ENVE M60 Forty HV 29” Wheels

The Ride

The last 2000 words don’t really matter if all the engineering, fancy tech, and expensive carbon don’t translate to a noticeable improvement on the trail. Well, I’m not the first one to say this, but Yes, these wheels make a very noticeable and very beneficial difference on the trail.

They accelerate like a bat out of hell, and they’re one of the stiffest 29er wheelsets I’ve ridden. And they ride like they’re even lighter than they actually are, almost certainly because the rotating weight at the outer edge of the wheel is minimal.

That lighter weight is immediately noticeable the first time you accelerate, but the benefit really comes over time. Getting the wheels back up to speed after the first corner is easy with fresh legs, but after the 1000th corner, the difference becomes that much more appreciated.

Now making a light wheel that accelerates quickly isn’t that difficult. There’s tons of light wheels on the market, and many that cost much, much less than the ENVEs. What there aren’t a lot of, however, are wheels that are this light that are also stiff and can taking a beating.

Stiffness

I purposely chose to ride these in the 29er format because, more than any other wheelsize, 29ers really highlight flexy wheels. I’m positive I’m not the only one to land hard on a 29er or tuck the back wheel into a corner only to feel the wheel wobbling and buckling under the lateral load.

29er wheels have gotten better about this, primarily because they’ve gotten a lot heavier. Case in point: the Industry Nine Enduro wheels I mentioned above. They’re almost as stiff as the M60’s, but they weigh almost 300 g more.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the ENVE’s ride like they’re carbon. It’s sort of similar to a carbon frame—there’s a certain dampness to the ride that comes with carbon. It’s tough to really pinpoint the difference, but it’s as if most of the high frequency vibrations are muted. Personally, I’m a fan.

It’s not quite as apparent as going from an aluminum to carbon frame, but the ENVE rims contribute to that same dampness. When carrying speed through rough terrain, they just seem a bit less “pingy.”

The M60’s also handle hard, awkward landings quite well. Even on the hardest landings, I’ve yet to get that “wheel is unhappy” momentary wobble. The wheel flexes a bit, but the flex manifests itself more as the whole wheel moving sideways rather than just one part of the rim torquing over.

These moments are fleeting, and usually when they happen I’m preoccupied with not buying the farm. But suffice it to say that the wheels behave differently under large loads than their aluminum brethren. I’m mostly attributing this to the rigidity of the carbon rim—lateral force at the contact point with the ground seems to be dissipated over a much larger section of the rim than with aluminum.

So is all of that a good thing? I would say Yes. The M60’s handle large loads and hard hits more gracefully than wheels built around aluminum rims, even ones that are similarly stiff to the ENVEs. But at the risk of repeating myself, the more noteworthy thing here is that any aluminum rim that even approaches the ENVE’s level of stiffness is going to be a lot heavier.

I’ve seen some arguments saying that the ENVE’s are too stiff—some say they really beat you up over a longer ride. Perhaps on a rough trail on a stiff hardtail, this might be the case, but so far in my experience, they’re great. I’ve spent a couple days on them with 5+ hours on the bike, and if anything, I came away a tiny bit fresher just because of the aforementioned benefits of a light wheelset.

Blister’s Tom Collier also noted than when he rode a 26” ENVE wheel, it seemed like the stiffness of the rim had the effect of reducing traction in corners a bit. At least on the 29er wheels that I rode, I didn’t find this to be an issue, but the larger wheel size is also inherently a bit flexier than the smaller wheel sizes.

Durability

I only have about 10 days on these rims, so I can’t yet make conclusive statements about durability. But with that in mind, they’ve held up pretty well. The wheels did settle in very slightly over the first couple days. I noticed a few minor pings and pops from the spokes in the first ride, and the wheel went slightly out of true. And to be clear, when I say the wheel went slightly out of true, I mean slightly. Like, less than 1 mm of wobble. Again, I’m being hyper-critical.

After that initial bit of settling in the first couple days on them, they seem to be holding steady. I haven’t trued them yet because (1) pulling off the tire and rim tape to get to the spoke nipples is a pain in the ass, and (2) as far as I’m concerned, 1 mm of wobble doesn’t matter.

But the question of durability also really needs to focus on the carbon rim. The often irrational distrust of carbon persists, but if nothing else, carbon rims are still relatively new to the mountain bike world, and they need to be fully vetted.

Anecdotally, they seem to hold up well. I know quite a few people who have been riding ENVE’s for years, and for the most part, they’ve had very good luck with them. I’ve personally witnessed a number of carbon rims from various brands crack or fail, but I’ve yet to personally see an ENVE fail. This isn’t to say that there’s never been an ENVE failure (I’m sure there have been plenty), but they seem to hold up better than many of the other carbon options.

While my time on the M60’s has thus far been brief, I did take a good crack (pun intended) at breaking them. In an over-cooked corner, I sent the sidewall of the rim hard into a rock. It left a pretty solid gash in the rim, but so far no other negative effects have surfaced. It was a hard enough hit that I’m fairly certain it would have dented an aluminum rim, but the ENVE shrugged it off without any fuss. I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see if it develops into an issue, but so far so good.

All that aside, every ENVE wheelset comes with a 5-year warranty and a lifetime crash replacement policy. Under the crash replacement program, you can replace the rim for 50% off the MSRP.

Bottom Line

My inescapable conclusion is that these wheels are really impressive. They’re noticeably light, they’re supremely stiff, and in every situation I’ve put them into, they ride really, really well. Of all the little nitpicky issues I’ve found with them, almost all of them are negligible (the only potential exception being that you have to pull the tire off to true them).

I don’t expect everyone to run out and throw a couple grand at a wheelset after reading this; there’s no escaping the fact that these things are expensive. But for those that are willing to take that plunge, I’d be extremely surprised if you were disappointed.

Long-Term Follow Up

I have about a 15 months on these wheels at this point, which in Montana means about 10 months of actual riding time. These wheels probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 miles on them at this point; I spent a lot of time on them, and when I was reviewing other bikes or different wheels, I had friends flog the M60 HV’s in the interim (shockingly, it’s not too hard to find people who want to try them out).

So after all of that, here’s what I have to report: not much. I haven’t trued the wheels at all, and the spokes are still holding their tension nicely. That gouge that I put in the rim? Well, it’s still there, but it’s been entirely unproblematic. I’ve added a few other scrapes and scratches, but I haven’t had any issues whatsoever with durability.

I mentioned in my initial review that I was having problems with the King rear hub skipping occasionally. It took about 300-400 miles for it to break in, but it doesn’t skip anymore.

In the past year, I also spent some time on the Reynolds Enduro 29 wheelset. As I mentioned in that review, those wheels are stiffer than the M60’s, but the rim is heavier. The M60’s ride “lighter” — they accelerate better, and they’re easier to flick around, but on extra hard corners, the flex noticeably more than the Reynolds. The M60’s have a much more forgiving ride quality though, which is nice on bumpier trails (especially on shorter travel bikes and hardtails).

So, long story short, I stand by all of my initial conclusions regarding the M60 HV’s. They’re ridiculously nice wheels, and they mate really well with the 2.3” tires that are my go-to choice for most trail riding purposes. They’re still far from cheap, but I’m confident in saying that you won’t regret owning them.

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