OneUp Components Hubs
Stated Weight:
- Front: 142 g
- Rear: 220 g
MSRP:
- Hub set: $369.97 USD / $ 499.97 CAD
- Front: $99.99 USD / $134.99 CAD
- Rear: $219.99 USD / $296.99 CAD
- Freehub: $49.99 USD / $67.99 CAD
Configurations Available:
- Front: 110 x 15 mm Boost, 28 or 32 hole
- Rear: 148 x 12 mm Boost, 28 or 32 hole
- XDr, Microspline, or HG drivers available
- 6-bolt rotor mount
Drive System: 44t ratchet system
Test Locations: Washington, British Columbia
Reviewer: 6’, 165 lbs / 183 cm, 74.8 kg
Bolted To: Kavenz VHP 16, laced to Forge+Bond 30 EM rims
Test Duration: 3.5 months
Intro
OneUp’s original product — a cassette expander cog — feels like a throwback to another time, but they’ve been steadily expanding their lineup to offer thoughtfully designed parts at reasonable prices. The crew at OneUp has now turned its sights to hubs and designed their own 44-tooth ratchet inspired by the formidable DT Swiss Star Ratchet. OneUp’s new hubs are also very light but promise good durability.
OneUp says that they made the hubs that they want to run on their own bikes — so let’s see what that looks like.
Design
For now, at least, OneUp is offering a very simple set of configuration options for their new hubs. They’re available in Boost spacing only (110 x 15 mm front and 148 x 12 mm rear) with a 6-bolt rotor mount. 28-hole and 32-hole options are available, both drilled for J-bend spokes.
The hubs come in 7 colors and the bodies are made of machined 7075 aluminum — a higher-grade material with greater strength than some more common grades like 6061. Riders can choose from a SRAM XDr driver, Shimano Microspline, or Shimano HG. Driver bodies are easily swappable and doing so is a tool-free affair. OneUp also laser-etches the hub dimensions into the body to make the lives of wheel builders that much easier when determining spoke length.
We’ll get into more details below, but the combination of high-grade materials and a simple design have allowed OneUp to hit a very impressive weight target. At a claimed weight of 362 grams for the hub set (142 g front, 220 g rear), OneUp has managed to beat most of the common choices in rear hubs, including the much more expensive and notoriously lightweight DT Swiss 240 (by 5 grams).
The chart below shows where the OneUp hubs stack up to common competitors — note that all of those weights include the freehub body.
44T Ratchet Freehub Mechanism
OneUp (rightfully, in my opinion) praises the DT Swiss 350 hub for its blend of performance and value. Those DT hubs are not the flashiest — they’re available only in black with an understated design — but the DT Swiss Star Ratchet system is dead-reliable and offers quiet performance with a reasonable, but not particularly fast engagement in the common 36-tooth ratchet configuration.
Inspired by DT’s design, engineers at OneUp opted to develop their own 44-tooth ratchet system that works nearly identically to the more recent DT Swiss EXP design. The design relies on two steel ratchet rings, one spring-backed, which interlock with one another. As the wheel rotates, one of the ratchets remains captive in the hub shell while the other spring-backed one is captured by splines in the freehub. The ratchets slide along one another’s face in between engagement points but are in full contact with one another at each point of engagement.
While this ratchet design cannot match the engagement point count of some pawl-based designs, it has the advantage of using only a handful of parts while also having full contact with the surface area of each ratchet at each point of engagement. This means all 44 teeth on each ratchet are interlocking, creating a very strong connection point with minimal moving parts. This design is also typically a bit quieter than some of the more raucous pawl-based designs out there (looking at you, Industry Nine Hydra), but we’ll have to see if that holds true here.
This design’s simplicity and durability have earned DT Swiss some fans over the years, but we’ll be curious to see how OneUp’s design stacks up.
Axle, Bearings, and Seals
OneUp uses a simple and familiar internal layout, with a machined aluminum axle rotating on Enduro ABEC 5 bearings. Those Enduro bearings are better quality than what is used in many hubs on the market, and while they certainly aren’t at the standard of something like Chris King or Paul Components, they should have good life while being easily replaced when the time comes due to common sizing (Front: MR17287, Rear: 6902, Freehub: 6802).
Hailing from Squamish, BC, we would think that OneUp knows a thing or two about wet weather riding and the need for decent seals on any moving parts. The hubs have dual-sealed end caps with what look to be fairly burly rubber seals, and the rear hub gets a freehub seal from Enduro. Of course, time will tell how well that sealing works, but it’s on the more robust side of things at first glance.
FULL REVIEW
OneUp is probably best known for their dropper posts, but their catalog of parts just keeps growing. The latest release — a hub set — was one we didn’t expect, but OneUp found plenty of ways to make their mark. Capitalizing on the expiration of DT Swiss’ Star Ratchet patent, OneUp’s hubs come in a rainbow of colors, use a 44-tooth ratchet of their own design, and place a heavy emphasis on sealing to hopefully keep them low maintenance.
Apparently, a resilient design does not necessarily mean they have to weigh a lot, because the OneUp hubs are extremely lightweight at 142 grams for the front and 222 grams for the rear. For reference, an Industry Nine Hydra weighs 152 grams for the front and 295 grams for the rear, while a DT Swiss 240 EXP setup weighs 144 and 233 grams, respectively.
At $370 USD for the set, the OneUp hubs also cost almost $100 USD less for the pair than the Industry Nine Hydra ($460 USD) and DT Swiss 240 EXP ($465 USD) runs for just the rear hub. So do OneUp’s hubs deliver on the trail, or is there a catch? We put the miles in to find out.
Setup
OneUp offers a relatively limited range of configuration options for their hubs — they are available in Boost spacing only (15×110 mm front, 12×148 mm rear), and riders can choose between 28- or 32-hole options. Six-bolt is the lone rotor mounting option (sorry Centerlock fans), and OneUp offers the hubs with your choice of an XDR, Microspline, or Hyperglide freehub body.
To simplify inventory management for themselves and their dealers, OneUp ships the rear hub separately from the driver body. The rear hub itself arrives with a small packet of Dumonde Tech Pro X Freehub Grease, the two requisite ratchet rings and spring, and a plastic dust cover in place where the freehub body belongs. Installation is as easy as greasing the ratchets, installing them on the axle along with the spring, sliding on the freehub body, and installing the end cap.
In my case, I opted for a Microspline driver body. Assembling the hubs was an opportunity to check out the sealing elements that OneUp has included, which are quite burly compared to some other options on the market. The end caps on both the front and rear hubs are double-sealed to prevent water ingress, and the dual lip seal on the freehub is fairly burly too.
Given that OneUp does not currently offer a complete wheelset option, buyers will inevitably need to build the hubs up with their rims of choice. OneUp makes this a bit easier by laser etching the essential hub dimensions into the hub shell, ready to be entered into your spoke calculator of choice. I ended up lacing them to the Forge+Bond 30 EM rims from the Shift EM Mixed wheelset that I tested earlier in the year, replacing the more budget-oriented Bitex hubs that came with those.
Ride Quality and Performance
The bike industry is at a somewhat odd inflection point right now when it comes to rear hub engagement. Some brands are touting near-instant engagement, such as the 690 points of engagement on the Industry Nine Hydra, while others are intentionally pursuing designs that deliberately reduce engagement in the name of reducing pedal kickback (like the new e*thirteen Sidekick). While I haven’t tried some of the bleeding edge options for reducing pedal kickback, I generally find that I’m happy with anything over 36-ish points of engagement, but try to stay away from ultra-high engagement options beyond 120 points of engagement as I do sometimes notice more feedback through my feet in certain situations. Mostly, though, I just find that super-high engagement often brings more noise and more drag without meaningful performance improvements.
The OneUp hubs sit within my happy place, with a 44-tooth ratchet that functions in basically the same way as DT Swiss’ Star Ratchet design. Unlike some pawl-based designs, that means the entire face of each ratchet is in contact with its partner, providing a lot more surface area and thereby distributing the load. DT Swiss hubs have earned a reputation for reliability, so OneUp’s design here is an example of imitation being the highest form of flattery.
While 44 points of engagement may not sound like a lot, it’s totally adequate in practice. Technical climbs were easily executed without feeling like I was dealing with too much dead space in my pedal stroke. Switching back and forth with my personal favorite Hope Pro 5 hub, I did notice the faster pickup afforded by the Hope’s 108 points of engagement, but despite the 64-point delta between the Hope and OneUp mechanisms, I only really noticed if I was thinking about it.
While it’s again a subtle difference, I did notice the particularly solid-feeling engagement of the OneUp hub over a pawl-based hub. In a pawl-based hub, the actual number of pawls engaging at any one time and transferring power to the wheel is in the single digits (often three or six), which means those little steel bits are bearing quite a bit of force. As I mentioned above, the ratchet design in the OneUp hubs fully engages the entire face of each ratchet, which distributes that force over a much larger surface area. Riders who like the solid power transmission of DT Swiss hubs will be right at home here, and while my 165-pound body weight isn’t going to put crazy forces into a hub, I never noticed any skipping or flex in the system.
As much as their performance mostly disappeared into the background, one area where the OneUp hubs are a bit less subtle is in the sound of the ratchet — these things are loud. While it’s a deeper and more mechanical sound than the high-pitched whine of an Industry Nine Hydra or Chris King hub, the OneUp hubs remain quite noisy even with a fresh coat of Dumonde Tech grease. Folks who are familiar with DT Swiss’ traditional ratchet hubs like the 350 will find the OneUp hubs far louder, while DT’s noisier EXP ratchet design gets a bit closer in volume but is still a good bit quieter.
I personally prefer quiet hubs, so when my re-application of grease failed to quiet things down, I took a closer look at the design to see what might be making them noisier than expected. While the sound is influenced by various components in the hub, the primary culprit seems to be the heavy spring that OneUp uses behind the outer ratchet. While the strong spring likely helps ensure consistent engagement and reduce the risk of skipping, it comes at the cost of added noise.
Durability
Reviewing hubs is a funny thing because typically the less I have to say, the better the testing went. Fortunately, there’s not much to report with the OneUp hubs.
OneUp’s decision to use ABEC-5 bearings and heavy-duty sealing appears to be paying dividends. While I would be quite surprised to already be having any sort of bearing issues, the inside of both hubs has remained impressively clean, with no water ingress after washing or wet rides. That bodes quite well for the longer-term reliability of the OneUp hubs.
Using the DT Swiss-inspired ratchet design was a smart move for reliability, but the OneUp hub goes about the implementation a little bit differently, with a keyed area for the inner ratchet machined into the aluminum hub shell. In contrast, DT Swiss uses a keyed steel insert threaded into the hub to retain that inner ratchet, the idea being that steel is a harder and more durable material for coping with the stresses going through the ratchet mechanism. While steel is the stronger material for this purpose, I didn’t notice any signs of wear inside the hub throughout my testing — it may also help that OneUp uses 7075 aluminum for the hub shell on both the front and rear hubs, which is generally stronger and harder than 6-series material.
Who’s It For?
It’s pretty easy to see a lot of riders getting along with the OneUp hubs. Riders who love the feeling of a super high engagement hub may find OneUp’s 44 points of engagement a bit lacking, while riders concerned about pedal kickback may see that lower engagement as a selling point. Many riders care a whole lot more about their hubs being as fuss-free as possible, and that’s where OneUp hubs have a lot to offer — the weather sealing is impressive, the ratchet follows a time-tested design, and the weight is low.
The one dealbreaker for some folks may be the rather loud freehub, but there are plenty of folks who seek out loud hubs, too. That said, even for more noise-adverse riders, it may be easier to look past once you factor in OneUp’s reasonable $370 asking price for the hub set.
Bottom Line
Aside from being rather lightweight, the OneUp hubs don’t have a flashy feature set. Instead, they manage to blend a solid feel and reliability at a very reasonable asking price. There are plenty of hubs out there that pack more engagement, but if consistent performance and a lightweight build are a priority, it’s hard to argue with the value proposition of the OneUp hubs.
Sweet. If these have reliability like their posts, they will be a winner at a fair price.
Looking at you on the price thing, DT!
Given that the ratchet design is almost identical to DT’s, I’m surprised OneUp was able to do this without patent infringement.
DT’s original star ratchet patent has expired, so it’s fair game at this point.
bummer on the noise, quiet hubs are nice.
Zack or David, I know this would void warranty or whatever, but would it be physically possible to use OneUp’s 44t ratchet rings in a DT Swiss 370 (non-EXP of course) hub. It appears that the springs are different but you could theoretically re-use those and just swap ratchet rings if they are the same dimensions. DT’s ratchet upgrade kits are way too fucking expensive on this side of the pond. Oneup’s aren’t inexpensive either but they are a good 35% cheaper.
OneUp says you can’t use a DT ratchet in their hub, so seems unlikely.