Reynolds Blacklabel 329 Trail Pro Wheels
Internal Width: 32 mm
Sizes Available: 27.5’’ and 29’’ (27.5’’ version is called Blacklabel 327 Trail Pro)
Rim Material: Carbon Fiber
Stated Weight:
Wheelset: 1,574 g
Blister’s Measured Weight (with pre-installed rim tape):
- Front: 712 g
- Rear: 864 g
- Total: 1,576 g
MSRP: Wheelset w/ Industry Nine Hydra hubs: $2,300
Test Bikes: Rocky Mountain Element, Guerrilla Gravity Trail Pistol, and Santa Cruz Tallboy
Reviewer: 6’, 175 lbs / 183 cm, 79.4 kg
Test Location: Washington
Test Duration: 6 months
Intro
Reynolds has been making carbon fiber bike wheels for a long time, and the Blacklabel 329 Trail Pro (and its siblings — more on those in a minute) are the latest additions to their mountain bike wheel lineup. But apart from the “Trail” moniker (other models in the line are branded “XC”, “Enduro”, and “Plus”), Reynolds’ marketing copy doesn’t offer a ton of guidance on how, exactly, they intend for the 329 Trail Pros to be used. And so we were rather curious. On one hand, they’re very, very light; on the other, with a 32 mm internal width, they also feature wider rims than most wheels in their weight class, which tends to favor slightly bigger, higher-volume tires than the more typical ~26 to 30 mm wide rims you’d generally see for these sorts of wheels. So how does that all add up, and where do the Blacklabel 329 Trail Pros fit into the many, many wheel options out there? We were eager to find out.
Design
The Trail 329 rim is a little wider than average for an all-rounder Trail bike rim (with a 32 mm internal width) and quite shallow in cross-section at just 19 mm. As with most modern mountain bike rims, the bead seat is hookless, and the rim is asymmetric for more even spoke bracing angles and tension. The center channel of the Trail 329 rim is relatively wide, which tends to make installing stubborn tires, especially those with relatively thick beads, easier. The bead seat area has a slight lip on the inside to help with bead retention and mitigate burping tires, and I’ve found the Blacklabel 329 Trail Pros to mount most tires without much fuss, including Continental’s new range of DH tires, which have proven to be notably difficult to mount on a variety of rims — more on those coming soon.
There are three different versions of the Blacklabel 329 Trail wheel family, starting with the top-tier Blacklabel 329 Trail Pro, tested here. The Pro version of the 329 Trail wheels uses a custom hub manufactured by Industry Nine with Hydra internals (including their crazy 690 points of engagement), but with hub shells for straight pull spokes. The Blacklabel 329 Trail Pro wheels are laced with Sapim CX-Ray spokes and are available with 110 x 15 mm Boost front spacing and your choice of 148 mm Boost or 157 mm Superboost rear hubs, with centerlock rotor mounts only.
The Blacklabel 329 Trail Expert features the same rim as the Pro version but laced to Sun Ringle Super Bubba X hubs in place of the Industry Nine Hydra ones. The 329 Trail Expert wheels share the Sapim CX-Ray spokes of the Pro version as well. The Blacklabel 329 Trail Experts (and the 27.5’’ diameter 327 version) retail for $1,900 and come in at a claimed weight of 1,605 g for the pair.
And finally, there’s the TR 329 Trail, the entry-level model in the range. Those use a different rim, with an identical profile to the one used in the higher-end wheels, but with a more basic carbon fiber layup. The TR 329 Trail wheels also feature 28 straight-pull spokes (Sapim Sprints) and centerlock hubs (Sun Ringle SRXs), but between the more basic components and the swap to brass nipples (from aluminum ones on the higher-end wheels), the TR 329 Trails are significantly heavier, at 1,776 g (claimed) for the pair.
All the Blacklabel Trail 329 variants come with a lifetime warranty for the original owner. They’re sold as complete wheelsets only, and unfortunately, mullet combinations aren’t available at this time.
Weight (and Comparisons)
Reynolds doesn’t list a rim weight for the Blacklabel Trail 329 rim, but our measured 1,576 g total for the wheelset is very light for this class of wheel (and impressively close to their 1,574 g stated weight). The straight-pull Industry Nine Hydra hubs and Sapim CX-Ray bladed spokes undoubtedly contribute to that figure — they’re both quite light — but based on the parts that have gone into the wheels and the final total weight, we’d estimate the rims at around 440 g each, which isn’t a whole lot, either.
The listed rim weights below are all the manufacturers’ stated weights; complete wheel weights are as measured by Blister, where possible. And all are for a 29’’ diameter unless otherwise noted.
Rims:
408 g Enve M630 (carbon)
395 g front / 435 g rear NOBL TR35 (carbon)
425 g We Are One Faction (carbon)
436 g Revel RW27 (carbon)
440 g Reserve 30|SL (carbon)
480 g Revel RW30 (carbon)
480 g Reserve 30|HD (carbon)
495 g We Are One Union (carbon)
525 g DT Swiss XM 481 (aluminum)
525 g Race Face ARC30 (aluminum)
570 g DT Swiss EX 511 (aluminum)
580 g Enve M730 (carbon)
Wheelsets:
1,571 g NOBL TR35 + DT Swiss 240 EXP (carbon)
1,576 g Reynolds Blacklabel 329 Trail Pro (carbon)
1,639 g DT Swiss XMC 1501 (carbon)
1,648 g Enve M630 + Industry Nine 1/1 (carbon)
1,718 g Reserve 30|SL + Industry Nine 1/1 (carbon)
1,740 g We Are One Faction + Industry Nine 1/1 (carbon)
1,758 g Revel RW27 + Industry Nine 1/1 (carbon)
1,840 g Revel RW30 + Industry Nine Hydra (carbon)
1,848 g DT Swiss XM 1700 (aluminum)
1,849 g Reserve 30|HD + Industry Nine Hydra (carbon)
1,877 g We Are One Union + Industry Nine Hydra (carbon, 27.5’’ diameter)
1,985 g DT Swiss EX 1700 (aluminum)
2,069 g Enve M730 / Chris King (carbon)
On The Trail
It had been a while since I’d ridden any Reynolds wheels, so I wasn’t sure what to expect of the Blacklabel 329 Trail Pros. I’d last been on the Reynolds AM wheels from maybe 8 or so years ago and found those to be awfully stiff and harsh, but that was true of most carbon mountain bike wheels back then, and the industry has come a long way in figuring out how to retain the lateral stiffness and precision of a good carbon wheel in a package that rides a whole lot more smoothly, and I figured the same was likely true for Reynolds.
And it is. The Blacklabel 329 Trail Pros ride really well, but in a lot of ways, this has proven to be a tough review to write (or at least, make super exciting) because their ride quality doesn’t bring to mind many superlatives one way or the other. That’s far from a critique, though. The Blacklabel 329 Trail Pros feel fairly precise without being overly stiff and harsh, and in terms of their on-trail ride quality, they just feel well-rounded and balanced, rather than at one end of the spectrum or the other for any particular trait (apart from maybe weight), in a good way.
That balanced ride quality is especially impressive for their weight, in a world where ultra-light carbon rims are often (perhaps counterintuitively) notably stiff and not very well-damped. The Blacklabel 329 Trail Pros feel a little more lively (as opposed to damped) in terms of how they rebound from being flexed, relative to the Reserve 30|SLs, in particular, but the Blacklabel 329 Trail Pros don’t feel unduly stiff, especially radially, and generally feel well-sorted for the sorts of short-to-mid-travel Trail bikes that they’re meant for. The 329 Trail Pros don’t feel quite as stiff and precise laterally as some burlier, more Enduro-oriented wheels (e.g. We Are One Unions, especially with the Unions built with 32 spokes) but I think that’s probably a good thing for more Trail-oriented wheels, and the 329 Trail Pros feel vastly more precise than any aluminum wheel I’ve been on that even starts to approach their notably-low total weight.
I was also curious to see how the wider-than-average 32 mm inner width of the Blacklabel 329 Trail Pro would play out in terms of tire profile and ride characteristics, but to be honest, I don’t think it makes a huge difference one way or the other, relative to the 30 mm inner width that I’d consider to be the default for this class of rims. I ran tires from 2.3’’ to 2.5’’ nominal width over the course of testing, and while the slight bit of extra rim width does make the tire profile ever so slightly more square than it would be on a 30 mm rim, I (1) found the difference to be subtle and (2) a mixed bag as to whether it was a pro or a con, depending on the specific tire model in question.
Generally speaking (and within reason), wider rims make the side knobs of a given tire engage slightly quicker and make for slightly more sidewall support when really cornering hard; the tradeoff is that if the tire profile is squared off too much, it becomes too easy to lean the bike past the point where the side knobs offer optimal grip, and it can make for slower-rolling tires since you’re engaging a wider portion of the tread more often. The 2.4’’ Continental Kryptotals (the front version, especially) are a prime example of a tire that gets a little more square than I’d like from the added width; conversely, the 2.4’’ Maxxis Dissector is improved, especially as a front tire, in my estimation, by the extra width and support. I feel more or less indifferent about a 2.5’’ Maxxis Minion DHF (the bigger, higher-volume the tire, the less difference a couple of millimeters of rim width makes to its profile), and am similarly ambivalent about the rim width difference for the 2.4’’ Maxxis Minion DHR II as a front tire, but like the slightly more round profile of the 2.4’’ DHR II on a 30 mm rim as a rear tire. And as a rear tire, the 2.3’’ DHR II was substantially more squared off on the Blacklabel 329s than I personally prefer — in general, I’d typically prefer a slightly more square profile on my front tire and a more round one in the back, so that that rear is quicker to step out and drift than the front, and because if you’re drifting the rear and countersteering with the front, you’re effectively achieving a higher lean angle on the rear tire than the front at a given moment.
Anyway, that’s a very long-winded way of saying that the 32 mm inner width of the Blacklabel 329 Trail rims didn’t feel like a dramatic difference from the 30 mm width that more people are likely familiar with, but it does bias the wheels toward running slightly wider tires than some might prefer for true Trail bike use, and tends to make tire profiles just a touch more square, for better and / or worse.
A 1,576-gram wheelset is (unsurprisingly) also pretty great to pedal up. On the Rocky Mountain Element (which came with comparatively heavy aluminum wheels), in particular, that bit of weight savings did a lot to help the bike realize its full potential. Light wheels are nice on the way up no matter what, but the difference is especially noticeable when you’re really trying to climb quickly in more varied, rolling terrain, and consequently sprinting / accelerating hard out of corners and when the terrain presents opportunities to do so. The Element is a bike that does that readily and eagerly, and cutting wheel weight makes a big difference when it comes to making the bike feel snappy and quick to accelerate when you put the hammer down.
The Santa Cruz Tallboy feels similar to the Element in that regard, but also came with light-ish stock wheels (Reserve 30|SLs) so the difference on that bike simply wasn’t as pronounced, and I mitigated it further by using the wheel swap to try some burlier tires on the Tallboy than the stock Maxxis Dissector / Rekon combination — more on that in the Tallboy full review, coming very soon. And as I spoke about at length in my review of the Guerrilla Gravity Trail Pistol, that bike is not one that feels XC-derived and snappy in the same way that the Element and Tallboy do; the Trail Pistol is a more game-on descender, but also a bike that’s doesn’t encourage you to pedal hard and attack on the climbs to the same extent, and so while saving wheel weight certainly didn’t hurt, it didn’t transform the Trail Pistol in the same way that it did the Element.
The custom Industry Nine Hydra hubs used in the Blacklabel 329 Trail Pros have held up nicely so far and I haven’t needed to true or re-tension the wheels thus far — the factory build was well sorted. If I’ve got anything to complain about it’s that I’d love to see a six-bolt rotor mount option (even if it would be a little bit heavier), mostly because there are just far more six-bolt rotors out in the world; centerlock still strikes me as the sort of design that might be better if it had caught on more fully, but in the real world is mostly just an annoying second option that makes parts compatibility more complicated than it needs to be. (Reynolds’ sister brand, Hayes, notably doesn’t even make a centerlock rotor.)
But that’s really not a big deal, especially when the overall package has given me little to complain about. The Blacklabel 329 Trail Pros aren’t cheap (though the Expert version is a bit more affordable and comes in at a similar claimed weight) but they’re super light, ride very well, and haven’t given me any trouble in nearly a full summer of riding.
Bottom Line
The Reynolds Blacklabel 329 Trail Pro wheels are very light and a little bit wider than average, but they’ve held up great and are a compelling option for folks who prefer to run medium- to higher-volume tires on their Trail bikes. Their ride quality is more well-rounded and balanced than it is truly superlative at any one thing — they feel moderately stiff, without being over the top or harsh — and that’s a nice place to be for a versatile Trail bike wheel.