Mavic CrossMax SL wheelset review

Blisteringly quick, tough and user-friendly XC wheels with serious stealth appeal

Our rating

4.0

1000.00
870.00

What Mountain Bike / Immediate Media

Published: February 23, 2015 at 10:00 am

Our review
Expensive, but a dramatic XC speed/responsiveness boost with outstanding user-friendly toughness

Mavic’s latest wheel combines nearly 20 years of technological evolution into a quick yet user-friendly XC/fast trail-focused wheelset.

At 1580g (710g front, 870g rear) it’s impressively light for an alloy 29er setup, and within 100g of the lightest carbon wheels that can be trusted to steer straight. The latest ISM (Inter Spoke Milling) 4D rim sculpting shaves excess metal from the rim for the minimum of weight at the outside edge, where it matters most for reducing inertia.

Critically for split-second off the startline/out of corner reactions the ITS-4 freehub has almost instant (7.5-degree) engagement. Mavic’s unique big bladed Zicral alloy straight-pull spoke arrangement mixes with the seems-wonky-but-works radial driveside Isopulse lacing to punch power straight from your pedals with dramatic and ego-boosting directness. Despite having only 20 spokes at either end they’re obedient enough to hit aggressive racing/overtaking lines and hold onto them as well as all but the most expensive carbon XC wheels.

It’s the same lacing system and freehub we’ve been giving obscene amounts of abuse to in a set of CrossMax Enduro wheels for over a year, so we’re not worried about it being able to handle whatever mileage or torque most riders will throw at it. You’ll have to send the wheels back to Mavic’s service centre if a stick takes a spoke out, but we’ve only had to do that once in the past few years despite having multiple Mavics on the go at any one time.

The easily adjustable bearings are smooth and long lived if you check them for wobble occasionally. Axle swapping (QR to 15mm front, 135mm QR, 135x12mm, 142x12mm rear) is swift and simple and all fit kits are included. As long as you’re patient swapping pawls it’s a cinch to switch to a SRAM XD driver too.

The totally sealed rims blow up easily with most tyres and don’t burp or bleed even at silly low pressures. They’ve stayed sealed even when we’ve dented rims badly on some sets and worked even after we’ve bent them back with pliers. The skinny (19mm internal) width does mean rubber more than 2.2in wide gets pinched but that’s normal for an XC rim. Even the full black finish is an easier cosmetic match to more bikes than raw metal panels like the previous CrossMax SLs are.

Finally, while they’re undoubtedly expensive for alloy, they’re a lot cheaper and more practically tough than the carbon wheels they’re otherwise competitive with.

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