Lightweight releases new €6,990 Milenstein ART wheels

Lightweight has released a brand new wheelset today named the Milenstein ART.

The wheels are some of the German brand's most expensive ever, costing an eye-watering €6,550 per pair or €6,990 for the Schwarz edition, which gains CeramicSpeed bearings and black decals. We make them to be some of the most expensive wheels ever that we know about, second only to the super deep Lightweight Fernweg wheels.

For some additional context, in their most expensive guise, they sit at €2,491 more than the recently released Enve SES 4.5 Pro wheels that are currently being used in the Tour de France.

The brand claims the new wheels have been developed over four years and introduce a new era in carbon engineering, thanks to a new rim design. They also appear to represent a rim profile update for Lightweight, a brand that has long stuck with a relatively narrow, V-shaped rim for most of its road wheelsets.

It seems to maintain high stiffness, a Lightweight calling card for many years, but to move forward with a wider, more up-to-date aero shape, the brand has introduced a new reinforced internal rim design.

The wheels are 45mm deep, with hooked rims and weigh in at 1,190 grams, comfortably among the best lightweight wheels around by that metric.

ART - Alpha Rib Technology

The Milenstein is a wheel model that has been in the Lightweight wheel range for a long time. This new release is, as mentioned, the Milenstein ART, and the abbreviation stands for Alpha Rib Technology. This appears to be a big part of the Lightweight redesign philosophy.

Lightweight claims these new wheels feature a wider, more aerodynamic profile with an internal width of 22.9mm, while increasing stiffness and reducing weight.

For comparison, the current Milenstein Evo wheels have an 18.2mm internal width, a number that's considered fairly outdated by modern standards, as wider tyres are more regularly used.

The brand claims that the new ART technology incorporates a network of integrated 'ribs' inside the rim cavity itself. These structural ribs are said to increase lateral stiffness by reinforcing the rim against side loads.

The bladed carbon fibre spokes are then bonded directly into the internal rib structure. This gives the brand the ability to eliminate bends or directional changes for the carbon fibre, increasing tensile strength, reducing material fatigue and producing a lighter, stiffer wheel.

According to the attached press material, around 500 metres of carbon fibre, along with 70 pre-cuts, are cut to construct the wheels. The layup is tailored and uses ultra-high modulus carbon fibre in certain areas.

The spokes are bonded to the rim, meaning truing shouldn't be necessary, but more serious damage will require a more comprehensive repair, just like the Partington R-Series wheels we tested a while back.

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The wheels also have a new 'Penta Fly' hub system, which features a machined aluminium hub with a smaller diameter to minimise drag, to which the carbon spokes are then bonded.

The spoke/hub interface is also now left exposed; the circular hub covers that have long adorned Lightweight wheel hubs, often bearing the model name, are now gone.

A new rim construction method has also been developed for the wheelset, for which the brand says it has multiple patents pending, and does away with the traditional foam core structure. A removable, reusable core material is used in construction, which is then removed.

The wheels meet and exceed the ISO 4210 standard according to the brand, and have also undergone corrosion and environmental exposure tests.

The 'aero mass index'

Lightweight claims the ambition for these wheels was for them to perform across every riding scenario. Balancing aero, weight and stiffness, which is probably a consideration for most brands when creating wheels.

The brand says it has created a new metric named the aero mass index, which evaluates wheels based on a combination of aero drag and weight. The brand claims that the lower the index, the better the balance between speed and overall performance.

Lightweight claims the aero mass index is calculated as follows:

DRAG AT 45KM/H x WEIGHT

Or put simply, the Aero Mass Index is a multiplication of how aerodynamic the wheelset is, multiplied by its weight.

The brand claims the rim shape prioritises an ideal balance between low drag and crosswind stability. CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) was used to decide on the ideal rim profile, after more than 70 prototypes were used in the design process, along with wind tunnel testing with a range of tyre types and wind speeds.

No information has been provided by the brand on this wind tunnel testing, only the above aero mass index graph. But in the results, the Milenstein ART outperforms nine competitor wheelsets.

The brand has also explained that the ART wheelset has 20% greater overall aerodynamic efficiency than its predecessor, the Milenstein Evo. It's probably fair to assume that its wider, rounder rim and optimisation for 28mm tyres make it a lot more competitive than the older Milenstein, which have fallen out of favour with pro teams in recent years after lots of high profile use in years gone by, notably Team Ineos Grenadiers at the 2019 Tour de France as well as a few other years.