ENVE All-New M Wheels Review: One Major Issue Fixed – john watson | The Radavist | A group of individuals who share a love of cycling and the outdoors.

US-made carbon rim manufacturer ENVE just announced the fifth generation of its M Series wheel line, solving a major Achilles’ heel for people who enjoy backcountry travel. Read on for all the M Series updates and a quick review from John below…

ENVE M Series Wheelsets Quick Hits

Unique front and rear rim shapes
New front and rear-specific carbon layups
ENVE Innerdrive mountain hubs
A lower pricepoint ($2300, down from $2550) made possible by efficiencies in component sourcing and the new layups
Four new wheels create the M Series line, spanning from XC to DH race:
- M5 Pro: XC Race
- M6: Trail/E-MTB Light (reviewed here)
- M8: Enduro/Gravity Race/E-MTB
- M9 Pro: Enduro/Gravity Race/E-MTB

M6 Wheel Specs and Logic

Cross-Country, Down-Country, All-Country, Old School Country (Willie/Waylon), Trail Applications
29” – 1575g, 29”/27.5” – 1544g
Front and rear-specific construction and geometry
Inner-Rim Width Front: 32mm
Inner-Rim Width Rear: 29mm
Wide Hookless Bead – Trail-optimized anti-pinch flat protection
Brass external nipples with Nyloc threaded locking insert
28-hole front and rear
E-MTB usage – Up to 75nm
Made in USA
Backed by ENVE’s 5-year Factory Warranty and Incidental Damage Protection

As you can see in the specs, each new M Series wheel model features unique front and rear rim shapes to offer optimizations in compliance and strength, thanks to these new profiles and carbon layup designs. While the external widths are nearly identical in front and rear, the internal widths trend wider in the front and narrower in the rear. ENVE’s logic is that this optimizes tire shape and volume for traction in the front with more forgiveness in the rear.

ENVE went as far as to even offer different carbon layups from the front rim to the rear, engineering the front rim to have more flex and vibration damping for the rider. Meanwhile, the rear rims trend slightly stiffer and stronger for rear impacts and tracking control.

Efficiencies = Lower Cost to Consumers

ENVE is continuously honing its manufacturing processes to pass cost savings to the customer. The new M series rims utilize a new bladder in the layup construction, eliminating patches on the rim and reducing material and labor costs. Like all ENVE rims, the new M Series line is handmade at their Ogden, Utah facility.

M Series Innerdrive Hubs

All M wheels are built to ENVE’s Innerdrive mountain hubs, which feature an oversized ratchet mechanism with four ratchet options – 40t (9°), 60t (6°), 80t (4.5°),100t (3.6°). This allows riders to customize their hubs to their desired engagement. Innerdrive M Series wheels ship with the 80t ratchet installed. For weight savings, the M5 and M6 wheels use straight-pull center lock hub shells, while the M8 and M9 use a j-bend hub shell for increased durability.

Real World Testing

ENVE went all-in with this new M Series, taking feedback and development notes from its top professional UCI athletes from XC to downhill.

However, I am not an elite athlete. I’m a normal rider who rides for fitness and fun. I also get to ride a lot of different bikes and wheels over a calendar year. So, I’ll be completely honest: I genuinely don’t believe human beings can detect the minutiae touted in most wheel marketing.

If anything, I think tire size, compound, and pressure can achieve the desired ride qualities riders are looking for. Unless you’re in the game of incremental gains like a professional UCI athlete hoping to shave milliseconds off your time, most of the marketing behind wheels is part snake oil and part technological progression.

However, a few wheels have stood out to me over the years in terms of a unique riding experience, namely the ZIPP 3Zero wheels, with their wide and shallow profile, resulting in “ankle compliance.” Even the Fusion Fiber wheels did feel a bit more flexy than other wheels I’ve used. No carbon wheel has felt as plush as a good set of aluminum wheels, though. Yet aluminum wheels don’t last as long as good carbon wheels when they’re being thrashed hard on trails, at least in my experience.

What I’ve found with this new M series is that ENVE is playing the long game here. They are slowly improving a tried-and-true platform over time. If you rode the first-gen M Series wheels and then rode the brand new, fifth-generation M Series wheels with the same exact tire spec and pressure, you might be able to tell the difference. Maybe?

More importantly, I consider wheel maintenance, tubeless setup, and in-field serviceability key demands for my wheels. These wheels have taken a lot of abuse over two months of hard riding and have not a single wobble or loose spoke. There is a considerable difference between wheel abuse endured on a full suspension bike, where kinetic energy from poor lines can be absorbed by rear suspension, and a 150 mm travel hardtail ridden like a trail bike without such technology.

I’ve been hammering these wheels on a review bike, and they have been incredibly resilient.

That’s the thing: ENVE wheels are durable. While they don’t feel as “plush” as aluminum wheels, what you lose in perceived flexibility, you gain in durability. I’ve had to true my aluminum wheels a few times each season but haven’t had to touch my ENVE wheels. They maintain tension in a category all their own.

Now, I’ve ridden every generation of M Series wheels and it wasn’t the lack of “compliance” or “stiffness” or any of the other marketing terms that took me away from its bomb-proof wheel design in recent years.

It was the internal nipples.

Finally, External Nipples and a Brief Anecdote

I had ENVE M6 wheels on my backcountry touring bike, and back in 2023, on top of the Aquarius Plateau in Southeastern Utah, I popped two spokes, jamming the internal nipples into the rim strip. Here’s the thing. I had an extra spoke. I even had Gorilla tape (used as a tubeless tape alternative).

Still, it was impossible to clean the rim strip in the field without a degreaser like Simple Green to get the new tape to adhere, and my tire was littered with hundreds of goat head thorns, making an inner tube risky. To rid the rubber of all the pokey boys would have taken hours, so I did my best to limp down to civilization with a tube filled with Stan’s sealant. I made it within feet of my car before that setup failed, too. This was jokingly highlighted in our Aquarius Plateau video…

If the spokes had been external, the field repair wouldn’t have been as severe, as the rim strip most likely would have been unscathed as I always wrap my rim tape thick in prep for such inconveniences, and I could have finished the ride. Even with the two busted spokes, the wheels stayed perfectly true, and I could have continued on, but I was worried about more spokes breaking due to the decreased integrity of the wheel.

Once I got home, I built up new wheels for my backcountry bike with external nipples. Then, a similar thing happened on my lunch ride last year, resulting in a long walk home. Both of these wheelsets had endured a lot of hard riding over the years and were coming up on four years of age. I wasn’t surprised in the least.

Here’s the thing: Throughout my extensive experience with ENVE rims, I have never had the rims themselves go out of true or break, even with busted spokes. Yet, the internal nipples presented a challenge for me to put my faith back in that system.

These new M Series wheels solve that issue. For the first time ever, the new M Series wheels have external nipples. Rejoice! That alone is worth the investment to me.

TL;DR and Pros/Cons

I’m not going to tell you these wheels ride any different than their predecessors, not because they don’t, but because I honestly cannot tell the difference. What I can say with one hundred percent certainty is they ride really well, offering resilience and reliability (so far), even moreso now with external nipples and at a lower price. That’s a win-win.

The new M Series is available now and shipping worldwide to ENVE retail and distribution partners as well as ENVE.com.

All M Series models will be retailed in the US for $ 2,300.