Long-term review: NOBL HR35/45 Berd takes gravel to new heights

There are very few opportunities to ride a wildly new set of wheels. Since the advent of carbon rims, it’s been relatively staid, other than mountain biking messing around with slightly different wheel sizes. In moving away from metal spokes, Berd Spokes are offering one of the few real changes in construction in a while. Vancouver Island’s NOBL wheels are pushing to be early experts on the new design.

We’ve spent a year on NOBL’s HR35/45 rims, laced up with Berd spokes, to get familiar with this new technology and find out if it has some real-world mettle to go along with the high-profile medals it’s quickly racing up on the world stage.

Berd of Paradise

Instead of alloy spokes, Berd uses a woven polymer fibre that, in appearance, resembles a rope. But, once tensioned, promise 12 times the strength-to-weight of steel. That makes each spoke incredibly light (just 2.5g each) and makes for a significantly lighter wheelset.

Visiting NOBL’s Cumberland, B.C. headqurters to watch the wheels get built, it was wild seeing what looked like a knot of loose Dyneema string turn into a wheel. The novelty of a flexible spoke aside, though, Berd offers real performance benefits beyond just weight. They’re light, yes, but they help dampen noise and vibrations coming up from the ground. And they are surprisingly tough.

These performance attributes have won Berd some extremely high-profile early converts. The most prominent early adopters of Berd Spokes come from the world of mountain biking. Tom Pidcock and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot won matching Olympic gold medals in Paris last year, launching the polymer spokes from the fringes of mountain bike development into the spotlight. It doesn’t get much more high profile than that. But adding Alan Hatherly winning world championships and an Olympic medal on the polymer spokes in the same year (giving Berd rainbows and an astounding 50 per cent share of the combined men’s and women’s podium positions in Paris) certainly didn’t hurt. Rumors are, more pros are moving in this direction.

A Berd in the hand, a Berd on the podium, a Berd on a gravel road ride.

While Berd’s early successes are in mountain biking, and we really appreciated their performance on singletrack during testing last year, one of the more beneficial applications for the new spokes are, arguably in the world of gravel. There are, at least, two key performance elements that suit mixed-surface riding.

The first is vibration damping. Gravel is basically enduring hours (sometimes many hours) of low-level vibrations coming up from rough surfaces, usually without the benefit of any suspension. After the tires, it is a direct line from rims to hands, butt and feet. I experienced how much the little baby Fox fork could do to reduce fatigue on gravel and, going into this review, was curious if Berd could offer some of the same advantages.

The second is traction. A little bit bit of lateral compliance is a big thing right now in the world of mountain biking. Once you step away from the predictable world of tarmac, cornering on uneven or imperfect surfaces is easier with a less rigid structure. Lower tire pressure is the first line of defense, but wheels are another way to easily tune in some good flex.

NOBL Berd: suited to flying fast on rough roads

Berd has early pro converts and sucess. But what works for the pros, whose bikes are attended to daily by professional mechanics, doesn’t always work for the rest of us. Could these exotic polymer spokes survive a year of rugged gravel on Vancouver Island? Berd spokes have proved worth their weight in Gold for Pidcock and Ferrand Prevot, sure. But what happens over months of day-to-day use? We spent a year on a set of NOBL HR35/45 rims built with Berd Spokes to test their performance and longevity out.

The 35/45 combo is one we’re familiar with, so getting the Berd twist was a treat. Its a fast combo meant for mixing tarmac and gravel in whatever combo you want, but generally with some pace. NOBL says you can stretch their use out to bikepacking, if you want. Our test focused more on riding unloaded and with some urgency.

Anchoring the NOBL Berds, as I took to calling them, is a set of Industry Nine’s Solix hubs. With faster-than-one-degree engagement, and a high-pitched whine to match, the Solix’s matched the performance focus of this wheelset. NOBL’s experience with Berd, though, means you can build your wheelset up around a wider array of hubs. Either quieter or, if you can find one, louder than the Solix.

That gives the NOBL’s a 1,379g weight (with valve and tape) saving 100-150g over the same wheelset with any metal-spoke options offered by the brand.

Year of the Berd: NOBL HR35/45 Berd long term test

While the world of gravel borrows most of its technology from the staid world of road biking, more tech like Berd should make its way over. The benefits of the light polymer spokes work for Pidcock in XCO, which he’s repeatedly proved. But, for many of the same reasons, they work really well for gravel, too.

I spent most of a year going back and forth between the NOBL wheels and a set of Shimano RX880 wheels. Both are built around carbon fibre rims and are quite light. Shimano’s shallower, 32mm depth should make them more comfortable on rough gravel roads. While that is a great wheelset, the NOBLs outshone them handily.

The biggest difference is, as expected, in vibration damping. NOBL Berds won’t save you, or your tire, from smashing into a root or rock. They’re not magic. But they will save your hands, wrists and generally reduce fatigue as you start to rack up hours in the saddle. There’s just less noise traveling up from the wheel, through the bars or your saddle, and into your hands and butt. This isn’t a massive, black-and-white difference like, say, throwing a suspension fork on. It’s a more subtle change. But Berd spokes also don’t come with the added weight and loss of efficiency of a fork.

There is a difference in how they feel, or at least sound, though. A significant part of our perception of riding, I think, is connected to audio feedback we get from our bike. Between the Berd’s and Industry Nine’s instant-engagement Hydra hub, there isn’t the audible “clunk” when you stand up and hammer on the pedals. The NOBL’s spin up fast, I’m absolutely not saying they’re slow. But those expecting that audible feedback of “yes, I’m putting on power” might find it missing. The flip side of that is that the NOBL Berds are really quiet (uh, when that I9 Hydra isn’t screaming at you while coasting). Deeper section carbon rims can be louder, and amd feel harsher. Even with relatively small (for gravel) 40mm tires mounted, the NOBL HR35/45 were impressively quiet through roots and trails.

All of this is more impressive because the HR35/45 combo retains some aero gains. I don’t, personally, think aero is everything. But it’s unavoidably important in the world of gravel right now. NOBL’s rims, with their front and rear-specific depth, aim to add some efficiency at higher speeds.

Laced to the Berd spokes, though, they also gain some traction. Again, this isn’t a huge difference like mounting a fork would be. But it is a change. And, unlike a fork, this benefit is spread over both wheels instead of just the front. A bit less deflection as you corner on rough, chunky roads makes it slightly easier to hold speed into, and out of corners.

Berds versus balloons

Now, I can hear some of you saying, or at least thinking that many of the benefits I’ve attributed to the Berd spokes could just as easily be achieved by running higher-volume tires. That would come at a much lower cost. There are a couple counter points to that argument, though. And I think NOBL’s HR35/45 build demonstrates this well.

First, the Berds made my NOBL set, with relatively skinny 40mm tires mounted, feel better. They did that without losing rolling speed on smoother surfaces, like fatter tires would. They also did that with an aero advantage, but with less of the harshness of your usual aero wheel set.

Why (almost) all the gravel pros will be running fatter tires in 2025

Second, sure! But why not run higher-volume tires and Berd spokes? If the road is rough enough that you want 2.2” tires, more vibration damping without a loss in power transfer is probably going to feel better. And this is a benefit of NOBL’s very custom capabilities and Berd expertise. If you know you’re going to build your bike around high volume tires, NOBL can do that. They have options to build your Berd wheels up with a rim that has an appropriate inner width for high volume tires (the HR35/45 combo is only recommended up to 47mm).

A note on maintenance and durability

The folks at NOBL sent me home with a Berd spoke truing kit to keep the HR35/45’s running fast and true during my year of testing, as well as spare spokes. I was worried about the spokes losing tension or stretching out over time. That, well, deosn’t happen. NOBL’s build process is designed so that any stretching happens before the wheels leave the shop. After a year of riding, I didn’t have to touch the spokes once. As for durability, many rocks did touch the spokes, as well as a few sticks and much shrubbery. While Berd spokes are bendy when untensioned, they’re impressively tough once under tension. Cool stuff.

Is Berd… the word?

Nothing can be new, lighter, faster and feel better for free, of course. Let’s be clear up front that this is rarefied air NOBL’s riding through with its Berd 35/45 combo. So this review is not assessing a value proposition. This is purely a performance project. Or, performance with some novelty for the gear nerds out there that like to try something new.

So, while a set of Berd wheels from NOBL will certainly set you back a few pennies (though substantially fewer than if you opted for Pidcock and PFP’s rims from P1 Race Tech), they offer a chance to ride a technology that is trying to break convention to push the sport forward. A technology that is proven at the highest levels of the sport, but is just starting to enter the wider market.

NOBL’s custom program also gives you quite a bit of freedom to set up a set of Berd wheels how you want. We opted for the faster end, and the ultra-high engagement I9 hubs. But NOBL offers several rims and a staggering array of hub options. At the Berd level, every wheelset is custom assembled to suit your needs and preferences.

Unlike some Olympic tech, though, my year on the NOBL Berds show these improvements have a very real-world benefit for anyone spending a significant volume of hours riding or racing off-road. Everyone can benefit from the decrease in fatigue that Berd offers. And reducing fatigue results in an increase in speed, which is never a bad thing. Especially if you’re out there for extended hours chasing the ultra-endurance end of the gravel dream. NOBL’s HR35/45 Berds aren’t just a flight of fancy, they’re fast.