27.5 or 29

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Cycleops

Legendary Member
Location
Accra, Ghana
Both will be satisfyingly round but more to the point what sort of bike(s) is it?
A link to it would be good.
So both on and off road?
 

Cycleops

Legendary Member
Location
Accra, Ghana
Okay so a mountain bike.
Fine for off road but if you're doing any length of commute on it'll be sluggish and heavy with the suspension fork. Size of wheel is not going to make any difference except in tyre selection.
Maybe consider a gravel bike for both.
 

vickster

Squire
Sit on them / try them both and see which you prefer :okay:
 

si_c

Guru
Location
Wirral
Either is good, 29er probably has the edge for road stuff, 27.5 for off road but it's mostly personal preference - prefer the larger wheel size myself though.

I wouldn't buy one for commuting under most circumstances though, you'll chew through MTB tyres on the road and that gets expensive very quickly, and it's just not the right bike for that sort of thing.
 

Drago

Legendary Member
Makes genuinely little difference on the road. As mentioned elsewhere on another thread, the outside diameter of the 650B tyres on my ebike is, the the mm, identical the the 700 x 25C tyres on my sportive machine.

Off road I'd err towards 650B, although the difference is minimal, but for general, A to B utility tarmac use as well 650B with 50mm tyres is 700C on the outside diameter anyway.
 

SkipdiverJohn

Deplorable Brexiteer
Location
London
I'd err towards 650B, although the difference is minimal, but for general, A to B utility tarmac use as well 650B with 50mm tyres is 700C on the outside diameter anyway.

The reason I like 26'ers is because even if you run standard 2" wide tyres, they are still smaller than a 700c wheel on road tyres and if you compare just MTB-width tyres, a 26" wheel & tyre is about 10% lighter than a 29'er.
 

rualexander

Legendary Member
Either is good, 29er probably has the edge for road stuff, 27.5 for off road but it's mostly personal preference - prefer the larger wheel size myself though.

I wouldn't buy one for commuting under most circumstances though, you'll chew through MTB tyres on the road and that gets expensive very quickly, and it's just not the right bike for that sort of thing.

Can always change tyres between commuting duties and off road use.

Also, many bikes can use both 29er and 27.5+, for example my Sonder Frontier, got it originally with 27.5+ but recently got a set of 29er wheels for it too. Plan is to run it with the 27.5+ wheelset for pure offroad use but to swap to 29er for road use or combined road/gravel.
I've had Ice Spiker tyres on the 29er wheelset recently though.
 
Top Bottom