Ticeacebike

Bought a set in 165mm during the anniversary sale. I paid under $403 for a set with an xcadey PM, kind of an impossible to beat deal especially with the impending demise of the de-minimis exception in the US.

Anyways, 327g. Judging from the weights I've seen on here and on the Aliex reviews, there seems to be ~5g of variance from unit to unit. Compared to the other 2 165mm cranks posted to AliEx reviews, my unit is the heaviest, but only by 5g compared to the lightest. No biggie.

First impressions: Rockbros did not spend much on packaging/unboxing experience, which honestly I see as a good thing. Wall thickness on the spindle is THIN. I hope not too thin. It's clear they've saved lots of weight on the spindle in this area. Whoever designed this was clever in that once you get leftwards beyond the part of the spindle that sits in the bearings, the diameter of the spindle tapers out to a much bigger diameter to form the crankarm bonding interface. This interface is bolstered by a large-diameter (like 35mm) flanged ring that threads into the inner surface of the spindle, and the flange buttresses the outer surface of spindle-circle on the left crankarm

This seems like a very different design to the lexon, which appears to use a smaller bolt to secure/bolster the left crankarm attachment to the spindle, and may even have a detachable left crankarm. If the carbon crankarms are really the same as they appear to be, then this difference in spindle interface design likely accounts for the weight difference.

Actual market leaders (i.e. CRW Works, Roval Rapide CLX II) don't use v-shape profiles. Zipps are trash tier wheels in general.

1) We don't have wind tunnel data on CRW so it's hard to say. Peak Torque attributes their good performance in his testing to the low spoke count.

2) While it's true the CLX front wheel has a more U-shape, it's hard to compare because the extremely wide shoulder rim bead is an aerodynamic feature that no other rim (besides the new Hunt rims) has.

3) HED Vanquish reliably comes out near the top of wind tunnel test leaderboards, and they use a V-ish profile. Cannondale even licensed the profile from HED for the wheels specced with the System Six. The only intelligent conclusion I can offer is that the difference between V-ish and the modern moderately Toroidal/U-shaped/Parabolic profiles like you see on the CRW is going to be really marginal, and which profile you believe is faster is not unlike affiliation to a religious faith.

My take here is you guys are shooting us all in the foot by telling this seller to change the rim profile, which in effect will limit our choices as consumers. Toroidal/parabolic rim profiles are abundant. These more V-ish profiles are rarer, and it's nice to have the option on the market.

look good and at that price is mega tempting.
Apparently they are the manufacturer and do 25mm internal although a better rim profile would be more acceptable as it is V-Shaped!
No website and they only sell on Aliexpress

V-ish shaped rim profiles are actually back in vogue with tire widths over 28mm. Look at rim profiles for industry leaders like HED vanquish, Enve SES 4.5, Roval CLX, Zipp 303 and 404 (after MY2022). At least for rear wheels, all these rims have v-ish profiles. HED and Zipp use v-ish profiles front and rear. I think the idea is that with wider rims and hookless beads, recapturing air trailing off the tire is less of a concern because it stays attached across a wider range of conditions than before.

Juintech have released a flat mount 4-pot caliper. Some notes of interest:

-extended mounting points to eliminate rear brake block
-one piece construction
-75g and $180 per caliper 
-available on Aliex and Amazon Prime

These are the lightest, but also nearly the most expensive caliper on the market. It’s a similar concept to the Hope RX4 caliper, but are nearly $50USD more expensive.

Overall interesting to see these brands enter a new era where they are positioning themselves as the premium boutique option.

Having done 2 builds, the margin is close between 2nd hand market and a Chiner build. I did my builds a couple years ago during peak bike inflation so the margin was a bit better, now you have to be more careful. The key is that you need to spreadsheet everything (costs, weights), across multiple builds. You’ll find that some chiner builds turn out pretty expensive for what you get. It also gets very expensive if you make mistakes and buy the wrong parts, install them, and can’t return them.

But case in point: I built up a lightcarbon gravel/cx bike for less than $3k, and comparable bikes new were 5k+ even after discounts.

The other big advantage is you get to control spec. With used/new, you are stuck with paying for wheels/cockpit you didn’t want. Thats not a problem if you build

Tariff on Chinese goods is now 10% (AFAIK--the announcement said tariffs are increased 10%, but I can't figure out if there was a preexisting tariff that applied), and the de minimis rule has been taken out.

So yeah, 10% more expensive now. Not great but not horrible.

They discontinued this model because the crank arms were not stiff. The marketing materials for the QED model that replaced it made a lot of noise about how much stiffer they made the cranks.
I also don’t really like the P325 power meter. Mine gave me constant power dropouts, iirc gplama and someone else found the same.