If you're a road cyclist and you have a pulse, you're familiar with the ceramic bearing craze currently consuming the market. Why go ceramic? Because after reducing aerodynamic drag, a reduction in mechanical drag is the best thing you can do to make yourself ride faster for a given power output. And the big plus with reducing mechanical drag is that it's linear -- not exponential like aero drag. In other words, reductions to your mechanical drag have equal impact at all speeds, while aero drag reductions are of increasing consequence as your speed increases. Ceramic bearings are very hard and very round and they take a nice bite out of mechanical drag.

DT Swiss is the only noteworthy player in the hub market outside of Campy and Shimano. The skyrocketing pre-built wheelset craze has curtailed hub sales industry-wide to near non-existence as it is. People hardly buy hand-built wheels anymore. The only reason to do so, in fact, is because the quality of the hubs you get from Record or DA or the long-beloved DT Swiss 240s is superb, and they outshine the hubs in pre-built wheels by a country mile. We've sold more 240s' than we ever expected, no doubt due in part to the fact that in 2005 and 2006 Team Phonak built their Zipp rims on 240 hubs to get the best of both worlds -- Zipp aerodynamics, and DT Swiss hub precision.

DT Swiss upgraded the 240s to ceramic bearings, and they've done some inventive machining to the freehub body on the rear hub in order to shed 30g -- almost 15% of its weight -- from it. The resulting jewel is known as the DT 190 Ceramic thanks to the fact that it weighs in at 190g. It has a white label in contrast to the red label on the 240s, and the next time you're tempted to put together some hand-built wheels it should likely be the top hubset on your list. It's available for both Campy and Shimano, in 28h and 32h drilling. Skewer sold separately.