If I were buying a new bike, it would be THIS one (Winspace T1550 Review)

What's up guys, welcome back. I've got a special one for you. I'm here with Will, Miami Knights Pro Racer, and we're going to make the case for the Winspace T1550 being potentially the best bang for your buck crit bike that you can buy right now. But here's the thing, I want to get this right off the bat. I want to clear the air. Winspace provided the bike for review, but this is not a paid advertisement. In fact, they're watching this video at the same time you guys are right now. So these are our thoughts about this bike after riding it for the better part of a month for me. And then Will's been on this bike all week, we've been smashing miles. So we're going to share with you our thoughts on this bike. Okay, so to be clear, this is not either of our team bikes. I was asked that a lot. I am not, I'm not on Team Mike's bikes racing the Winspace. Will, as far as you know, you're not racing Winspace on Miami Knights next year. But we've been on a lot of carbon race bikes over the year, so we have points of comparison to talk about. So here's what I want to do for the next five or so minutes. Here's the roadmap. Here's what to expect. I think we're just going to break down the good, the bad, and the ugly. So Will, what's your favorite thing? What's the good? What's your favorite thing about this bike? Yeah, I've been on it for about a week. Honestly, the feeling on this bike is great. If I close my eyes, it feels like any mainstream race bike. Corners well, handles well, very comfortable bike. And it looks good. How about you, Jeff? It does look good. Yes. I had the same thoughts when I first jumped on it. It does look pretty nice. That's a thing. It passes the eyeball test. And yeah, like when you jump on it, you can't tell that it's a Winspace. Like, I think that these Chinese brands have come a long way. So I had the opportunity. My favorite thing, to answer your question, I had the opportunity. The way these Chinese brands come, they don't come as pre-built bikes like the aforementioned, you know, Trek, Specialized, Cervelo, things like that. So the frame came. They also sent handlebars and wheels, which we'll get to. Those are big talking points. But I built this whole thing up and that gave me a good opportunity. First, dude, I miss building bikes. It's been a long time since I've properly built a bike from a bare frame. And it gives you a good opportunity to inspect things. Because my concern with these Chinese components, frames, wheels, things like that, is I've had bad luck in the past. But that was in the past. That was 10 years ago. These have come a long way. And when you do things like press fit bearings, which this is a press fit bottom brand cup, you can really start to tell tolerances. And you can get a good feel for how they manufactured it, quality control standards, which was always really something that I was focused on when I would see these Chinese brands come out with like way too good of prices because there's something's got to give. But I was pleasantly surprised with headset bearings pressing in the bottom bracket bearings. So I was really happy with the way this was built. Again, just like it felt. Building it, I couldn't tell the difference between a modern high-end bike of a Western brand compared to this Winspace. Yeah, so what else is good? What are we missing? Yeah, the price of this is obviously going to be super competitive. The frame comes in just over $1,700. And then the wheels, we've got just over $1,200. The handlebars, right at $300. Integrated one-piece carbon, like that is like $3,200 for everything except the drivetrain. I happen to have, this was in a box that I had, but I think red is a bit overkill. I think if this were my first bike, 105 Di2, Ultegra Di2 can be had for so cheap now. There's a surplus right now, guys. You may have seen the videos on YouTube. You can get really good prices. So this can be had for like less than $4,500. Kind of silly for a bike, let's be honest, but it is such a good value proposition because let's look at the competition. You name it. I mean, the aforementioned, like, you know, Trek, Cervelo Specialized, doesn't matter. You name one of these major brands and it's going to be at least $2,000 to $3,000 more than that for the same thing. Plus there's this added benefit, which if you like to tinker like I do and you like to get it just dialed the way you like it, that is what Winspace offers because these happen to be the deep flat crit sort of flat rotary sort of wheels, but you can get the shallower ones. You can choose, like I said, 105 Di2. You can go four, so you can choose the group set you want. You can get a different crank length. The bars are very customizable. So all of these things you can customize. It's not just like how, you know, one of the major brands sells their bikes, this is what you get. You can't really customize anything. And I think there's a lot of value in that. And our dimensions are pretty similar, but if I were to set up this bike, I'd buy like narrower handlebars than what you spec'd it with and probably a little shorter cranks. And if I were to buy this bike, I could do that. So that's a big benefit. Yeah, it's awesome. We're probably missing a bunch of things, but I think that's a pretty good start on what we really liked about this bike. Good, the bad and the ugly. Let's go to the bad. It's a narrow bike, so a little stiff on the rear end, but for crit racing, kind of what you want, you want the feedback. For road racing, you might get a little more chatter than you want to. And if you're racing on cobbles, which we don't have in the US, so it shouldn't be much of a concern. I think that was the one thing I noticed is, yeah, just a really stiff rear triangle. Coming from the Cervelo, I can echo that sentiment. The Cervelo team bike, the Soloist that I had last year and we're going to have next year. Great bike, not as stiff, which is good and bad. It kind of depends on what you're doing. I think the Cervelo is a better all-around bike. This is a crit machine. It is not the best for questionable roads, really long distances. I'd probably go towards the Soloist or something that is a little bit more compliant, but yeah, that could be a bad. It could also be a good, but I think that that fits kind of in the bad category because if you're not used to a stiff bike, this will be like, whoa, this is a stiff bike. And I think the wheels have a lot to do with that, too. These are very stiff. These Hypers, I know a lot of pro teams are now running them, too, so they've gained a lot of popularity. The price is good. They're very stiff. This is one of these things where people ask, like, how does the wind space feel, Jeff? And I'm like, it feels like every other, like, carbon race bike and it feels very stiff. It's always hard for me to pin down what it is. I feel like the one-piece carbon barn stem is doing a lot for the stiffness as well, but it's kind of hard to tell. When you get up and you give it the beans, like, that energy is transferred into the rear wheel on this bike, but it also sometimes is transferred into you. Yeah, back into you. So, I think that's a great point that you make. Yeah, so, Jeff, what about you? Like, what bad on this bike did you pick out? Yeah, a couple of things, and this is a problem with Chinese brands in general, is you're not going to get that dealer support, right? There aren't authorized bike shops you can just bring it in. If I had a problem with my Cervelo, I go to a Cervelo authorized dealer and it's like, bam, replacement, you know, English-speaking representative to help me with that. Now, Windspace has made great strides and I guess they have pretty good customer service. This is back maybe a little bit to the good categories. I haven't had to use that yet. An excellent build experience like we talked about, but that is a potential issue. You can't just bring it to a local bike shop that has representation, is going to support whatever issue you're having with the bike. The other thing that I thought about is these have, this is kind of another mixed, like, is this good or is this bad? These have carbon spokes, and now I've had issues with carbon spoke wheels in the past, like recall, like do not use these wheels, recall issues in the past. Now, in fairness to Hyper, aka Windspace, there hasn't been any issues. So, you know, fingers crossed, but I would have just preferred to see, like, a bit more vanilla, like just put the sap in whatever, like, CX-Ray spokes on there that, like, is the industry standard because what are we doing? Are we saving three grams or something? I don't really understand. Is it a stiffness issue? I'm not sure, but I just would have rather seen a more vanilla setup for the spokes. I think a lot of consideration that you're going to put into a crit race bike is we're racing crits, so crashes are a deal, and you only want to race what you can afford to replace, which this bike has a lot of strengths in that category, but those carbon spokes, that's going to be hard to find when you're in a different city with bike shops you're not aware of and are likely not going to carry Hyper carbon spokes. Yeah, yeah, good point. Integrations, another thing that's in the bad category, but that's across all brands. Like, it's generally kind of tricky. I had the issues that everyone else has when you're trying to route cables through integrated bar and stem, but it's the type of thing where it's like, that's why I recommended if you're building this bike from scratch, get yourself electronic shifting because you're not changing out cables, you know, once or twice per season, depending on where you live. So I think that kind of concludes my bad section. Should we move on to ugly? Yeah. Okay, we have sat here for about five minutes and I can't think of any ugly. I think we used all of them for the bad category. I will keep you guys updated though. I'm going to continue riding this bike throughout the season. I'll have a team race bike that I'll be doing the majority of like sanction races on, but for all the testing stuff, all the ISO stuff, I will be blogging a lot of miles on this bike and hit me up if you guys have any questions about a much longer term review. If I find the ugly, I'll be sure to make a community post or something like that. Let you guys know we're about to hit the road and do a hundred miles on this bike. We will immediately revise this video if we have issues, but I've already done hundreds of miles on this bike, so I don't think there's going to be, but just stay tuned guys. I appreciate you. Leave a like down below. Give it a subscribe for Will. Do it for Will. Do it for me. Catch you guys in the next one.