Originally Posted by
HillRider
Some are. Wheel building machinery is far more sophisticated than it was years ago and completely machine built wheels can be quite good. I recently bought an inexpensive rear wheel from Jenson USA with a Tiagra hub, 32 3x DT straight 2 mm spokes and an Alex 390 rim for about $90. I was surprised how good it was right out of the box. The true was nearly perfect, the tension pretty much spot on and the dish took only 1/4 turn of each of the nds spoke nipples to get exact.
That said, the best prebuilt wheels are hand finished after the machine does the major assembly work. Colorado Cyclist does that with their prebuilt wheels and the results are excellent.
Pretty much any wheelset that costs < $200 CAD will blow out of the box with some rare exceptions. The higher zoot wheelset it is, usually the better. For example Campy G3's, Fulcrum 1's, Dura ace Tubeless, Shamal Ultra Tubeless. These are perfectly trued and tensioned out of the box. Zipp 404's etc.