Originally Posted by
Booger
HYPE. How many manufacturers have come out either directly (Didn't HED flat out claim zero benefit?) or indirectly (why wouldn't Shimano want a $150 BB with $140 of margin?) to debunk ceramic? In an industry full of cheap, generic goods and hyperbolicious marketing that is beyond ridiculous at times, that's saying something.
Maybe I'm a skeptic.
I don't think you're a skeptic. I just think that the difference isn't worth it to you, as it isn't for most people, myself included.
There are a couple things about ceramic bearings that are important to know.
1. The benefits in terms of power savings are extremely small, especially as you figure in dollars per watt.
2. There are now manufacturers who add just enough of some kind of ceramic material to call the bearings "ceramic" or "hybrid ceramic" and take advantage of the tiny speed benefits advertised by Zipp, FSA, and others who actually make the uber-expensive bearings. Some companies just stick low-grade ceramic bearings in cheap races and call it good.
3. Just as in steel bearings, fabrication matters. Roundness, type of grease, etc etc all figure into the equation, and a cheap set of ceramics won't give you a lot of benefit.
So to say that there's no benefit or that it's all hype isn't really true--what IS true is that the benefits are only realized by spending a TON of money and being really fastidious about cleaning and greasing the bearings.
Zipp, for instance, prides itself on being a spare-no-expense kind of company when it comes to the materials used to build their wheels, but ceramic bearings don't come standard on a single stock Zipp wheel or crankset. You can save a watt or two (literally, that's it) by spending some huge amount of money per wheel, but it's just not worth it. Hed also acknowledges this as you mentioned, stating that they offer a ceramic upgrade but their stock wheels don't have them because they think cost far outweighs benefit.
So the advantage is real and measurable, but the cost of admission is super high, and the claims that rags like Bicycling magazine make about how ceramic bearings save an entire gear's worth of power are, as many marketing things are, overblown.
You can spend a few hundred bucks on a fit/positioning session and save a lot more power than you ever will shelling out for ceramics.
If I ever find myself in a position where I'm building some $15K wunderbike without flinching I'll get the ceramics, but as long as money is finite I'll be sticking with regular old steel bearings.