- Shark Wheels have been called,
the reinvention of the wheel.
They're heavily hyped in longboarding and skateboarding,
but are they good for surfskating?
That's the question we'll answer in this review.
Hey friends, I'm Steve with Surfskate Love
and I have been playing around with wheels a lot lately.
And my latest focus has been on Shark Wheels.
Shark Wheels are a very interesting design,
from the side, they almost look like a cube or a square.
And then when you look at the contact patch,
you've got these three waves.
So Shark Wheels have three primary claims.
The first is that they have more grip
and therefore more slide control.
The second is that because they have less friction,
they're faster.
And the third is that they have
more traction over rougher terrain
and they even have a page on their website
devoted to selling the benefits of Shark Wheels
for surfskating specifically.
And we'll go into detail into that later.
So as I'm reviewing these,
understand that I'm looking at these
through two lenses specifically.
And the first is surfskating.
I'm not looking at them as
downhill longboard speed wheels,
anything else other than the benefits,
the uses, for surfskating.
And then the second lens
through which I view these wheels,
is my personal riding style and my abilities.
I like to just jump on a board
and ride for two hours straight,
never taking my feet off of the board
and traveling through a lot of different terrain,
which could include steep hills,
rough pavement, pebbles,
cracks, smooth pavement,
you can go from rough to smooth.
And so, I need a wheel that is very versatile
and that can handle
a lot of different terrain and environments.
So as I analyze the wheels, the questions I ask are,
number one, how well do they grip for tight carving?
Number two, how well do they pump?
Number three, how well do they handle rough surfaces,
cracks, and pebbles?
Number four, how fast are they?
Number five, how comfortable are they?
And finally, how well do they slide?
And on that last point, I am not a slider.
And so that gives me a weak spot as a reviewer.
So if you're a slider, I'm not gonna be
the best help on that front.
However, I do feel like I can give you a good enough idea
of the overall performance of these wheels.
And from that, you can decide whether or not
it's gonna be worth it to you
to try them out for sliding specifically.
Now on their website, they have four sizes.
They have 95 millimeter, 72 millimeter, 60 millimeter
and they do have one option at 54 millimeters.
I got the 72 millimeters because for me,
that of all of those sizes, that's gonna be the best
for surfskating, or at least the way that I ride.
So here's how we're gonna do this review.
I'm gonna just take you on my daily ride
that involves a lot of different terrain and environments.
And as we're skating, I'm gonna just tell you
in live action what I'm experiencing.
So let's head out to our first location.
Okay, so here we are at the top of a hill.
Now, not only is this hill very steep.
I don't know if you can get a frame of reference
for how steep it is, but it also is extremely rough.
It's got lots of rough asphalt sections.
It's got lots of cracks
and it also has lots of pebbles all throughout.
So given that riding rough terrain,
is one of the main selling points of the Shark Wheel,
this should be a pretty good test.
Okay.
So right out of the gate, what I notice is,
whoa, I can ride this hill.
It will grip me.
But if you can notice,
if I'm on anything rough and I try to slide.
It will very easily slide out,
because of that reduced contact patch.
It does not like slides on rough stuff,
really slides out on me.
And I don't like it at all.
Okay. So can I ride rough steep hills with it?
Yes.
But as I said and as you noticed,
on these Shark Wheels, when you're on rough stuff,
they are very easy to slide, from side to side.
The one advantage that I do feel on this hill,
is that if you're going straight on these wheels
and you're hitting pebbles, debris,
things like that, it does handle that okay.
But it does not like any kind
of side to side sliding on rough surfaces.
So let's head off to our next location.
Okay, here we are at our second location.
I like to ride up on sidewalks,
as I'm going down the street.
I don't know if you can really tell,
but this sidewalk is very, very cracky.
There's lots of different uneven concrete.
And what I'm testing in this environment,
is the comfort as I go over these large cracks,
is it jarring to me?
How do these wheels feel, in terms of comfort,
over rough, cracky concrete, let's give it a shot.
Okay.
Bottom line is, I do not find these wheels very comfortable.
They say they're 78 durometer,
which should be a very soft and comfortable wheel,
but it, for whatever reason,
it is much harder than most of my other surfskate wheels,
which bottom line, makes for kind of
an uncomfortable ride on rough surfaces.
Let's head to our next spot.
Okay, here's our next spot.
This is another very steep hill.
It's paved with these bricks,
which creates a lot of uneven surface.
So let's give this a shot.
See how the Shark Wheels ride on this surface.
Okay, so what I noticed on this,
is the exact same thing as that other steep hill,
bottom line is I can ride it,
but when it comes to these Shark Wheels,
when you're on rough surfaces,
it will slide out to you, on the side.
My experience, is that on these rough surfaces,
you really don't have nearly as much grip
as you do with other surfskate wheels.
So let's head off to our next location.
Our next test is very simple.
I've got some nice clean, smooth pavement behind me.
And I just want to test
how well these wheels pump and carve.
Okay. So obviously this was a silly little test.
It's a very small area.
I didn't do a lot of pumping and carving here,
but I have done a lot of pumping and carving
on these wheels.
And here's the bottom line.
These in my experience, do not pump well at all.
In fact to me, they feel like
they have increased friction on them.
The best way I can describe it,
is when you pump these, it feels almost like
you're pumping through sand.
So they're hard to get up to speed initially.
And then what I also find, is once I'm up to speed
and then just coasting, these do not maintain momentum,
like other wheels.
So bottom line, I don't like these,
for either pumping or carving.
So let's head off to our next location.
Now here we are at a parking garage,
where I'm gonna perform a little speed test
and I'm doing this,
because that's one of the core claims of the Shark Wheels,
is that it's faster than other wheels,
because it has less of a contact patch.
And I've also seen a few other people online
say that they find it to be faster.
But the truth is, that's not the case for me.
It doesn't feel faster to me at all,
they feel like they have more friction
and they feel like they're slower.
So I wanted to be somewhat scientific about this.
So really, all I'm gonna do
is to test five different wheels.
And I'm gonna just time myself,
from the top to the bottom of this section
of the parking garage here.
And it's not completely scientific, obviously,
because I can be wrong on my timing
and the wheels aren't the same diameter.
But I am using the same bearings,
the same exact setup on all of these.
So I think it'll give us kind of a good idea
of whether or not these Shark Wheels
are indeed faster than other wheels.
Okay. So let's recap what we've learned here.
Let's just go through the original questions that we asked.
The first question is,
how well do these grip for tight carving?
The bottom line on that one for me,
is they do not grip nearly as well as other wheels.
I find that the decreased contact patch
with these wave patterns
actually makes it easier to slide out, side to side.
Now they do carve just fine on flat,
clean, smooth pavement,
but when I'm carving down steep hills,
I have to be somewhat careful,
especially when I'm sliding on that really rough asphalt.
Second question we asked, was how well do they pump?
In my opinion, they do not pump well at all.
I don't really know how to explain that.
All I can say is how it feels is,
that these wave patterns, when that front of your board
is going side to side, in a pump,
it's almost as if these wave patterns
actually kind of compete with each other.
It's just hard to pump. It's hard to get up to speed.
And it's just not a very comfortable pump action for me.
Next question.
How do they handle rough surfaces, cracks and pebbles?
My experience is not very well at all.
The one thing that I can say about it is,
if you're going straight over rough stuff with pebbles,
it will kinda push those pebbles out of the way,
going straight a little bit better than other wheels.
But when it comes to any kind of of sliding,
side to side on rough surfaces,
in my experience, these slide out from underneath me,
very, very easily, much easier
than many other surfskate wheels.
And the other thing is,
when you're going over sidewalk cracks,
they are very quite jarring.
So as I said, these are 78A.
Now that's supposed to be a very soft durometer,
but when you compare this to these other,
like this is the Yow Cinetic 78A,
you can just tell the difference in softness.
Here's some Roundhouse Ecothanes, also 78A,
here's some Seismics, also 78A.
And you can just tell that it's very hard to squeeze.
So what that means is,
I don't know how to explain the difference in hardness,
when they're the same durometer,
but these wheels are much harder
than any other surf-skate wheel that I've tried,
which means that it's not a comfortable ride.
And so that answers the comfort question as well.
How fast are they?
Well, as we saw from our little speed test,
they are not faster.
I don't know where Shark Wheel is getting their data,
when they say they're faster,
I don't know what they're comparing them to,
because to me, they do not feel any faster.
In fact, they feel slower.
As I said, when you start to pump,
they're hard to get up to speed.
And then when you're just coasting,
they lose momentum very quickly.
They don't keep up that forward momentum,
like other wheels do.
Now, when it comes to surfskating,
I'm not a big fan of speed.
Anyway, it's not like I'm getting very fast,
but I do want the option when I'm on big hills,
I want the option to be able to open it up a little bit
and get some speed.
And when it comes to that, I'm not going with Shark Wheels.
And now our last question, how do they slide?
Well, as I've said and as you've seen,
I'm not a good slider, so I don't know.
So I don't know the full extent of that,
but as you also saw, in my opinion,
they slide out too easily and they say on the website
that it's for a more controlled slide.
That's not my experience at all.
In my experience, it's a far less
controlled slide than anything else,
because of the wave pattern,
which gives you the reduced contact patch.
Now, if you're a good slider,
that might mean that they slide pretty well for you,
but I wouldn't recommend them anyway,
based on their overall performance.
And I think that you're gonna find
better slide wheels out there anyway.
And then just to finish this up,
I wanna go through their website page,
where they talk about their wheels
for surfskating specifically
and analyze each of their claims on that front.
Okay, so the first thing they say,
is that these wheels are built for surfskate,
"Shark Wheels are the only wheels in the world,
specifically designed to increase
your surfskate experience.
The carving motions of Surfskate,
are the actual shape of the wheel.
Feel the difference."
I don't know if anyone at the Shark Wheel company
has tried these wheels for surfskating,
but I don't know what they're talking about.
Because as I said, my experience is,
when I pump these wheels, that side to side front action,
those waves do not work well at all for pumping.
And it feels to me like
they actually interfere with each other,
the exact opposite of what they're claiming,
on their website.
The next claim they make, is that it's
"The best wheel in the world for rough terrain."
My experience with that,
is that that may be true when you're just going forward.
But when it comes to sliding side to side,
on rough surfaces on these wheels,
they do not handle well at all.
And there are other wheels that handle
way better than them in my experience.
The third thing they say, is that they're "lightning fast."
I don't know where they're getting that data.
I don't know what they're comparing it to.
I do not find these wheels lightning fast at all.
In fact to me, they feel like they actually
have more friction than other wheels.
The next thing they say is that they have
"better slide control."
As I've already said in my opinion,
not at all on rough surfaces.
In fact, I find them to be decreased slide control,
to the point where I'm worried
that they're gonna slide out of control on me.
And I can't be very aggressive with them
on steep, rough hills.
Now, maybe if you're a better slider,
maybe you have a different experience
on the slide front than me,
but my experience is,
I would not use these wheels for sliding at all.
I think there's much better slide wheels.
And then the final thing that they say
on their website about them, is that they last longer,
well I don't know about that.
And honestly, I don't really care,
because I've been riding these wheels hard,
every day for about a week.
And after this test and this review, guess what?
I'm never gonna use Shark Wheels again for surfskating,
because I think that there are so many other
better wheels out there.
Now what those wheels are. I'm not gonna tell you.
I'll tell you that in a next upcoming review,
where I reveal what my personal favorite
surfskate wheels are.