Over the past few weeks, we’ve put Swiss Stop’s Yellow King brake pads through every condition possible. We’ve ridden them on aluminum, magnesium, and carbon rims, through rain, mud, and dirt. We even put them on our mountain bike to see if they would perform any differently. Alas, every combination we tried yielded the same, excellent results- the Yellow pads are the ultimate cycling brake pad.

The Yellow pads are a frustrating product to review, because there’s not much to say about them besides that they work really well. Our first trial was on a road bike with aluminum clincher wheels. We could tell a noticeable difference between the Yellow and stock Dura-Ace pads, especially during long, winding descents. The Yellow pads made braking felt like the pad’s contact surface had been doubled, and stopping power didn’t drop as the pads heated up.

We threw on a pair of Zipp 404’s (Swiss Stop claims you can use both aluminum and carbon rims without changing the pads) and went at it again. Simply put, these pads make carbon behave like aluminum. The screeching normally associated with a carbon braking surface disappeared completely, and modulation felt as our road bike had suddenly been equipped with disc brakes. Wet performance wasn’t quite as powerful, which is to be expected, but they still performed far better than regular rubber pads or (gulp) cork pads.

The only disadvantage is the price. A set of four pads retails for about $40 or $60 for Shimano/Sram or Campy, respectively. When you consider that stock pads can be had for under $10, it makes the Yellow pads hard to justify if you only use aluminum wheels. If you’re training on aluminum and racing on carbon, however, the fact that you don’t have to do a last-minute pad swap makes the price worth it. Plus, the performance is so sublime that you’ll wonder how you ever raced without them.