Alpha TT-Ceramic, a pair of pedals weighing only 30g

If you are obsessed with the weight of your components, you know what it means to have pedals weighing only 30 grams. The Alpha TT-Ceramic, launched on the market by a small American company, weighs just that: 30 grams.

Alpha TT-Ceramic: 30 grams of pedals

They don't have the best image, the best marketing, or a tremendous market, but the Alpha TT-Ceramic has attracted everyone's attention because of its weight: 30 grams in pedals designed and created by a rather small company with limited resources. That makes us wonder, are the big brands really developing and betting on creating lighter pedals?

The Alpha TT-Ceramic is made by AeroLite, and on paper it becomes the lightest pedals on the market. Not that we weighed them all, one by one, but 30 grams is an unprecedented figure so far.

With a pure titanium shaft and ceramic bearings, the Alpha TT-Ceramic is riddled with holes to lighten the weight without affecting the strength of the structure. They look like a stiff hornet's nest, with sheets of turcite on the bearing surfaces, to give the support an extra point and avoid the need for maintenance of the most exposed areas. So, neither platform nor automatic pedals, the Alpha TT-Ceramic is a hybrid even for that.

The cleats, the weak point of the Alpha TT-Ceramic

Although the cleats have also been worked on at AeroLite, at first sight they do not give the impression of the quality of the Alpha TT-Ceramic pedals. These cleats, which are produced according to the manufacturer in a streamlined design, are made of nylon and are injection moulded. Nylon cleats are already familiar from road cycling: they are useful and sturdy, but above all they are lightweight.

It's true that they look a bit big, but the predecessor cleats have also been a bit of a humbug, especially the Speedplay cleats, which work great but, let's be honest, they need to be mounted under the cycling shoe in a pretty rough cube.

The manufacturer states that in the Alpha TT-Ceramic it has used a "PVD, or physical vapour deposit, to reduce the friction of the pedals", i.e. applying PVD to the pedal axle in an oven at about 400?C, which gives it 40 times more hardness.

Despite this, it is true that going down to 30 grams per pedal on these Alpha TT-Ceramics leaves more than enough room for the cleats not to be dreamy of. But the easiest thing to improve on is a thermoformed nylon cleat, of course. The hard part is already done. We did not include them in our list of best pedals of 2020 because they came late and because they look like they are road bikes.

Made in Washington, they are priced at 369 dollars, so they would cost about 316 euros at the exchange rate. That is if you manage to find them in an online shop, because AeroLite does not distribute in Europe at the moment. If you enter their website, don't be scared by the design of the page itself.