The Best Longboard Bearings are Zealous (But Bearings Don't Matter That Much)

The belief that high-end bearings will make you skate faster is widespread in skateboarding and longboarding.

This belief is wrong. As long as they are clean and lubricated, bearings do not make a significant difference in how fast your skateboard rolls.

Bearings with a higher ABEC rating won’t make you go faster because the ABEC rating scale was designed for industrial machines, not skateboards.

Ceramic bearings do not offer any meaningful performance benefits and actually wear out faster than steel bearings because the super-hard balls tend to dent the steel races when you do slides and ollies.

Those $40 Bronson bearings that come without shields may sound cool, but they are almost certainly slower than most other bearings and will wear out quickly because dirt and grime gets in easily. (You should not buy the $40 Bronsons, but if you do, I will make a couple dollars because that is an Amazon affiliate link.)

The best bearings for your longboard are $14/set Zealous Classics. Designed by an experienced downhill racer with built-in bearing spacers and speed rings, they are fast, cheap, durable, and convenient. Every top downhill racer who doesn’t get another brand of bearings for free rides them. If you want the mainstream brand name, Bones Race Reds are also great.

That said, I understand the desire to invest in new gear to improve your speeds and performance, so here’s how you can get the most bang for your buck:

  1. High quality wheels - $55-90 - If you want to make your board faster, the best use of your money by far is on new high-quality wheels made with fast, high-rebound urethane. Most low-cost complete boards come with wheels made from cheap urethane that rolls slow, like a flat tire. Changing them out for higher quality wheels from a reputable brand* will allow you to roll farther on every push and go faster down hills.

  2. Performance trucks with perfectly straight axles - $150-400 - Because aluminum shrinks as it cools, most cast trucks come out of the mold with slightly bent axles, and heavy riding tends to bend them further. Bent axles concentrate your weight on the inner lips of your wheels, which makes them slower, less grippy, and more prone to coning. Replacing cast trucks with forged or billet trucks that have precision axles will ensure the whole contact patch meets the ground, which will make your board roll faster and grip harder. Forged trucks Paris Savants and Bear Kodiaks run about $160, while billet trucks start around $350. (I ride Rogue Slaloms for downhill.)

  3. Tighter clothes - downhill racers and bicyclists wear tight clothes for a reason: the wind resistance from baggy street clothes slows you down a lot. Spandex may look a bit dorky, but it has real performance benefits, especially if you’re doing long distance riding.

  4. New or freshly-cleaned and lubricated bearings - if your bearings are crunchy, you can get a significant performance benefit from cleaning them or replacing them with a fresh set of inexpensive bearings like Zealous or Bones Reds.

  5. Expensive bearings - if you’ve already done everything else to your board and setup and you’re still not rolling fast enough, it might be worth spending the extra money for high-end bearings.

This isn’t to say you can never realize performance gains from high end bearings—slalom riders might shave a couple thousandths of a second off their times by switching lubes or whatever—only that there are a lot of gear and technique changes to make before they become relevant.

PS: fraud is rampant in the bearing industry. Unscrupulous factories are happy to stamp “ABEC 9” on the shield of any cheap bearing and bootleg Bones Swiss are readily available on sites like AliExpress for $4/set. If you’re going to shell out for Bones Swiss, buy them direct from Skate One or an authorized dealer.

*I mostly ride 78mm 74a Venom Magnums. Other good brands include Hawgs, Orangatang, Cuei, and Powell Peralta.