Originally Posted by alienator .
Some of the ceramic bearings now are sufficiently durable for bike use, but you're not going to see a lot of free speed. Lets say you put out 200 watts and that ceramic BB bearings will save you 5 watts. That means now you lose 5 watts less, so you get an effective power increase (after losses) of 2.56%. In terms of velocity, your velocity would theoretically increase by 0.847%. Not exactly a huge jump......and that's in a perfect world where ceramic BB bearings save 5 watts over standard bearings. I just picked a number out of the air. Campagnolo claims their CULT bearings save 3.5 watts, so those bearings would give a speed increase of 0.59%. Again, that's not very huge.
If I had to pick ceramic bearings to use, my first choice would be CULT bearings (I have Campy cranks), followed by HSC hybrids (inexpensive but perform well) and Ceramic Speed bearings (tres expensive but may very well be the caviar of the ceramic bearings for bikes world). I have heard very little that's good about Enduro bearings and a lot that is not good, but I've never used them. Frankly, I'd put the money elsewhere in the bike or in training rather than dump money in ceramic bearings.