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@gbj_tester
Perceptible to the rider? Not at all - the small refinements are at a scale well below the sensitivity of a seat-of-the-pants measurement. It's actually hard to measure outside a lab too, when you're talking about changes of less than about 5W at 50km/h, because repeatability on the road to that level is hard to achieve even if your Science grade SRM has the accuracy to measure it.
At 50km/h though, 1W saved is worth about 0.025km/h or about 2s in a 50km time trial. 6W of power saving through aerodynamic tweaks would have accounted for the whole of the difference between GB and Australia in the final of the team pursuit last week. There is that much difference between two aero helmets, the lesser of which is still regarded as pretty good.
Other things worth about 5W at 50km/h: Switching from Mavic Aksiums to the equally cheap Shimano R560, switching from Conti GP4000 to Vittoria Open Corsa CX, switching from butyl tubes to latex and, if you're running tubulars on a wooden track, increasing pressure from 9bar to 14bar.
In short, there are a lot of small gains available, none of which you can feel when riding, but which are nonetheless of vital importance to the competitive cyclist as they can be the difference between victory and defeat.