FWIW
After having taught hundreds of classes on detailing cars and thus answering thousands of questions about how to clean wheels, here's what I like to mention to people considering purchasing new wheels.
Pick a wheel that's easy to clean.
Nobody likes cleaning wheels and the more intricate the design the more difficult to clean and the more time necessary to maintain.
Keep in mind that some wheels have multiple different types of surfaces, for example some portions may be polished aluminum while other portions are painted. If you pick a wheel with multiple types surfaces you just limited yourself to using very safe wheel cleaners and usually the safe wheel cleaner out of necessity are the weaker wheel cleaners.
Painted or clear coated wheels means you'll have to maintain the finish just like you would th paint on your car. Often times people with painted wheels find the have t clay them with detailing clay as brake particles embedded into the paint. You can probably imagine how much fun it is to clay a wheel, the use a paint cleaner on it and then wax it x 4.
The easiest wheels to maintain in my opinion are flat faced chrome wheels. Chrome is pretty much impervious to anything and as long as you keep the surface clean they won't rust or deteriorate.
My second pick is always polished, uncoated aluminum. While you have to stay on top of them and polish the aluminum or they will oxidize, at least you can work on them. You get any other kind of coated wheel and something goes wrong and it's usually out the skill level of most people to replace the coating should something go wrong.
I remember a gentleman bringing a BMW to a class once with the most complicated, intricate looking wheel design on his BMW and part of the class was for everyone to walk with me as we inspected each participants car and evaluated the condition of the paint. When we got to his car I looked at the wheels and asked him how long it took him to clean each wheel and he said about 45 minutes each. I asked him if he would recommend that wheel to someone else and he said no do to the difficulty in cleaning the wheel do to the design.
Just some things to think about...
