Want to transfer your ride from a dull to a fast one? We test eight tubeless tyres on the road and at the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub to find the best speedy slicks
Buyer’s guide
When it comes to performance, tyres are a critical bike component. Poor-quality tyres will sap your energy, reduce cornering confidence and make your ride less comfortable. In contrast, the best road-bike tyres can transform a dull bike into a lively one, make you faster for less effort and absorb road imperfections more easily.
As with anything, though, separating the wheat from the chaff isn’t easy. After all, almost every manufacturer launches new tyres with bold claims of reduced rolling resistance, improved durability and lower weight. With that in mind, we put eight of the latest high-performance tubeless road tyres to the test, both in the lab and in the real world, to see which live up to the hype.
We picked eight of the latest high-end, road tubeless tyres from the major brands in this category. These tyres are the top of the range, all-round options for fast road riding and racing. For all tyres, we tested a size 700 x 28c (apart from the Challenge Criterium RS, for which we selected the closest available size – 700 x 27c).
We chose the 700 x 28c size as we feel that it represents a sweet spot for the average road rider, offering a good balance of speed, weight, grip and comfort.
Your tester…
Simon von Bromley
● Senior technical writer for BikeRadar. com, Simon has been racing road and time trial bikes for over a decade. He has a keen interest in any tech which can help him ride faster and is obsessed with the tiniest details.
Key considerations
Wide or narrow?
● As we’ve seen at this year’s Tour de France, whether wider tyres are faster than narrow ones usually depends on many other factors. Most modern road bikes can fit wider tyres, and many road bike wheelsets are now optimised for it, too.
Tubeless on test
● We opted to only test tubeless tyres as this is where the major research and development in road bike tyres is being focused. While some brands have released clincher-only versions of their latest tyres, others haven’t.
Inner tubes
● It’s worth noting that all tubeless tyres can be used with inner tubes if desired, although the stretch-resistant tubeless beads can make installing tubeless tyres with inner tubes more difficult.
Pressure
● Drop the pressure on wider tyres to enjoy the benefits. A 28mm ty
