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In addition to your comments I would recommend that people upgrading or shopping for tires for a road/city bike familiarize themselves with bead types and tire

In addition to your comments I would recommend that people upgrading or shopping for tires for a road/city bike familiarize themselves with bead types and tire weights. Something like a "cheap" 700C 28mm tire with a wire bead can be quite a lot heavier than a folding bead (kevlar) more expensive road tire such as one that costs $55-70 per tire. Additionally there is a big difference in the quality of the compound used in the rubber for a cheap tire vs an expensive road tire. There are also specialty city oriented tougher tires like the gatorskip series that sacrifice some grip and cornering ability for purported resistance to punctures, also at the expense of being heavier. If you ride regularly and have something like a flat bar road bike, and change the tires from 28mm cheap/wire bead to folding bead, you will IMMEDIATELY notice the difference in pedaling effort and cruising speed , subjectively measured by your own effort on a flat/level road, average effort, no wind. You can feel this in the tire weight if you take the old wire bead tire off your bike and hold it one hand, and hold the unfolded new folding bead tire in your other hand. As an example of a really good quality, folding bead, clincher type road bike tire: https://www.amazon.com/Continental-Grand-Prix-5000-Performance/dp/B07K8XN48B?th=1&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Continental-Grand-Prix-5000-Performan... If you're using tubes there are also a number of benefits to be found from using the proper size/diameter range of tube, correct valve stem length of tube for your rim, and quality material tube. A good quality tube will cost a few dollars more than a cheap generic one. Using the example above of a 28mm road tire the appropriate size range of tube should be marked on its box from 25-32mm. One other thought on rim type: If you are buying a $1700+ road bike new these days it most likely will come with a tube-using setup, but the rims will have the "new" square profile for bead lock that is also compatible for upgrade in the future to a tubeless tire setup with special rim strip and sealant. Older 700C clincher wheel sets generally are not compatible with the square profile bead lock required for tubeless. Newer 700C wheelsets should be compatible with conventional tube-using clincher beads as well as tubeless. https://www.google.com/search?q=clincher+rim+tubeless+profile&client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=APq-WBvilLnmnrXAoaNEtxqVTxEsj1n29g:1643587056721&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwje9bD11tr1AhXSKH0KHXMzCSsQ_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1680&bih=940&dpr=2 https://www.google.com/search?q=clincher+rim+tubeless+profil... Terminology: To avoid confusion, tubeless and tubular are two different things. You're very unlikely to see tubular (glued directly to rim) tires in 2022 unless you're a professional, extremely serious about triathlons.

sasawpg 5y ago
Correct tread pattern and pressure for conditions will make a significant difference in rolling resistance, far more than just about every other tire property (weight, suppleness, etc). Different conditions require different tread patterns and different tire pressures. As for weight, you’ll save maybe 100g of weight per tire, which is admittedly amplified due to rolling. Drop a single water bottle and you’ll be back on top. You won’t of course find many “performance” bikes with wire beaded tires. Most paved paths are best paired with slicks/semi-slicks, even when wet (snow/ice is a separate discussion). Yet many hybrid/city bikes are equipped with a bit of tread depth. The tradeoff is durability and puncture resistance - slicks/semi-slicks can’t compete. And for people buying these types bikes, it is far more important that they reliably get from point A to point B without any flats or maintenance costs than saving a minute off their daily commute, so it is a fair trade off. As for tubeless setups, I would hesitate to recommend those to anyone that needs this site (not that you’re suggesting that). If you don’t know what tire you need I would be willing to bet you have no idea how to fix a tubeless puncture, top up sealant, or remove/reinstall the tire.
- walrus01 5y ago
  Re: the weight of a water bottle, rotating weight is very different than static weight. My experience with 28-32mm sizes tires on pavement in an urban environment has been that tires with tread on them actually have much less overall grip and cornering ability. This seems to correlate with data I've seen from third parties measuring the actual square mm area of a typical "contact patch" between tire and pavement. It seems counter intuitive, because on a car you want and need tires that aren't bald. But on a city/road bike, the best possible performance on pavement in the size range of 23-32mm with seems to be gained by having a treadless tire with a grippy compound.
  - sasawpg 5y ago
    That’s exactly my point :) Puncture resistance may be improved with more aggressive tread but handling and rolling resistance will definitely suffer. It’s all about the amount of contact patch on the ground. Same reason why on ice you want to run very shallow tread while on snow or mud you want a very aggressive tire. You can correlate this with slick car race tire vs a rally tire. One is great on road while the other wouldn’t get you far. For a fun experiment, head out on a wet day and try to corner on both 28mm slicks and 33mm+ tires with a decent amount of tread (bonus points if you use a mud CX tread). Personal experience dictates that aggressive tread will treat you to a good dose of road rash while slicks will continue to grip far longer. I’ve far more experience with this than I should (one should be plenty).

sasawpg 5y ago

Correct tread pattern and pressure for conditions will make a significant difference in rolling resistance, far more than just about every other tire property (weight, suppleness, etc). Different conditions require different tread patterns and different tire pressures. As for weight, you’ll save maybe 100g of weight per tire, which is admittedly amplified due to rolling. Drop a single water bottle and you’ll be back on top. You won’t of course find many “performance” bikes with wire beaded tires. Most paved paths are best paired with slicks/semi-slicks, even when wet (snow/ice is a separate discussion). Yet many hybrid/city bikes are equipped with a bit of tread depth. The tradeoff is durability and puncture resistance - slicks/semi-slicks can’t compete. And for people buying these types bikes, it is far more important that they reliably get from point A to point B without any flats or maintenance costs than saving a minute off their daily commute, so it is a fair trade off. As for tubeless setups, I would hesitate to recommend those to anyone that needs this site (not that you’re suggesting that). If you don’t know what tire you need I would be willing to bet you have no idea how to fix a tubeless puncture, top up sealant, or remove/reinstall the tire.

walrus01 5y ago
Re: the weight of a water bottle, rotating weight is very different than static weight. My experience with 28-32mm sizes tires on pavement in an urban environment has been that tires with tread on them actually have much less overall grip and cornering ability. This seems to correlate with data I've seen from third parties measuring the actual square mm area of a typical "contact patch" between tire and pavement. It seems counter intuitive, because on a car you want and need tires that aren't bald. But on a city/road bike, the best possible performance on pavement in the size range of 23-32mm with seems to be gained by having a treadless tire with a grippy compound.
- sasawpg 5y ago
  That’s exactly my point :) Puncture resistance may be improved with more aggressive tread but handling and rolling resistance will definitely suffer. It’s all about the amount of contact patch on the ground. Same reason why on ice you want to run very shallow tread while on snow or mud you want a very aggressive tire. You can correlate this with slick car race tire vs a rally tire. One is great on road while the other wouldn’t get you far. For a fun experiment, head out on a wet day and try to corner on both 28mm slicks and 33mm+ tires with a decent amount of tread (bonus points if you use a mud CX tread). Personal experience dictates that aggressive tread will treat you to a good dose of road rash while slicks will continue to grip far longer. I’ve far more experience with this than I should (one should be plenty).