bilabonic said:
Want some slick/puncture proof road tyres.
Anyone recommend anything ?
Puncture resistance and speed work against each other. Panaracer RiBMo is the fastest tire I know that is still very effectively armored. Others I know swear by Panaracer T-Serv or Schwalbe Marathon Supreme for the same role.
If the bias is towards flatproofness rather than speed, check out Schwalbe Marathon Plus, Michelin Pilot City, or CST Salvo. Specialized Armadillo tires have earned a reputation for puncture resistance, but they ride terribly and are slow.
CST Cyclops, Schwalbe Big Apple, Maxxis Hookworm, and Origin 8 Captiv8er are big fat tires with a good compromise of puncture resistance, ride quality, speed, rim protection, and durability. None of them are armored according to my definition of the term; they are just sturdy. Some of them have Kevlar belts which resist tears and cuts but not thorns, wires, glass slivers, etc.
Most utility tires work fine in most places. Some places have blights like lots of broken bottles, goatheads, or flints to spoil the riding experience. The most effective flat preventives (like armored tire + extra thick tube + sealant) are appropriate in those blighted places, but they're usually not worth the tradeoffs in ride quality or rolling resistance outside those places.
Camel:
Maxxis, CST, and Cheng Shin are all the same company. To my taste, Maxxis tires are far too expensive for what they are, Cheng Shin tires are almost uniformly crude and crappy, and CST tires are usually good value for what they cost. Each one of these brands has a lot of different models, so it's a matter of getting a tire that matches your application. I have not found anything about a Maxxis tire for a given application that justifies 2X or 3X the cost of a CST tire made for the same application. To me, they seem about the same, with Maxxis tire models concentrated in the specialties that people are willing to pay more for.
Neptronix:
Thin tires are generally faster, lighter, more comfortable, better handling, cheaper, and easier to install and remove than tires with effective armor. Regular bikes are relatively easy to service, and leg power is too precious to squander just heating up chunky tires that spoil the ride quality anyway. The pushbike market must be at least 100X the e-bike market, so it drives availability of bicycle tires. Thus we have lots of tires that are optimized for speed and comfort, and lots of tires that are optimized for very low cost, but not too many tires to serve flat-phobic people who put in big miles and are willing to spend a fair amount of money. (Riding lots of miles on a bike is usually a cure for flat phobia. Or in the case of a hub motor equipped bike, perhaps a cause thereof.)
Of course there are gimmicky items like horrible-riding foam tires for the significant market of people who have pet notions, but don't actually ride their bikes much. Specialized Armadillo tires ride so poorly that I tend to count them in this latter category, even though they have effective protection and they usually last a long time.
Michelin tires have infuriatingly stupid overlapping names, and I wonder whether you actually tried the Michelin Pilot City. It looks a lot like the similarly named Michelin City, but the Pilot City has a Marathon Plus type thick elastomer belt, and the City does not.
