Best road bike tyres | Cyclingnews

It’s an often-used phrase in bike media, but a tyre upgrade is about the best bang for your buck as far as upgrades go. New bikes are often specced with cheaper tyres in order to hit a price point, and trading up for some better rubber can be genuinely transformative. The best road bike tyres sit in the middle of the Venn diagram, with low rolling resistance, high grip, and decent puncture protection, but each model has its own characteristics. For some of you, puncture resistance may be more important – if you’re commuting for instance – or speed may be the only goal if you’re racing against the clock. Tyre tread makes less of a difference than it does with the best gravel tyres, but the tread pattern is still important when discussing grip.

Alongside real-world testing to determine how tyres perform on the road, we rolled 24 of the best road bike tyres into the lab and can confidently tell you which road bike tyres are the fastest based on our efficiency rig testing. Rolling efficiency isn’t the be-all and end-all and what works for some may not work for others, so as well as highlighting our recommendations for all-rounder tyres, time trial tyres, winter options and the like, we’ve also added a few additional options in each category, each of which we’d be happy to run ourselves.