Schawalbe Pro One: Smooth, Fast & Worthless

The Schwalbe Pro One come in a beautiful black box. Enjoy the show. It's the best thing about these tires. They also ...

• go on easily
• hold the bead nicely, even when pressing flat to create a vacuum
• roll pretty well
• save a bit of weight (not a weight-weenie)
• are UTTERLY USELESS

I was lucky that these were my 1st tubeless tire, as these MicroSkin tires were pretty easy to put on (Schwalbe, has now abandoned the MicroSkin technology for lack of puncture protection), and fill with sealant as the bead stays stuck even when fully deflated and pressed down to get enough air out of the tire so it will suck in the sealant. All nice, friendly things.

UNFORTUNATELY, they're made of warm butter, and unless you ride in pristine conditions they puncture if you look at them cross-eyed. They also sit VERY wide on my Easton rims, the 25mm measuring 30mm and the 23mm opened my digital caliper to 28mm. I don't know what "polymer" that utterly useless V-Guard is, but it's beyond pathetic for puncture protection.

(Conti uses Vectran, ~ 2.5x as strong as Kevlar by weight, and thus the choice for bullet-proof vests around the World.  They use Vectran, and they TELL YOU they use Vectran, because it's the best stuff there is!)

A little extra width I'm OK with, but this is just sloppy and makes buying tires a nightmare. There's only so much clearance between the fork and frame for a tire to occupy. I got my rear wheel 1st, so after mounting a 25mm and putting a caliper on it I changed my mind and put a 23mm on the front wheel when it arrived. It was sitting so flat the entire tread-cap sat flat on the road, leaving no wrap-around side protection - not that there's any protection under the tread-cap anyway, but the rubber is thicker.

After running over a small amount of glass in a bike lane the 1st rear 25mm was ruined beyond repair. I had a 2nd 25mm to put on and did so. I got 4.3 miles into my very next ride before a cactus thorn when right through the molding bead right down the center of the tread. I don't care what BikeRadar.com says, this tire is complete crap!

They also cost $50 a pop, even mail-order.  That's $150 I wasted on a total POS tire.

If I HAD to ride Schwalbe road tires I'd try the One tire, except now that tire is the old Pro One tire, so Schwalbe is just hopeless, AND, the Conti 5000TL blows this tire away in every important way, including especially, toughness + rolling resistance, so why bother?

JUST SAY NO!


PS: There's a new version of the Pro tire, the Pro One TLE Addix. Wanna roll the dice again when Conti is still kicking its ass? I'll pass...