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Comment by ano-ther | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate sites like this where they make an effort to systematically review products rather than just giving a superficial impression or repeating PR. https://www.notebookcheck.net/ or https://dpreview.com/ are also good examples.

They are also a testament to the dazzling amount of options that mature industries seem to produce.

> The Schwalbe Racing Ray is optimized for front tire use and is a bit less aggressive than the Schwalbe Rocket Ron, […] Schwalbe suggests pairing the Racing Ray with the Racing Ralph (read review), which is optimized for use on the rear wheel.

> The Racing Ray used to be only available with the Addix SpeedGrip compound, which [is] grippier than their Addix Speed compound. We just noticed Schwalbe also released a Super Race version with the Addix Speed compound somewhere in the last few years, and we're not sure about the front wheel claims for that version.

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As a cyclist, this is a situation in which I find this type of reviewing close to worthless to be honest. Throwing a tire on a metal roller is very far removed from riding unless you're on a velodrome or perfectly maintained road. This has led to a lot of push-back in the cycling community against this site and its findings. Their testing methodology, especially before they made recent changes, largely will prefer skinny, highly inflated tires. But in the real world, everyone is finding fatter, less inflated tires are faster, because in the real world compliance (smoothly rolling over every road variation, rock or pebble) is faster.

To add to this, unless you are actually competitively cycling (you probably aren't) this sort of thing makes pretty much no difference for someone that is using cycling for transport.

It's a bit like obsessing over the lightest frame possible. Yeah, we can get a 1lb frame made of space materials but at the end of the day it's basically something that will reduce a cyclist's average speed by like 0.1mph.

For anyone doing anything other than competitive cycling, comfort is far more important than anything else and fat wheel bikes with steel frames are damn comfortable to ride on.

A relatively heavy bike with giant wheels might take your average speed down .5 or even 1 mph. You almost certainly won't notice it.

I think it’s a little different than bike weight, which makes very little difference for anything other than lifting it onto a rack or taking it up apartment stairs. Rolling resistance makes slightly more difference than that.

Yeah. Between two brands of racing tyre the difference may be small but between racing tyres and some mountain bike tyres there's a very noticeable difference.

Maybe it's just me getting old but... as a scientist I love technical reviews however I care more and more about feeling that real world performance. If a tire feel fast, it's what I will go for. My favorite road bike is my 12yo CAAD10 because I just love how it feels and the geo is perfect for me. This kind of thinking has been mostly phased out of the reviews and the design lately while the engineering has been optimized to a point almost all new bikes (and also true with cars IMO) feels more or less the same. Nowadays, I value character over numbers.

And if you live in a mountainous area, bike weight do make a big difference, up to a point. :)

I've switched to Schwalbe Marathon Almotion from some knobby Kenda and they made a night and day difference. It was a pleasure to ride in the city.

What type of difference did you notice? I switched from a stock Bontrager tires to Continental Grand Prix which are supposed to be high end and didn’t really notice too much of a difference.

Try using the Silca Tire Pressure calculator set to "Gravel Roads". This will give a safe PSI recommendation with a nod to comfort. I would ride 28mm GP4000s around 75 psi on a training ride with lots of chip seal

I'm in the mountain / touring category. My tires are more than 2.1" wide. Anyway, acceleration was faster and they kept on rolling when I stopped pedaling (because a traffic light was coming next).

I'm not sure if steel frames make a significant difference in comfort. If we measure comfort as deflection or vibration, then tire choice will have orders of magnitude more importance. When you have two springs in series, the combined spring constant is dominated by the weaker spring.

I race on a carbon frame with 30mm tires, and commute on a steel frame with 38mm tires for what it's worth.

Bike weight is irrelevant on flat roads. We should be obsessing over Watts/gram of drag, not Watts/kg if you're not a climber

I think the difference between aluminium and steel is easier to feel than carbon to steel.

I always enjoy those conversations with middle aged cyclist who fill up their jersey and then talk about how they shaved off 200g somewhere. Dude if you didn't drink all those after ride beers you could shave off a lot more than 200g. This is why I refuse to wear jerseys. Ahahaha.

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