Best tubeless road tyres: Faster, more comfortable and less puncture-prone

One of the main benefits of tubeless road tyres is increased puncture protection, but that doesn't necessarily mean fewer punctures. 

However, when an object pierces the tyre, the pressurised air tries to escape through that hole. As it does, sealant is pushed through the hole. The best tubeless sealant will clog up rapidly, plugging the hole and fixing the puncture with only a small loss of pressure. Most of the time, with the kind of punctures you tend to pick up from small bits of glass, rocks or thorns, you might not even notice it happening and can just keep riding along as if it didn’t, although you may find a spray of sealant on your frame next time you wash your bike. 

Sealant alone won’t be able to fix larger cuts in the tyre (anything over about 5mm) but what makes tubeless tyres different is that you've not got extra layers of flat protection. Your first layer is the tyre itself but that's the same as a tube-type tyre. Without an inner tube, you avoid many of those roadside repair jobs. 

The next layer of protection is the sealant, which is usually enough to solve the problem. If your tubeless sealant fails then your next step of puncture protection is a plug system such as those offered by Dynaplug.

It can sometimes happen that you find yourself unable to fix a flat. The hole may be too big for the sealant and for one reason or another, the plug repair may not hold. 

The nice thing about tubeless tyres is that you still aren't stuck. You should always carry a tube with you as a last line of defence. There's nothing that says you can't put a tube in a tubeless tyre and get yourself home, although it can be a messy business due to the sealant. 

Even more convenient is the fact that with tubeless you may go for years never using your emergency tube. A TPU inner tube like those from Tubolito, Schwalbe and Vittoria might be more expensive but given the rarity of use, they start to make a lot of sense for their compact size and low weight. 

In the eyes of this writer, there is no bigger advantage to running tubeless road tyres than the ability to run lower pressures. With a tube in a tyre you run the risk of pinch flatting any time your wheel experiences low pressure. 

Removing that obstacle means you can run the right pressure for your weight with your wheels and it's probably a lot less than you think it is. My favourite place to look up the right pressure is on the Enve Tyre Pressure Chart.

Running a lower pressure isn't just about comfort. Sure, you'll have a more comfortable ride when you don't overinflate your tyres but there's more to it. Running lower pressure also helps with flat resistance. If you want to visualize this, think about a balloon that's as full as possible vs a balloon that's a bit flat. Given the extra ability to stretch and conform, the flatter balloon is harder to pop.

This question follows the lower-pressure question because it tends to be the next question in the discussion. 

No road is perfectly smooth, it will always have small bumps and imperfections, and however small they may be, they deflect forward motion upwards as you and your bike roll over it. Each of those deflections causes a small loss in momentum, resisting the wheel's ability to roll. By lowering that resistance, a wheel (and therefore the bike and its rider) will be faster for a given power output. 

There are a couple of ways that tubeless tyres enable this. First, the lower tyre pressures enable more suppleness overall, meaning the tyre can more easily conform to those imperfections, rather than deflecting over them.

Secondly, removing the inner tube from the equation means there's no sliding friction between the inside of the tyre and the tube inside, which makes it easier for the rubber to contort around the bump and lower frictional loss. 

If you want to dive even deeper into this then Silca will take you about as deep as anyone would want to go. They have an article that explains their tyre pressure calculator and gets very detailed. Their tyre pressure calculator is also another resource although I tend to use the Enve reference because it's less complex.

The main downsides revolve around installation. There's no getting around the fact that putting a tubeless road tyre on a rim is almost always a more difficult process than mounting a tubed tyre. You may need an (expensive) reservoir pump to get the tyre to seat properly and sometimes even the best tubeless sealant doesn't ensure a leak-free seal to the rim.

Tubeless tyres aren't maintenance-free either. The sealant will dry up over time, so you need to check it regularly and keep it topped up to preserve your puncture protection. 

Not only that but if you are changing a tyre it's likely to be a messy experience. The upside is that it's only getting easier as the manufacturers of wheels and tyres iron out standards that mean every tyre fits every wheel in the way you'd expect. 

Before buying any of the best tubeless road tyres, you'll need to check that your wheels are actually tubeless compatible. Some wheels will say this on the rim sidewall, while others will hide the info on the rim bed beneath the inner tube. If you can't find it on the wheel itself, check with the manufacturer. 

If the wheels aren't tubeless compatible, they will be less likely to offer the tight fit needed to remain airtight, and even though you can sometimes get them to seal, you run the risk of them failing later down the line, potentially whilst descending at speed. It's not recommended to try to set up tubeless unless both your wheels and rims are tubeless-ready.

The good news is that most of the best road bike wheels are now tubeless-ready, so if you're looking to upgrade your wheelset this is unlikely to be a problem.

The latest new wheel tech is hookless rims, which have actually been ported over from mountain bike wheels, where they've been a feature of top spec wheels for years. They're designed to be used with tubeless tyres.

A normal wheel rim has a lip to help retain the tyre, but a hookless rim has straight sides without the lip. This makes the wheel lighter (and also cheaper to manufacture), but it also dictates a more precise fit between the tyre and the rim. There are horror stories of tyres blowing off hookless rims and destroying expensive carbon wheels.

But tyre and wheel makers have worked together to ensure the precise tolerances needed in both their products and many tubeless tyres are now hookless rim compatible.

Nevertheless, it's wise to ensure that your wheel-tyre combination is compatible - check the websites for both - before mounting a tyre on a hookless rim. Also observe the recommended tyre pressures, as both wheel and tyre makers will have a safe maximum. 

This depends on a number of factors, including the internal width of your rims, the clearance offered by your bike, your riding habits, and ultimately your preferences. Of course, we're talking road tyres, so we're going to assume you're riding a bike with 700c wheels, but when it comes to width, there are plenty of factors to consider. 

If you're riding all-day epics on a disc brake-equipped road bike, you'll probably have enough clearance to run wider tyres, and would likely benefit from anything between around 28c and 32c. However, if you're riding a rim brake road bike, your brake calipers will limit you to narrower widths. 

If you're racing, you probably don't need the comfort of a 32c tyre and would find greater benefit in the lower weight and increased aerodynamics of going narrower. But of course, this all depends on the width and shape of your rim, as most modern rims are designed for optimal use with a specific tyre size - which the manufacturer will no doubt be happy to tell you, if it's not already published. 

Given all tubeless road tyres are designed to self-seal punctures, you might be forgiven for thinking that you no longer need to worry about the level of puncture protection, but the reality is that they can still be susceptible to damage. 

Like tube-type tyres, the best tubeless road tyres come in various forms. Some are designed as a fit-and-forget solution to punctures, while others are almost paper-thin and designed to minimise rolling resistance. These thin tyres will still seal punctures, but as they are more fragile, they will be more prone to larger tears and they will typically wear out more quickly.

Exactly how much puncture protection you need will depend on your riding habits. If you're fitting tubeless tyres for your commute, then durability and high levels of protection will likely be more important than the few watts you might save. 

In contrast, if you're fitting tubeless tyres to your time trial bike, then thinner, more supple tyres will help you go faster. Those are the extremes, but there are plenty of options that balance speed and protection well. 

This depends, because the best tubeless sealant comes in various forms. Some are designed to seal very quickly at high pressures, but these will usually dry out more quickly in the tyre. 

Others prioritise longevity, meaning they can last for six months and more before drying out inside the tyre, but they will usually be a little slower at sealing the puncture, resulting in a probable need to top the air up before continuing your ride. 

We've got a guide for that. Check out how to set up tubeless tyres for step-by-step instructions.