Vital had a good review on some DH tires.
www.vitalmtb.com
Curious to ride the new Highrollers. After riding several of the newer tires on offer, the conclusion I've come to is that tires peaked with the Supertacky Minion DHF DH casing and everything since then has been a sidegrade or a downgrade depending on how closely the design was copied.
The newest iteration of Highrollers have piqued my curiosity though, they look like they're fairly similar. I'll probably make that my next set of tires, but I'm not in dire need at the moment as I have a pretty fresh set of tires on both my DH and enduro bikes.
Currently riding some Conti Kryptocals (the enduro version) on my enduro bike I was given for free and their review is pretty close to where I'm at. They're pretty good - good enough that I won't take them off my bike until they're worn out, but I probably wont buy another set when I can buy a set of Minion DHFs or the new highrollers. If you're looking for something new to try and just want to mix it up, they're pretty similar in feel to the "Assagai F and Minion DHR R" combo. If you can find them for a decent price, they're a solid combination if that particular tire type floats your boat. Casing is nice and damped, rubber is soft and grippy, and they've performed well pretty much everywhere I've ridden them. Only exception is wet slippery east coast roots they've been pretty awful - I fell 3 times from sliding/looping out when they lost traction on a local XC loop that I've ridden both wet and dry a million times and don't fall on. If you do a lot of wet riding with slippery roots, might be worth steering clear. Traction on that stuff is never great when its wet, but this felt noticably more slippery than the DHF's I had on prior, and those were pretty old and clapped out DHFs.
Happy to see Vee making some tires that appear to be quite good at a much more reasonable pricepoint than maxxis, but I probably wouldn't buy any because they appear to be Assegai/MinionDHRII (like all the other tires in the test) and do the exact thing I don't like, and is the reason I like minion DHFs so much. I don't love not having a clear transition between middle and side knobs, making it harder to judge when traction is going to break. Still though, sounds like the casing is well damped, they have a reasonable weight for a big tire like that, and they use a nice soft rubber and cost $30-40 less than a maxxis tire.
Gravity Tire Shootout - Vital Test Sessions
Last year, we conducted a front tire shootout where we compared the performance of eight tires when mounted up front. It was a grueling battle of sipes and transition knobs to see which delivered the best control and predictability.
Curious to ride the new Highrollers. After riding several of the newer tires on offer, the conclusion I've come to is that tires peaked with the Supertacky Minion DHF DH casing and everything since then has been a sidegrade or a downgrade depending on how closely the design was copied.
The newest iteration of Highrollers have piqued my curiosity though, they look like they're fairly similar. I'll probably make that my next set of tires, but I'm not in dire need at the moment as I have a pretty fresh set of tires on both my DH and enduro bikes.
Currently riding some Conti Kryptocals (the enduro version) on my enduro bike I was given for free and their review is pretty close to where I'm at. They're pretty good - good enough that I won't take them off my bike until they're worn out, but I probably wont buy another set when I can buy a set of Minion DHFs or the new highrollers. If you're looking for something new to try and just want to mix it up, they're pretty similar in feel to the "Assagai F and Minion DHR R" combo. If you can find them for a decent price, they're a solid combination if that particular tire type floats your boat. Casing is nice and damped, rubber is soft and grippy, and they've performed well pretty much everywhere I've ridden them. Only exception is wet slippery east coast roots they've been pretty awful - I fell 3 times from sliding/looping out when they lost traction on a local XC loop that I've ridden both wet and dry a million times and don't fall on. If you do a lot of wet riding with slippery roots, might be worth steering clear. Traction on that stuff is never great when its wet, but this felt noticably more slippery than the DHF's I had on prior, and those were pretty old and clapped out DHFs.
Happy to see Vee making some tires that appear to be quite good at a much more reasonable pricepoint than maxxis, but I probably wouldn't buy any because they appear to be Assegai/MinionDHRII (like all the other tires in the test) and do the exact thing I don't like, and is the reason I like minion DHFs so much. I don't love not having a clear transition between middle and side knobs, making it harder to judge when traction is going to break. Still though, sounds like the casing is well damped, they have a reasonable weight for a big tire like that, and they use a nice soft rubber and cost $30-40 less than a maxxis tire.
