Budget Tire Review!

As promised, although slightly late, here are my first impressions on the Forte Pro Plus (Performance Bikes house brand) road tires.

I did a whole bunch (read as 15 minutes) of reading on these particular tires before making the purchase.  They are very inexpensively priced like most of Performance's house brand gear tends to be.  After doing a little bit of digging around on Google and a little bit of reconnaissance at the store, I felt the evidence was pretty convincing that they were either rebadged Panaracer tires, or at the very least, made in the same factory as the Panaracers.

Now just because I bought these, I'm not to saying that Panaracers are the best tires out there, but the general consensus seems to be that they are pretty mid range.  Another tire option I had considered at the time were some Vittoria Zaffiros, but the shop only had them in the slick variant and I was weary of how these would handle in the rain.  I also strongly considered the Michelin Lithion 2 tire, which was what I had originally came to purchase, however the shop only had a single tire left.

After standing like an idiot in front of the tire rack for the better part of an hour, switching between my smartphone browser with Amazon reviews pulled up, and bothering the seemingly one knowledgeable employee there, I finally settled on the house brand Pro Pluses on BLOWOUT SALE for about $25 a piece.

My very first impressions of the tire were positive out of the packaging.  Kevlar bead, puncture resistant shell, and relatively lightweight for for the features.  I opted for the 23mm width rather than the 25mm simply because the only 25mm tires had a secondary compound that was red.  The 23s I purchased were a much more subtle grey.  I was coming off of some Kenda Kontender tires, also in 23mm, that were doing no favors to my now empty patch kit.  I can thank those tires for the two punctures and one sidewall blowout I had on my 90 mile trip back from Columbus several weekends ago.

Putting the new tires on the rims was a piece of cake, and I easily coerced them on using only a single tire lever.  The grey secondary compound was a different look for the bike, but difficult to distinguish from a distance.  The tires do not have a directional arrow, however if you look at the tread, it should be easy for even the most novice cyclist to tell which way they should be mounted.

Mounted, here you can see I clearly mounted it backwards no thanks to a directional arrow, as well as the two tone compound I mentioned.

My first ride was unfortunately a short morning commute of my regular 19 miles to the coffee shop followed by work.  The conditions were dry and the commute is a mixture of multi use paths, bike lanes, and very unkempt road.

On the bike paths I noticed that the ride comfort was right about the same as my old rubber, however the rolling resistance was greatly decreased.  Maybe it was a placebo effect, but my average speed for that section jumped by about 1mph with what I would consider the same amount of effort.

The second section is comprised of some neighborhoods and onto a more main street with a bike lane.  Here the Fortes (Fortis?) easily outperformed my Kendas that still had plenty of tread left.  The corners felt like I had much more grip thanks to the softer secondary compound.  I felt way more confident in taking turns at speed.  This was a good thing.

The third section of my commute is made up some less than ideally maintained roads.  This is the only point I was wishing for my old tires back.  It could be that I usually had the old Kendas between 110-120psi depending on conditions, or that I had put the new tires up to 130 for their inaugural trip, but the bumps seemed much more pronounced.

Throughout the week, I of course commuted more and found that lowering the pressure just a hair remedied my complaints about the bumps, yet did not cost me any pinch flats.  In the rain the tires handled decently, but a little on the unpredictable side.  I would not classify them as fantastic or awful, but somewhere in the "not bad" range of the spectrum.

Overall, I'm pleased with my cheap tire purchase, and would recommend them to someone looking for a basic tire that doesn't break the bank.  Positives include their low cost, decent rolling resistance, and good dry cornering.  Downfalls of the tire are poor to mediocre wet cornering, a bit of a stiff ride, and the unavailability of a 25mm tire that wasn't gaudy red.