Road Bike Tire Test: Vittoria Rubino Pro III

The Rubino Pro 3 700 x 25C is a medium priced road bike tire from Vittoria. It comes with a 150 TPI nylon casing, long-life rubber compound, effective puncture resistance and a low weight of 235 grams. There is also a non-Pro version of the Rubino Pro 3 which comes with a 60 TPI casing and a wire bead. claimed weight of the non-Pro Rubino is 335 grams, which makes it unlikely to have a low rolling resistance. Although I'm testing the version with the tread pattern, both of these tires are available as a slick version as well.

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The Rubino family is positioned under the top of the line 320 TPI Corsa family and above the Zaffiro family which are low-budget road bike tires. This is the second medium priced road bike tire I'm testing after the Continental Grand Prix. I find it interesting to see how much of a difference this makes and how much you can gain with top of the line tires. I also plan to test some € 10,- ultra low budget tires.

The measured weight of 238 grams is close to the specified weight of 235 grams and is only 1 gram more than the Open Corsa CX which I measured at 237 grams. The Rubino Pro measures 26 mm wide on a 17C rim at 100 psi. Height is 24 mm. This is very close to the rated size of 25C.

Rolling resistance is surprisingly good and even better at the higher air pressures. At 120 psi / 8.3 bars, rolling resistance is 13.4 watts which is only 0.4 watts higher when compared to the Open Corsa CX. At an air pressure of 100 psi / 6.9 bars, performance is still very strong with a rolling resistance of 14.0 watts. At lower air pressures, the difference gets a little bit bigger. At 80 psi / 5.5 bars, rolling resistance has increased to 16 watts which is 1.2 watts more than the Open Corsa CX.

The Rubino Pro is able to score 12 points in the tread puncture resistance test. 12 points is pretty average for an all-round tire and equal to the Open Corsa CX.

At very high air pressures, the Rubino Pro performs excellent, at 120 and 100 psi you're only losing 0.4 watts when compared to the Open Corsa CX III. The Rubino Pro seems to "break down" when dropping air pressure to 80 psi. This results in a 1.2 watts advantage for the Open Corsa. 80-90 psi is probably the pressure you would want to run with 25mm tires. This means low-pressure performance is important as well. At these pressures, this tire equals the Continental Grand Prix which is a tire in the same price range.

When making a correction for an average road bike speed of 36 km/h / 23 mph (tests are run at 29km/h), and you want to spend a little less on tires, you will lose roughly 3 watts for a pair of tires when compared to the Vittoria Open Corsa. When compared with the "gold standard" Continental GP4000S II, you'll lose close to 5 watts for a pair of tires. 3 - 5 watts isn't much when you're just riding for fun, but if you're racing, it could be those last few seconds or meters you needed for the win.