Road Bike Tire Test: Vittoria Zaffiro Slick

The Vittoria Zaffiro Slick 700 x 25C is a very low-cost tire, you can get four Zaffiro's for the price of a single high-end tire. This is also Vittoria's cheapest road bike tire. To keep costs down, they use a wire bead, 26 TPI carcass, cheap rubber compound and no special puncture protection. This tire is described as an economical tire with very long service life. I've chosen to test this tire to find out if spending a lot of money on expensive tires is really necessary.

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Vittoria makes a lot of different road bike tires, looking at their website, there are more than 30 different models. I've already tested the Open Corsa CX which is a high-end tire and a Rubino Pro which is a medium priced tire. I think together with the Zaffiro, these are the most popular tires from Vittoria. There is also a Zaffiro Pro, which has a folding bead, 60 TPI casing and is a massive 120 grams lighter than the non-pro tire.The price of the Zaffiro Pro is close to the price of the Rubino Pro, which again seems to be a step up.

The specified weight of the 25 mm Zaffiro is 370 grams, which is much heavier than most other all-round road bike tires that fit in the 225-250 grams range. It seems the wire beads add a lot of weight compared to a folding bead tire. For most people, this will already be a big turn off.

The measured weight of this Zaffiro is a massive 398 grams, 28 grams more than the advertised weight. The measured width and height on a 17C rim is 26 mm and 24 mm respectively. This seems to be the average size for a 25C tire.

Rolling resistance at very high pressure seems to be reasonable for such a cheap tire. At an air pressure of 120 psi, it's just 2.3 watts slower when compared to the Rubino Pro. At lower pressures, it seems to really fall apart. The graph clearly shows a sharp rise in rolling resistance at pressures lower than 100 psi. At 80 psi, it requires 4.1 watts more energy per tire compared to the Rubino Pro, rising to 5.8 watts at 60 psi.

Surprisingly, puncture resistance of the Zaffiro is very low for such a heavy tire. It gets a score of 10 in the puncture test versus a score of 12 for the Rubino Pro, which is a much lighter tire. High-tech puncture belts in more expensive tires clearly do work.

If you want a really cheap tire, this might be it. If you want much better performance, I think you can do a lot better by spending a bit more on a Vittoria Rubino Pro or a Continental Grand Prix. In my opinion, those tires hit the sweet spot in cost/performance. The Zaffiro even gets a lower score in the puncture test than light, low rolling resistance tires, which is something I did not expect from such a heavy tire.

I'll advise you to read my reviews of the Vittoria Rubino Pro and Continental Grand Prix and decide for yourself if it's worth it to spend a little more on road bike tires. I'm curious to hear your opinion so leave a comment with your own experience!