Road Bike Tire Test: Zipp Tangente Speed Tubeless 25

Zipp is best known for its high-end carbon wheelsets that often cost an arm and a leg. What's interesting for us is that Zipp also sells tires that can be combined with their wheels for a full Zipp wheel and tire set up. With tubeless tires, combining the same brand wheels and tires is tempting as you expect them to fit well together for easy mounting and easy inflation.

The Zipp Tangente Speed Tubeless is currently Zipp's only tubeless road bike tire and it's available in both the 25-622 (RT25) and 28-622 (RT28) sizes. Zipp specifies this tire as a "Pro-level race day tire" that offers low rolling resistance, is durable, puncture-resistant, and offers better cornering grip than leading tubeless tires. Just like their wheels, these are some of the most expensive tires out there which sets our expectations sky-high.

The Tangente Speed Tubeless is a full tubeless tire which means it theoretically can be used without sealant and hold air just fine. This is one of the few full-tubeless tires still available as there has been a movement towards tubeless-ready tires that can be made lighter but require sealant to completely seal the tire. As most people run sealant even in full-tubeless tires to increase puncture resistance, we're not sure full-tubeless tires make sense from a performance perspective.

We've run all the usual tests on the Tangente Speed Tubeless and found some surprising things about this tire in combination with Zipp's latest wheels.

The Zipp Tangente Speed Road Tubeless is a very fast all-round road bike tire that offers good tread thickness and above-average puncture resistance. The Tangente Speed Tubeless even comes closest to the Continental Grand Prix 5000 TL that has been leading the all-round road bike class for the last couple of years and simply has been a step above all other all-round tubeless tires.

We do have an issue with this tire and that's the very small tread that can be a potentially dangerous combination with some of the Zipp wheelsets that have a larger internal width than the industry standards (ETRTO). As we expect the only people willing to pay the price for these tires are people that own Zipp wheels and expect trouble-free operation, it's a big let down they didn't develop a tire made for wide rims.

As an example, we mounted the Tangente Speed Tubeless on a 22 mm internal width rim and found that at a static 45-degree lean angle, 2 mm of the sidewall will be in contact with the road. While a 45-degree lean angle is quite a lot, you also have to consider the road camber and surface irregularities when looking at the contact surface. On our standard 18 mm internal width rim, there was exactly enough tread to support a static 45-degree lean angle which confirms our suspicion this tire was developed with ETRTO standards in mind.

The 25-622 Zipp Tangente Speed performs well in our tests but just don't use it on rims wider than the ETRTO standards. The 28-622 version might be a better fit for nearly all Zipp wheels.