Best Mountain Bike Tire Sizes
Most mountain bikes today are offered in one of two wheel sizes.
Best mountain bike tire sizes. Benson is a competitive athlete highly experienced tester reviewer and published author. Tires are essential to mountain biking the type of terrain you ride and they can have a big impact on your riding experience. Once you ve identified your tire diameter 29 27 5 or 26 you ll want to dial in your width. Benson s mountain bike roots trace back to new england in the early 1990s and he has seen and experienced the evolution of mountain bike tires.
Sizes written as decimals such as 2 75 are different than sizes expressed as fractions such as 2 3 4. Trail and all mountain bikes will have tires in the 2 25 to 2 4 width range. 29 x 2 0 27 5 x 2 4 29 x 2 8. Our mountain bike tire review is led by our senior mountain bike review editor jeremy benson.
Mountain bike tire size and width. Read the size carefully. A hybrid of road and mountain tires cyclocross tires are labeled as 700c and have widths indicated in millimeters like road bikes yet are knobbie like mountain bike tires. After all the best way to test a bike technology is to take it for a ride.
26 inch wheels long considered the standard wheel size in the mountain bike industry 26 inches is likely the size of the wheels you have on your mountain bike now unless you actively sought out something different. These widely used measurements refer to the tire s diameter and are typically paired with a tire width in inches when written out i e. A cross country bike will have tires in the 1 9 to 2 25 width range.