I’m at ~148lbs, and according to the Silca Pro pressure calculator for 25mm tires (nominally 26 measured) I should run:
84psi front
86psi rear
So I could only use the 25 with hooked / crotchet rims, which luckily I have. So yeah, the max pressures for hookless rims are interesting to say the least when compared to recommended pressures.
The transparent is better looking but, FYI if you ride in any weather other than sunny and dry, these seem to get dark enough that it’s not much difference from the black ones. Not saying don’t hold out for them. IIRC that’s all Conti made back a number of years ago. Not 100% sure about that but, every conti I had was transparent which was just standard???
My first choice would be the cream sidewall. No idea if they will produce them any time soon for the S TR. I gave up looking for the regular TL version.
I think the majority of people probably still ride hooked. Hookless might be the majority in time but, from a business perspective it would be foolish to not make 25’s with so many hooked rims out there.
I don’t know why they bothered to produce hookless rims unless they believe that the majority of people have tyres wider than 25mm.
Seriously though I don’t think hookless makes sense on narrower rims so I don’t think the weird pressure requirements of the 25mm tyre are going to be much of a concern as people with wide rims should be running lower pressure anyway.
I think most of the hookless rims are optimised around a wider tire. So unlikely to be many people running 25mm and hookless. Also depends on road surface - rougher it gets the lower the optimised pressure. I’m a little lighter than you at 80kg and running 28mm tires on hookless rims on roads that are often pretty crappy, and the max tire pressure of 72 just doesn’t concern me at all.
I think the key thing is that by making these hookless compatible Continental have aligned with the ETRTO standard, which regardless of whether you’re using hooked or hookless should mean they fit more consistently on rims from manufacturers who are also aligning with that standard.
Doesn’t seem like much of an upgrade unless you’re obsessed with tanwalls (like me ). The tread is 0.5mm thinner too…wonder if that means you’re trading longevity for a minor weight savings?
Looks like the interesting pressures are members only…
Also, the 80, 100 and 120 PSI tests are beyond the safety rating of the tire, only the 60 PSI test is below the maximum pressure.
The big upgrade is they are approved for use on hookless rims. If you just take the Enve and Zipp users who love Continentals but are nervous about using an unapproved tire, that alone is a pretty big pool of excited potential customers (I assume Enve will be adding the new 5000s to its approved tire list soon).
The rest is the usual iterative improvements Continental makes every couple years.
BRR has been a great site over the years and I realize they want to make money but only showing 100 and 120psi figures now makes the site much less useful. And I don’t really need another subscription for something obscure as tire rolling resistance even though it’s only $10.
The price is only higher because it just came out and everybody wants it. I just bought the old TL version for $39.99. That will get me through the winter!
I think what may be obscuring the results is that the new tire is physically smaller. This kind of bums me out more than anything. I didn’t really want an even smaller 25mm tire and I can’t run larger on my current frame. I could care less about saving a couple watts in rolling resistance.