New rubber compound adds both speed and grip, both on road and off, with a tread designed for '80%-tarmac' rides
(Image credit: Michelin)
The new Michelin Power Adventure tyre is, according to Michelin, designed for riders who spend around 80% of their riding time on tarmac, but still want to be able to head off-road in confidence for the other 20%.
As such, they’re not designed so much to sit among the best gravel bike tyres as to fit between them and the best road bike tyres. With their ever-increasing tyre clearance, many of the best road bikes should have space for the narrowest 32mm Power Adventure tyre width.
The new tyres' focus means that they have to prioritise low rolling resistance while still providing the grip to keep you rubber side down when you want to explore the path less beaten.
As such, they fit between the Michelin Power road tyre range and the Michelin Power Gravel off-road tyres, although Michelin says that the tyres can be used for bikepacking, trekking and commuting duties too, so they’re something of an all-rounder.
The new tyre's semi-slick tread is designed to balance grip off-road with rolling speed on tarmac (Image credit: Michelin)
The tyres are made from a new rubber compound that Michelin calls Gum-X. It says that this provides good grip both in the wet and the dry. The tread pattern includes small shoulder blocks for grip off-road, with a slick central section for speed on the road. It sits on a 3x100 TPI casing with a bead-to-bead protective layer.
As is often the case with new tyres, riders are catered for with tan sidewall “Classic” or black sidewall options, so that they can choose the tyres that best match their bike. The new Michelin Power Adventure tyres are tubeless-ready and available in 700c tyre size only.
There are tan sidewall and black versions in 30mm, 36mm, and 42mm widths and a 48mm tan sidewall-only tyre (Image credit: Michelin)
The tyres are available in 30mm size with a claimed weight of 340g, 36mm with claimed 380g weight and 42mm with claimed 440g weight in both tan and black sidewall options. There’s also a 48mm width in Classic tan sidewall finish only with a 510g claimed weight.
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Paul has been on two wheels since he was in his teens and he's spent much of the time since writing about bikes and the associated tech. He's a road cyclist at heart but his adventurous curiosity means Paul has been riding gravel since well before it was cool, adapting his cyclo-cross bike to ride all-day off-road epics and putting road kit to the ultimate test along the way. Paul has contributed to Cyclingnews' tech coverage for a few years, helping to maintain the freshness of our buying guides and deals content, as well as writing a number of our voucher code pages.
