Review: WTB 700 X 50mm Resolute

 Note: WTB sent over one set each of the Vulpine S, Vulpine, and Resolute tires for testing and review to Guitar Ted Productions at no cost. I was not paid nor bribed for this review and I will always strive to give my honest thoughts and opinions throughout.

I did a review of the three new WTB tires back in early July and now I want to break down the review into parts focusing on each tire in the release. In this post I am focusing on the Resolute in its new 50mm size.You can go back and see my previous take on this tire HERE.

The 700 X 50mm WTB Resolute with its familiar alternating tread block pattern

What About That Width?: The tire market for gravel has slowly been getting to the point where wider tires are more the norm than not. Ten years ago anything made for gravel tires was well under 45mm in width, with 38mm being the center of the width spectrum for tires made specifically (or marketed ) for gravel use. 

This was likely due to the fact that many companies were pivoting their cyclo cross frames to being marketed as "gravel" bike frames. The tell-tale was in the geometry charts and with regard to tire clearances, which limited these sorts of bikes to 40mm or so. However; savvy bike designers soon saw that wider tires for gravel were a good thing and bikes started being made to handle wider tires. We saw a surge of tires in the 43mm - 45mm range become available in the late 2010's. Then things slowly but surely have made their way to where now we are noticing even more bikes that can take 50mm+ wide gravel, or skinny 29"er, treads. 

The Resolute was introduced as a 42mm tire, but often times would end up being more of a 44mm tire on wider internal width rims. So, WTB jumped this tire straight to 50mm and as of now it stands as the widest gravel tire the company offers at the time of this writing. But if you read my previous update, you already know that the Resolute wasn't "measuring up". I was promised that it would stretch after usage. Did that happen? 

It took a while, but the Reso made it there!

As you can see by the image here, yes, the Resolute did actually make it to a 50mm width. It took a lot longer than I would have hoped and a lot longer to reach its stated width than the other two tires from WTB did which are in this test. 

If I were to venture a guess as to why that was, my guess would be that the full SG+ bead to bead puncture protection casing would be the reason why. The Vulpine and Vulpine S do not have a full layer of puncture protection, theirs is only a sidewall layer. My belief is that the full layer in the casing of the Resolute gave that tire a casing less prone to stretching. I could be wrong there though. 

Ride Performance: The Resolute was designed as an all-around conditions tire. I have had several Resolutes in the 42mm size on various bikes before and the overall impression I got of the Resolute was a tire that was kind of a jack-of-all-trades type tire. It did okay on pavement, but was probably best suited to dealing with loose, deeper crushed rock roads. 

I attributed this to the Resolute's flatter crown to the casing which helps the Resolute not cut into loose gravel and "hunt for the path of least resistance" but rather it seems to ride up over the top a bit better where the bike seems to react as being more stable. There is definitely a calmer ride quality to the Resolute in these situations. The wider Resolute does this even better. 

But a surprising result in my roll-down test was that this wider, heavier tire actually tested out as average on the paved section and above average on the gravel section. Resolutes have always been better on gravel than pavement, but I was expecting a below average paved test and maybe an average gravel test. So, that seemed to be a bit of a surprise for me there. 

Air pressure maters as it does in any tire and situation. What the wider Resolute allows you to do is to have a wider range of pressures to play with. Since the new Reso is almost a 29"er tire, I have been running it from around 30psi all the way up to around the high-30's psi. As the tire has broken in, and stretched a bit, this has allowed for an ability to make the tire fit the situation better. Lots of pavement? Go higher. Lot's of loose, silty, sandy dirt? Go lower. I have no doubt that this Resolute, with its higher volume of air in the casing, could be run in the upper 20's psi in the right situations for my weight and riding style. 

I cannot get away with that with a 40-43mm tire. Maybe with a 47mm tire, like the Teravail Rutland, which I think is really similar to the Resolute, I could get close. But now with an even wider, more voluminous Resolute? I think I have a Swiss Army knife of a tire now.

So Far... Now it will be time to play around with that ability to tune this tire to certain situations and conditions. I am excited to get out and try a few things with the 50mm Resolutes. Now, of course, this probably isn't the all-around tire in the sense that you could go fast and keep up with a paved group ride, most likely. No, that doesn't make sense, but with regard to all situations off-pavement, I am liking this tire's versatility and voluminous casing. 

I'll be back later in the Summer with a final word.