Review: WTB 700 X 50mm Resolute - Final Word

 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.

 First off, if you have missed the previous installments on the Resolute, you can go back HERE.

Now with a Summer's worth of riding the WTB Resolute in the 50mm width I have enough miles in to make a final verdict on the tires. In this post I will focus on how a wider Resolute compares to the previously available 42mm Resolutes and also how the wider Resolute fares in varied conditions. 

I've said it before in may posts here, but my favorite overall gravel tire for years was the original tan-wall Resolute 700 X 42mm tires. Whatever WTB was doing then as far as factory used and materials sourced for those tires, I was smitten with the performance on gravel and the ride quality, which was really top-tier, in my opinion. 

Resolutes do really well on loose, deep gravel. The 50's even more so.

However; a lot of riders reported troubles with sidewalls getting sliced up in sharp rocks and some others noted accelerated wear issues. WTB then began to change subsequent Resolute production runs and finally introduced the SG puncture protected casing for the tire. 

While gravel performance was not affected negatively by these changes, I always felt that the ride quality did suffer. A trade-off often seen when trying to balance durability with ride quality. 

Here is where the new, wider Resolute, with the SG+ casing, changes the game for me. The larger air volume of the 50mm casing allows me to gain back some of that lost ride quality, so now I not only have a wider, more stable footprint on loose terrain, but I have a bit more grace in ride quality and tunability which the narrower 42mm casings do not afford me. 

Just as with narrower Resolutes, the knobs will "round-off" as wear is noted.

In varied terrain the wider Resolute shines as a tire that will allow you to manage well. It is not the ultimate traction tire for cobbly, rock infested roads, nor is the Resolute the tire that will show up as the fastest hard conditions or pavement choice. However; it holds its own everywhere, so if you are a rider that sees varied terrain on many rides, this might be that "one tire" you can rely on to get you through. 

Since the Resolute does sport a flatter crown, and since the wider width enhances this characteristic, it can exhibit a bit of self-steer. Self-steer is an issue that many fat bikers are aware of, but if you do not know the term or what it describes, it is the tendency for a tire to grab a line and pull the bike in that direction, usually which is contrary to what you want to do. I experienced this when riding a grassy, two-track with weeds so high they obscured a rut. The Resolute caught this rut in the rut's depression and was trying to climb up the side of the rut contrary to my direction of travel. This resulted in a fall for me. 

It is not a terrible characteristic, and I could not see the rut to make a preemptive correction, so I do not blame the Resolute, but it is a cautionary tale if your riding sees a lot of rutted out dirt roads. 

The Resolute also did well in very fine, loose silt and carried me over wet, slightly muddy sections with aplomb. The silt sections were barely passed, and with a narrower tire, these would have been impossible to ride through. Credit the new 50mm width here. Dirt sections are where the Resolute is perhaps the best, with those knobs lending above average traction, at least as long as those knobs are not worn down. Resolute knobs have always been subject to rounded edges as they wear which reduces those knobs effectiveness in dirt. 

Final Words: This is now a tire which - for myself - brings ride quality and versatility with the SG+ casing protection together in a tire which rides really well and does a variety of things in a manner that is acceptable. Not great at any one thing, but a tire that shines in varied conditions and terrains. I would highly recommend the 700 X 50mm version as long as it fits your frame and as long as your riding has varied surfaces. This also might be the choice for rides taking you into unknown territory where you may not know what to expect for roads or paths. Of course, with technology and social media being what it is, it is becoming increasingly rare for "unknown territory" to exist. 

The 700 X 50mm Resolute has a tough casing, holds air quite well over a period of time, and with its volume is quite a "tunable" tire for varied conditions and for ride quality. It does what it is intended to do quite well. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great all-rounder choice for their gravel or adventure bike.

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.