Schwalbe Marathon 28" 47-622 Reflex Green Guard

I review the tire, not the bike-discount.de service, which is wonderful. The good: Rolling resistance is low, the bike rolls very easy, you can feel this most noticeably in high speeds The tire is comparatively heavy but the weight has its benefits on my bike. My bike has quite sensitive steering due to the rake. Sensitive steering is useful in low speeds in the city but provides low stability in high speeds. Heavy tire, due to gyroscopic effect, makes the steering heavy in high speeds, which adds stability. And that is benefits my bike pretty well. The bad: The contact patch with the ground on the tire is very small. The thread is very narrow, despite the tire being 45C, and it brings a negative effect – very poor traction. Breaking with rear wheel is near to useless even on the tarmac because the tire skids so easy. Similarly breaking on loose surfaces with the front wheel locks the wheel almost instantly, one must be very careful with brakes. I do have Deore M596 brakes with XT 180mm rotors. The second bad thing is also related to the tire width. Ok, it does not have good traction but it has good rolling resistance. You might be satisfied with that. The reason I put 45C tire on my bike is comfort. Large volume is supposed to suppress the road roughness. Not Marathon tires though. They are very harsh. They are harsher than i.e. Continental Speed Ride 42C tire, or even Specialized 37C cyclocross tires. Actually they are harsher than any tire I own. The conclusion: Schwalbe Marathon 45C tires are fat, heavy, harsh and have bad traction. They disappoint on performance and comfort. Probably puncture protection should outweigh the disadvantages, however, my previous commuter with Continental Speed Ride 42C tires was much more comfortable, had loads of traction in comparison, the tires where much lighter and I had single flat in four years. And they were twice as cheap. It brings a slight disappointment Marathons, I hope time will cure my disappointment :)