Bontrager R3 Hard-Case Lite TLR tyre

The Bontrager R3 Hard-Case Lite TLR Road Tyre in this 700x32 format is an excellent puncture-shy, durable and comfortable choice for crappy roads and long distances. It needs regular topping up with air, though.

For more road-focused options, check out our guide to the best road bike tyres – and if you're wanting something for more adventurous outings, our guide to the best gravel tyres should help.

The R3 Hard-Case Lite TLR is a lightly treaded, tubeless-ready road tyre available in 25, 28 and 32mm widths, made with proprietary TR-Speed compound rubber and puncture protected with an improved Hard-Case Lite breaker belt. It's the girthiest one on test here that's best suited for any long distance, endurance, go all the way over there and back again, whatever you want to call it road bike.

Fast-rolling for their size, they've proved to be entirely trouble free, throwing no surprises under any conditions, suffering no punctures and proving to be extremely durable.

The tubed and much older version of the R3 Hard-Case Lite I tested a long while back was my favourite tyre for both just mucking about on the local lanes and for heading off on much longer distances, and after the review pair wore out I bought another set, rode around a lot, and then bought another pair. They were fast rolling, comfortable, puncture resistant enough, and could cope with a bit of routing error genteel off road to make them a no-brainer for the jaunts I did on the bike both from home and away across entire countries. But that was in the days of inner tubes and we're all about tubeless now aren't we, so I was keen to see if the new tubeless version could live up to the high happy bar of their tubed namesakes and take their place as my new favourite tyre.

Fitting

The R3 has a claimed weight of 340g, but the pair I tested came in significantly under at 324g and 325g, which is nice. Mounted to a set of wheels that measured 27mm externally and 21mm internally, the tyres inflated true to the stated size.

As seems to be the way, based on my many years experience with setting up a pair of tubeless tyres on a bike, one was easy to install and one was a bit more troublesome. The tricky one required several attempts to get it to seat, with only the dump valve track pump inflated to its highest wincing pressure being able to punch and pop the bead into place, but since then there have been no tyre/rim interface issues.

As with the majority of tubeless tyres, there is a bit of air loss over time, and the Bontys seem to be more leaky than others, but as a gear, brake and tyre pressure check is part of my pre-ride routine, keeping on top of this was never an issue.

These R3 tyres in 32mm size have a 14mm wide bald centre strip of rubber that's bracketed each side by a 14mm-wide pattern of tiny oval lugs of tread that get incrementally yet subtly larger as they extend round the edge of the tyre, all the way to the top of the amber wall. The tyres are marked as directional, with the pattern of this tread pointing towards the front of the bike.

It's hard to measure the efficacy of this side tread. I know that tread on road tyres is mainly there for placebo effect and the side lugs here do play into the tyre's all-road endurance image, and it might help a little if you're riding on rougher road and lighter gravel paths, but in all the testing over a thousand varieties of tarmac, potholes, broken roads, mud-covered lanes and graded gravel paths, I felt they were neither a benefit nor a hindrance. So maybe it did work. I can't say I ever felt the need to back off in a corner, and the only skid was from sudden panic, noticing a deep ford at the bottom of a steep hill, in the dark.

As tan wall tyres go (they're available in black, too) it's quite a darkly shaded one, and in its defence Trek does call it Dark Brown. It's 75-year-old Italian man in Speedos tan, if you will, a leathery brown that might challenge your love of tan walls over plain black, but I quite like them, and on the plus side they show the dirt less.

The tyres have a 120tpi carcass (the narrower options are 170tpi) which keeps them nice and supple, especially when you add in the lower pressures you can run these fatter tyres at. Trek recommends a maximum pressure of 70psi on these 32mm ones.

In use

On the road the R3 TLR is a fuss-free, no surprises, dependable tyre. For the type of scenario a 700x32 tyre is likely to find itself in, you don't need outright speed or gossamer lightness, you need something that's going to get you to where you need to go without mishap, and these tyres do that incredibly well.

That doesn't mean they're overbuilt and boring – they're nippy enough to have fun on if you want to rag it about, although they don't necessarily feel fast thanks to their large volume and ability to benefit from lower pressures. The sensation of speed you get from a thinner and harder tyre, because you're feeling every bump of tarmac, just isn't there.

In this 32mm guise they're not designed for seeking every ounce of speed as you sprint out of a crit corner but for rides over less-than-perfect tarmac and across longer distances, and it's here where they really shine. That volume and squish make them a comfortably swift tyre that effortlessly eats up the miles and makes sure you're not battered to exhaustion by the end of a ride, no matter how short or long.

Bontrager's proprietary TR-Speed rubber compound is really very good. The roads where I live are hard on tyres, as well as being in a poor state of repair and the resting place for hawthorn and flint – the latter once useful for arrow heads, so it has an easy time with a bicycle tyre. Over the course of the test period the R3 Hard-Case Lite TLRs succumbed to absolutely no punctures. I know, right. While judging resilience to flatting is hardly a precise art, it should have been expected, and not much of a disappointment, considering the time and terrain these tyres have been pointed over, but that Hard-Case Lite puncture-resistant strip made from a Nylon105 breaker belt appears to do its job very well.

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The R3 tyres are also remarkably free of any of the nicks and cuts that would usually decorate and deteriorate a tyre that's seen a similar mileage. There is a small amount of damage, but it's only visible in the tiniest of pinprick indentations to the tread. It's a durable rubber; the front tyre still has the shadow of its central moulding strip on it and it's heavily into four figure distance rolled by now. And that longevity doesn't come at the expense of grip – the tyres have happily dealt with variable tarmac conditions and been leant into corners with gusto without any interesting moments.

Value

No tyres are cheap these days, eh? But while £53 isn't to be sneezed at, it's in the same ball park as similar options we've been impressed with on road.cc.

The Panaracer Agilest TLR Road Tyre that Steve tested recently seems to be a fine competitor, for just a few quid more. It's a lighter tyre and nippy (at least in the 28mm guise) with good manners on poor road surfaces, and robust enough to deal with them too. The slick rubber makes them look more road than the mixed rufty-tufty tread of the Bontragers.

While not marketed as a road tyre, the Panaracer GravelKing Slick TLC that Hollis tested last year is in a similar wheelhouse to the Bontrager R3 in being able to tackle poor tarmac and sometimes surfaces that might be a little rougher. Despite fitting woes they proved to be swift and dependable on road, for just under £50.

The Bontys are just a few quid more than the £49.99 Teravail Rampart All-Road Tyre I reviewed a year ago, a similarly good tyre to the Bontrager for longer distances and variable road surfaces. They feel a little swifter but definitely a little more fragile.

If you're happy using tubes, you can get considerably cheaper tyres, such as the Vittoria Zaffiro Pro V Graphene 2.0s that Matt tested in 2021. It's a hardwearing and puncture-resistant design but also a heavier, slower-rolling option that offers little feedback. A more traditional sturdy winter training tyre – but just £24.99.

Conclusion

I've ridden these Bontrager tyres across all kinds of tarmac, broken road, crappy bike lanes, mud-covered and debris-sodden roads, and along routing glitches that might be a little off road for a bit, on short local loops and longer all-day across several counties rides, and struggle to find fault with them despite my best efforts to put them in harm's way. For longer rides these 700x32 Bontrager R3s seem to have found the sweet spot of durability, grip and fun to ride, and are my new favourite tyre.

Verdict

Long-lasting, puncture-shy tyre that's dependable for longer distances