Back in August, Continental added thirteen new options to their gravity line, with the Xynotal Enduro Super Soft piquing our interest.
With the Kryptotal becoming a firm favourite as stock tyres on test bikes, and the Argotal being up with with Pete’s favourite tyres, and the Hydrotal being particularly niche, the Xynotal was up.
How would the dry, rocky, hardpack tyre square up against trails that don’t really have any of that?
Photos by Pete Scullion.
Key features:
- Dry/rocky/hardpack conditions tyre
- Single ply enduro casing with Apex protection
- Supersoft compound
- 29″ or 27.5″
- 1130g (27.5 x 2.4″), 1200g (29 x 24″)
- £74.99 RRP
- Continental-Tires.com
Whilst on the rear, the Xynotal might have been replacing a broadly similar tyre in the form of the Maxxis DHR II, the same can’t be said for the front. The High Roller III would be better off replaced by an Argotal but a pair of Xynotals is what I have. Dry, hardpack and rocky aren’t words you would use to describe my local trails.
A dry/hardpack tyre as the intro suggested, the Xynotal is designed to offer up plenty of grip and faster rolling when the mud dries out. Angled shoulder knobs are designed to create a smooth transition onto the shoulder from the main tread. Available in Trail, Enduro and Downhill casings as well as Supersoft, Soft and Endurance compounds. The Xynotal comes in a 2.4″ width only, in either 29 or 27.5″. At £74.99 RRP, it’s in the ballpark for tyres like this, beyond the stand outs like Specialized and Nutrak.
Confusingly, Continental list the Enduro casing as being ‘single casing’ but also list it as being 3-ply with a total of 330tpi. This is a much higher thread count that anything outside of Continental’s range with the general highest being 120tpi. Anyone who’s been paying attention to Continental since their tyre range went through the roof with the Projeckt range will see the lineage of the Kaiser in the Xynotal.
Fitting to a set of Reserve Alloy wheels was made slightly trickier by a decent quantity of German releasing fluid remaining on the tyres. Once on the wheels, they inflated easily with a solid thwack. These would replace the Maxxis tyres on my test Santa Cruz Nomad as mentioned above. Whilst the front tyre, in theory, would lose a bit of outright grip, I was looking forward to some more traction on the rear with the Conti rubber replacing a MaxxTerra DHRII.
On the ups, the Xynotals, inflated to the same pressure as the outgoing Maxxis units, were buzzing along nicely and I started to wonder whether the traction on offer would suffer. Fast tyres are rarely grippy tyres, but I wasn’t going to cast any judgement just yet.
A consistent, rounded profile with some serious shoulder lugs bookmarking both side of the tyre is what greets you on the front end. As soon as I dropped in, there didn’t seem to be any drop off in grip, especially on the front. Even being fitted to a slightly mis-firing Santa Cruz Nomad didn’t seem to distract from the performance of the tyres themselves.
For a hardpack/rock specialist tyre, I did not notice a sharp drop off from the High Roller III especially in terms of grip when going for a slightly ill-advised off-camber line or anything where grip drops off. On the rear, braking grip appears to be as good as the DHR II despite being a much lighter casing.
I was ready for the Xynotals, in their new Super Soft compound, would struggle to match the pure mechanical grip of my favourite tyre, the HRIII. I was pleasantly surprised. Wear has been the now expected long life of Continental’s tyres despite the soft durometer of the tyres seen here.
They will start to clog up when the dirt gets thicker and heavier, but so far, the dirt has been light and thin, so there’s been no issues with the tyre failing to shed the dirt. Only time will tell as to whether or not they can deal with claggier dirt, and in that scenario, it would likely require a step up to Krypto or Argotal as required, both of which are excellent tyres.
You can check out the Continental Xynotal over on their website here.
