WTB Convict Tire

The Ride

I had high hopes for the Convicts because, well, they look a lot like a bunch of other tires I’ve gotten along with. Here’s a picture with the Convict on the left, a Maxxis DHRII in the center, and a Bontrager G5 on the right (note that only the Convict is mounted on a rim; the others aren’t). Pretty clearly, the design and intentions of these tires have something in common, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing. The DHRII is one of my favorite tires of all time, and the Bontrager G5 isn’t far behind it, so if the Convict is in the mix, that can only be a good thing.

But on the trail, it just wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be.

Yes, it’s a big, blocky tire, and in a straight line, I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between it and a DHRII. It has great braking traction (although the harder compound Convict was a little skatey on wet roots). And while it certainly doesn’t roll as fast as a more trail-oriented tire, it didn’t feel painfully slow (I’d say the Convict is a little faster than a Maxxis DHRII).

But it is when cornering that the Convict falls a bit short of other burly DH tires, and I think it’s because of the knob placement and more rounded profile that I noted above. On the first corner I rolled into with the Convict, I leaned in and the tire started to drift. Cool. I was expecting that.

But as I leaned further, and further, and further, the tire just never really dug in and hooked up. And that pretty much sums up every corner I hit on the Convict — I feel like I have to lean further to get them to engage, and even when they do hook up, it’s not with the same authority of something like a DHRII.

With most other DH tires, if I nail a corner and feel like the tires are biting hard, I can push the bike harder and the tires just grip. I won’t pretend to be a good enough rider to get that to happen in every corner, but when the stars align, it’s a great feeling. But with the Convict, try as I might, I could never quite get them to lock in like I can with a DHRII, a G5, or even a Butcher.

I didn’t have a chance to ride the Convicts on a wider rim, but I think some of the issues I was having would be solved with the more squared-off profile that a wide rim affords. But while a wider rim would almost certainly help the real in the lean angles required to get the side knobs engaged, it doesn’t fix the knob placement issue.

Now, to be clear, the Convict still hooks up and corners reasonably well — it’s better than something like a WTB Vigilante or Schwalbe Hans Dampf, which is to say, it actually corners pretty hard. But the Convict has the look (and the weight, and the slow rolling) of a true DH tire, so that’s what I’m comparing it to. Compared to the best DH tires on the market, the Convict just isn’t quite there when it comes to really hooking into a corner.

Durability

As I mentioned above, so far, the Convict is holding up well. I haven’t sliced a sidewall or punctured yet, and it seems like the sidewalls are handling abuse roughly on par with comparable tires from Maxxis or Specialized.

The corners of the knobs on the rear tire (with the harder compound) were starting to round off after ~10 days of use, which I’d say is pretty average for my tires on Montana DH trails. They aren’t chunking out or tearing badly, so I’d say they’re somewhere between good and average in terms of tread lifespan. The front tire is still holding up decently — it shows some signs of wear, but nothing significant. Again, I’d say it’s wearing about average for a softer compound front tire.

Bottom Line

The Convict is the kind of tire that I really want to like, but it falls a little short in the cornering department when compared to other DH-specific tires. That said, if you’re running super wide rims (35 mm and up), the Convict has some potential, especially since some of the other DH tires on the market can actually be too square on a wide rim like that (the side knobs sit too high and slow the tire down).

The Convict’s basic tread design is really promising, but it seems like the tread and/or casing shape could use some minor tweaks to really unlock the tire’s potential. The tire is 90% of the way there, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t quite match the performance of some of the other well-regarded DH tires on the market.