Tires Continental or PHANTOM

I was doing a ride last year in 3 year old GP5000S and completely cleaned my bike, tires, rims, etc. It looked spotless, my wife came home, saw the bike on the stand and asked if I bought new tires.

I'm having the Continental VikingContact 8 on my Mazda, must say I am really happy. They are super communicative in what's happening under the car.

Ran the Schwalbe marathons (700x25) for a couple of years but still had puncture issues on gravel/rough roads. Switched to the Continental Gatorskins (700x28) and it's a world of difference; didn't have a single puncture this season.

FWIW - I run 32mm GP5000's on 25mm IW rims; I measured them after a few hundred miles and they were 34.4mm wide.

I have the 35mm as tr on a 25mm rim. Great tires btw. Smooth as butter and very consistent build quality.

DWS06+ performs incredibly well and is priced considerably cheaper than Michelin. I went from PS4S to DWS and actually prefer the Continentals even without price factored in.

Prius where road noise is the main concern, the Continental TrueContact Tour is usually the quieter of the two it rides softer and stays quiet even as it wears.

I have continental extreme contact are around $170 and I like them.

Some tires are made in China and some possibly(?) better ones are made Vietnam, while made in Korea tires usually aren't bad, but may not last as long as expensive tires. For safety, I wouldn't go too cheap on tires. Many cheap tires have rather poor traction when new and become unsafe with only a few miles of wear on them. The Chinese tires often are made of very hard rubber, which might wear well, but has poor traction. There may be some in between tires made in the Philippines, but I'd avoid them. Kumho is a Korean tire company with majority Chinese ownership by a Chinese tire company. They make Phantom tires, likely in China, but even in Korea, they would be the low end. Hankook tires are "better" Korean tires. Not the best, but seem safer. I'd check tire reviews on the Internet.

I previously had on the coveted Conti DWS 06+ and they sucked. Here’s what I did not like about them. The continental did not have the extra little bead around the rim to protect it. The front tires always look like they were under inflated, even though they were at the correct pressure and there was always a ring of dirt around the sidewalk where it looked like it was basically running on the side sidewalk half the time through turns with the flexing. The continental tires only lasted about 22,000 miles.