Tires NANKANG or Maxxis

I ran Exo for a year and ride on trails littered with basalt which is known to have very sharp edges, never had an issue with sidewall slicing.

EXO is plenty for XC and most trail riding IMO.

I run Exo casing and have had zero flats or issues. Had over 60 rides on the last pair. Would recommend

I run exo casing on my dhrii & haven’t had any punctures

I’ve run EXO tyres for years without any problems.

But its still a beefy maxxis tire. Im riding a dhr exo rear on my hardtail no insert and 18psi. Works great.

I'm on my second set of maxxis and they're good for intermediate to hard stuff. If it's slippery out and I need to do a steep hill climb using momentum it's almost impossible, but I've never experienced a better softer tire yet so can't compare to anything else.

They run a bit narrow but I haven’t measured

I have a set of 215/40 18 nankang ns-20's. Tires of course are on the cheaper side but many run them so thats what I went with. They perform fine for daily use and ride alright, however a few months back now I noticed that the driver side tire had some (at the time) small cracks in the sidewall. Thought thats odd but didnt have means to buy new tires so kept driving on them. Of course it got worse and then the passenger front tire began to do the same. This week I threw on a set of steelies and inspected all 4 tires and they all have the same sidewall cracks. The rears not as bad as the fronts but still present. Mainly on the inside of the rear tires, outside and inside of the front tires. Rear tread id say is like 60-70% remaining while the front are maybe 50% or so. Tires are also less than 3 years old with maybe 30k miles. Super frustrating as I have no idea why they did this and are pretty much trash at this point.

If the DHFs are hard to mount on a given rim, particularly Stans, wait till you try a Maxxis Ikon. One of the hardest tyres I've ever installed.