After 250ish miles of training and touring on my new tires in some widely varying conditions, I feel I can provide a pretty thorough review. On a recommendation from my brother-in-law, who is the sort of cyclist who makes us rank amateurs look like, well, rank amateurs, I picked up a set of Continental Grand Prix 4000s tires from Performance bike, after my stock Bontrager R1s let me down in somewhat spectacular fashion.
Rank amateur or not, these are great, great tires. Everything you want out of a road bike tire, they seem to bring to the table, effortlessly. They’re smooth, quiet, and fast-rolling. They corner confidently and steer quickly, and brake particularly well in a straight line. They were surefooted in the pouring rain on the Young’s Bike Tour. They handle gravel without making you nervous, and dampen road imperfections impressively, for a 23mm tire. And best of all, the mileage I’ve put on them already has barely put any noticeable wear on them, which is a decided improvement over the marshmallow-like compound of the stock tires I rode to failure. I can see myself running these for a long, long time.