Continental Grand Prix Urban tyre review

I bought Continental Grand Prix Urban 35-622 tyres for commuting during the 3 seasons (using dedicated winter tyres for the winter). This is my experience after one year and a half.

Cracked too quickly

This is the major downside and reason why I don’t plan to buy these tyres again. I started riding them at the end of April 2024, and they cracked (looks like what’s called “dry-rot”) after 6 months (less than 2000 km ridden) if not sooner.

See the photos (click to enlarge):

Here, you can see the larger photo of the tread.

After winter riding with winter tyres, I mounted these back in the spring of 2025 to see how long they will last. To my surprise, they did not break apart! Grip was still OK. Still, I will not be risking another season with them.

For reference and objectivity:

• Time and mileage to crack: 6 months, 1,500 km.
• Pressure: between 4 and 5 bars (within the given recommendations).
• Storage: lots of sun on my balcony – that is fair to note, though not all the tyres crack nearly as quickly, and the bike is usually in my garage or being ridden during the summer.

Great grip and rolling resistance

These tyres roll fast, are comfortable (hard sidewall tyres are often not comfortable even at lower pressures), and grip pretty well. Of course, being slick, they are not good for mud and sand, but for paved roads, even in the wet, grip was quite good.

My articles about slick tyres, and tyre speed (rolling resistance).

Video with the first impressions where I discussed speed and rolling resistance:

Price

In German online stores, I could compare these two (no affiliate links):

• Schwalbe Marathon Supreme Evo Addix 37-622 Folding Tyre
  Costs 30 €
• Continental Grand Prix Urban 35-622 Folding Tyre
  Costs 36 €

I plan to buy the above-noted Schwalbe tyres for the next season and see how they fare. They’re a bit wider (better overall for commuting), but I will see about rolling resistance, puncture resistance and durability.

P.S.
To be fair, I’ve had very good experience with Continental Grand Prix 4 Season tyres for road bicycles and Race King tyres for 26″ MTBs, so even though this is my first tyre review article on the website, I don’t want to see Continental as a whole brand, in general, to be taken as bad (automobile and motorcycle tyres by Continental have also served me well over the years).

Author

Relja Novović

Relja is an avid cyclist, a pretty good bike mechanic, and a professional computer systems administrator – with decades of experience in both those fields (computers and bikes 🙂 ). Relja Novović’s credentials and a short biography