Panaracer Agilest Fast TLR 700x28C

The Panaracer Agilest Fast TLR road tyre is the Japanese brand’s flagship slick offering designed with one thing in mind – speed. In practice, the tyres are fast, light, and responsive, but succumb to the same issue as many other tyres in this category – durability.

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> Buy now: Panaracer Agilest Fast TLR for £84.99 from Panaracer

Panaracer is perhaps best known for its GravelKing – a category-leading gravel tyre that represents one of the first purpose-built gravel options. But the Japanese company is now taking a stab at a high-performance speed-focused road tyre, in the form of its Agilest Fast TLR.

It’s only available in 25 and 28mm widths and the only colour is black – none of those trendy tan walls here. Priced at £84.99, this tubeless-ready tyre is said to offer ‘incredible suppleness, very low rolling resistance, and superior grip’.

The tyres are completely slick, with no siping or tread to displace water. The grip comes from Panaracer’s newly developed ‘ZSG Agile-F Compound’. Out of the box, the tyres were absolutely covered in a powdery, rubbery flash, which is used in the factory to help prise them from the mould.

This is almost like the debris left by an eraser when you rub out some pencil. And while I rubbed this off easily enough using my thumb, I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous about cornering on these tyres for the first few rides, and it took a little while to build up the confidence to let me really lean around the bends.

Installing the tyres and setting them up tubeless was easy. I fitted them to a set of Mavic UST rims – which I’ve long had success with when setting tyres up tubeless – and I managed to fit the Panaracers without using tyre levers.

I did have to use my tubeless shot pump to get the beads to seat, as I couldn’t manage it with a track pump alone, and when the beads snapped into place they splattered sealant all around the bead of the tyre, which is something I haven’t seen before.

I was testing the 28mm version, and they actually measured up closer to 27mm. In these days of 30 and 32mm tyres, and sometimes even wider, becoming the norm on road bikes, these tyres definitely looked skinny. I used Silca’s tyre pressure calculator, which is a great tool for finding your optimum pressure for any new tyres, and settled on 80psi to start with.

The roads where I live, as in a lot of the UK, are pretty awful. The surfaces are pocked with potholes, and even the ‘good quality’ tarmac is pretty rough.

Panaracer claims its Agile-F Casing offers ‘incredible suppleness’. I played around a lot with the pressure during testing and progressively dropped down to below 70psi – but I still couldn’t find this supposed incredible suppleness.

Owing mainly to their narrow width, I found the tyres had quite a wooden feel. They certainly felt fast, owing to their light weight and thin casing, but they also transferred an awful lot of road buzz.

However, as these tyres are primarily aimed at racing, day-to-day comfort is lower down the priority list than all-out speed.

Another flaw, which you can once again forgive considering their primary purpose, is durability. After a month and around 1,500km of riding they’re starting to look somewhat tired. The rear is already starting to look a little square, and they both have several pretty sizeable looking cuts and nicks.

While I don’t expect a high-performance tyre to last as long as an every-day training tyre, I would say the wear rate is faster than on other high performance tyres I’ve used – Continental’s GP5000 TR S was still looking nearly new after a similar amount of riding.

Those criticisms aside, I really did like the feeling of these tyres when you step on the pedals and really give it a nudge. A lot of my local climbs that I like to push myself up have flatter sections where you can pick up some speed, and some disgustingly steep sections where you can really feel every gram.

I’m very familiar with the Mavic wheels I was using, so I could isolate the difference in feel from the Panaracers. They were very responsive and didn’t have that sticky feeling that a heavier training tyre gives off when you’re really pushing.

On descents and corners, once the rubbery residue had worn off, the tyres felt good enough. I never found total 100% blind confidence in them to really send fast or tight bends, and would just brake a little more than I would on something like, again, a GP5000.

But I’d put some of this down to the narrowness of the Panaracer rather than an inherent issue with the tyre itself, and if the Agilest Fast was offered in a 30 or 32mm option I’d gladly take it.

Value

At £84.99 the Agilest Fast TLR sits about where you’d expect a flagship, race-focused tyre to – not cheap, but in line with the price of other high-end rubber. The Continental GP5000S TR retails for £80, while its TT-specific GP5000 TT TR is a hefty £99. At 273g, the Agilest is about the same weight as the GP5000S TR and a fiver dearer, which makes it a fair comparison.

Ere Research’s Genus Pro CCX Skinwall tyre is £89.00 – again the same weight – and the Challenge Criterium RS TLR is £90 for 255g.

Specialized’s updated S Works Turbo 2BR is better value, albeit with a slight 20g weight penalty.

Conclusion

Overall, I quite like the Panaracers. They feel fast – though this could be down to that old-school feeling of the road vibration chattering through your bike – and they’re in line with the competition in terms of price and weight, and they were easy to set up too. I’d love to see a width wider than 28mm (and in a tan wall too), but if you’re happy for a fast race tyre for smooth roads and best days only, these are worth a look.

> Buy now: Panaracer Agilest Fast TLR for £84.99 from Panaracer

Verdict

Fast-feeling tubeless rubber but it’s one for race days and smooth roads, and I’d have liked more widths too

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