Was in NZ for 3 months and put about 800 miles on these... absolutely love these tires! Really good traction across the board but still roll well on pavement. The feel/feedback you get from the tire is great (e.g., when the tire starts to wash out on a turn, they just seem to re-grab and give that extra fraction of time to correct), and so far, they are holding up well. I don't notice the "extra weight", taking stock that I worry less about punctures, and I had my local shop mount them so don't know about that part (some folks seem to have had issues around that). I will definitely buy another set when the time comes.
With the integration being normal for bikes these days, bearings suffer because you can't get to them easily, so you get lazy. I'm a heavy sweater, so my headset bearings see some grime. I also don't shy away from rain.
The ceramic bearings seem like a farse, and they are expensive, but honestly, they do last longer and don't get all chunky like regular old steel ones do. I grease them all the same when I install, and other than my "hmm I should check these" checks, where I pull the stem up and wipe/regrease, I just leave them alone. These do last longer, so I wait for a sale or points, and get them around the time I'm building a new bike.
If you have regular old steel, you're fine, don't worry about it, but if you have the bike apart anyway, and want to save some down the road work, these do help. No performance gain otherwise, you won't be more aero, and you won't sprint faster, and your FTP will be the same.
Looks great once mounted, but they are DIFFICULT to mount like the Conti GP5K's. You need two
Challenge tire levers and a soapy sponge. Once mounted (finally) to get the bead to seat, use soap
around the rim walls AND a high pressure tubeless tire inflator at 180 PSI. This forces the beads to seat!
You may need to deflate, reapply soapy water on the tire rims again, and they WILL seat!
I'm running these tubeless, they hold air for weeks, very happy so far. The ride is not as supple as the Conti GP5K or the Vittoria's though. I bought them on impulse, so far about 100 miles. I'm using Challenge tubeless fluid, which works well with the Conti's, Challenge and Schwalbe tubeless tires.
Good Luck!
The WTB NanoAir 700c TPU Road/Gravel tube is a decent tube. I bought 2 of them along with 2 Vittoria Zaffiro Pro Graphene 2.0 tires. One of them has probably over 1000 miles on it. And it holds air really well. I don't think I've had to add any ever since I put it on the bike. The other one got 2 pinch punctures and another puncture the first ride out and all at the same time. I tried patching the punctures. But, I couldn't get it to hold air. Which was really disappointing to me. Because it didn't hurt the tire at all, and there were no punctures in the tire. But, to be totally honest, I plowed down a chip seal road that has some really bad spots in it. So I'm not surprised that it may have gotten one pinch puncture. But, the other one and the other puncture was an unpleasant surprise. I'm probably going to get a few more for spares for my other bikes. Because they don't take up much space in my seat bags. And I have a tendency to also get a lot of punctures on my gravel bike. And I occasionally get punctures on my other bikes if/when I'm being careless.
