The first flat resistant tires I can remember were Specialized Armadillos. These worked really well in the whiskey bottle littered streets of the San Francisco bay area. But they are staggeringly expensive. I recently bought a set to test them again and they have a rather shallow tire depth. And after perhaps 1,000 miles I discovered a long cut in one of them. The tire had not flatted and the wear was particularly high for 1,000 miles under a 190 lber with lots of climbing and rotten roads.

Then Continental came out with the Gatorskin for a far more reasonable price and over the years have improved it to the point that it is now the hallmark flat resistant tire. They ride a little hard but they last a long time and they very rarely flat and then it's usually a Goat's Head Thorn or a steel wire from steel belted car tires that have been worn down to the belt and have shed these small sharp wires. But the sidewalls are not well protected and if you take the tires off road such as down gravel trails and such you can get large cuts in the sidewalls. I should note that I often ride off-road on shoreline paths and the like and have never had a sidewall failure but others have.

Always looking for something new I tried the Flatskins and didn't see any improvements in flat resistance and did see that the tires could peel away from the cord when they cut. And they seemed to cut easily. But the prices weren't bad and they didn't seem to wear very fast.

Then Michelin came out with the Pro4 Endurance. I bought these and tried them. The very first thing I noticed was how easy they rolled and how soft they rode. They cornered well and gave a lot of confidence. In the time I was using them they didn't flat. But that bike is presently hanging from the ceiling hooks in the garage as I am favoring another of my bikes at this time.

I was told Michelin had problems with cuts peeling the rubber off of the cord in the Pro4 Endurance as well and "improved" them to the "Power Endurance" tire. So I bought a set and mounted them on my recently restored Pinarello Stelvio. Whatever the compound is of the tire tread it doesn't roll well nor corner well. Inside of 500 miles I have had three flats with these tires. One a triangular glass shard that wouldn't have phased a Gatorskin and the other two with tiny glass shards that wouldn't have even gotten through the surface rubber of the Gatorskin. In short these did not perform well.

Michelin appears to be working on a flat resistant tire and those with the name "Endurance" on them are of this genre. Krylion 2 Endurance appears to be the latest. While I really liked the Pro4 Endurance, I hesitate to buy any further Michelins because of the failure of the Power Endurance to live up to the previous performance.

Schalbe and Vittoria have flat resistant tires but I don't know anything about them.