Although tubeless tire setups seem to be all the rage these days, tubes aren’t dead yet. Some professional cyclists continue to favor them, with superstar Lotte Kopecky and the WorldTour team Soudal Quick-Step among the clincher-setup loyalists.
But what's inside those clinchers has been changing of late with TPU inner tubes flooding the market. Made of feather-light plastic (or thermoplastic polyurethane to be exact), TPU tubes are a fraction of the size and weight of regular butyl tubes and have a lower rolling resistance. These tubes are, however, spendier than the butyl standard and come with their own set of problems.
