Selle Italia Smootape is made of squishy foam with tapered edges. It’s designed so that you can wrap your bars without overlapping the tape, leading to a smoother finish – hence the name. Selle Italia has patented the design.

In practice, you can’t really tape round the bends in the bars, or the levers, without ending up either with gaps or with overlaps. But on the tops and the ends of the drops, there’s enough stretch and compressibility in the tape to allow you to press adjacent wraps close to each other for a smoother look.

The tape is backed with a silicone strip, rather than being adhesive. This makes placing the tape on the bars a bit easier as you can unwind and rewrap if you haven’t got the positioning quite right. It also means that you can potentially transfer it to another bike if you want to. There’s still plenty of grip to make sure that the tape doesn’t slip around once you’ve wrapped your bars.

Selle Italia Smootape comes in a pack with two 1.8m rolls, bar end plugs, extra tape pieces for the underside of the brake levers and finishing tape for the tops. So it’s a complete kit to cover your bars and the 1.8m length, along with the non-overlapped wrapping, means that, unlike some other brands, Selle Italia gives you plenty of tape to cover your bars without needing to stretch the tape too much.

>>> The best handlebar tape and how to wrap it

Selle Italia Smootape is 3.5mm wide and 2.5mm thick at the centre. The Gran Fondo design is embossed with a random zigzag pattern that adds grip in the wet. The tape’s thickness means that there’s plenty of padding. I found this provided enough hand comfort even for longer, hotter summer rides, when sweaty hands can become sore or uncomfortable.

Selle Italia Smootape Gran Fondo comes in ten different colours, from the classic black and white options, to purple and two different shades of pink.

As well as the Gran Fondo version of its Smootape, Selle Italia also makes the cheaper Smootape Corsa (£14.99) and the pricier Smootape Controllo (£21.99). For ultimate luxury or to finish off a fixie or retro bike, there’s Smootape Classica, made of leather in four colours and priced at £41.99.

Personalising your bar tape is an excellent and easy way to inject some fun and personality into your bike without spending a fortune.

Supacaz is a Californian company, with the name derived from the term 'super casual'. There's a huge range of colours and patterns available, you can easily make your bike stand out from the crowd with Supacaz bar tape.

It is the wrap of choice for many top pros, including Peter Sagan and Vincenzo Nibali. Sagan is a rider known for his flamboyancy and Supacaz matches this well as it is available in lots of extrovert neon colours.

However, if the Euro-fluoro look is not for you then fear not, there is a huge range offered including good old black. There are too many colours to list and some seriously cool options, so I implore you to check out the Supacaz site.

>>> The best bar tape and how to wrap it (video too)

Wrapping Supacaz bar tape is easy as well, making it certainly one of the best handlebar tapes. Despite its thickness (around 2.5mm) there’s enough stretch to get a nice tension as you wrap; the finishing tape is great quality too and actually works. All too often finishing tape is, well, pants – and leaves you resorting to trusty black electrical tape.

Most bar tape comes with fairly bog-standard bar-end plugs that you just ram in and hope for the best. A highlight of Supacaz is that the expanding plugs are excellent and among the best plugs we have encountered. They can be tightened with a 3mm Allen key, making both installation and removal much easier.

The finish is smooth, meaning this tape is more slippery when wet than Lizard Skins. However like Lizard Skins, it is very comfortable and feels great to the touch. Comfort is excellent too with Supacaz providing a decent degree of vibration dampening.

DSP stands for 'Dura Soft Polymer' meaning that animal lovers can sleep easy in the knowledge that this tape is not made from actual lizards. If you have never tried Lizard Skins DSP tape we strongly urge you to.

>>> How to wrap bar tape

We have fallen in love with the way Lizard Skins bar tape feels on the bars, so much that we have relished recent mild weather as an opportunity to go sans gloves, such is the pleasant texture of this wrap.

The tape is good at absorbing shocks, (a 3.2mm version being a popular choice in Paris Roubaix) and it looks great too, with top quality finishing tape that actually works, unlike some of the others we have used. It is impressively light too, considering how comfy it is.

>>> Seven of the best: Handle bar tape

Although it is expensive at £27.99 we found Lizard Skins bar tape to be hard wearing and very easy to wipe clean. It can also be unwrapped and reused if necessary, which goes a long towards justifying the price. Being able to unwrap and rewrap tape is especially useful for maintenance, if you need to access a shifter or cables.

There are a hue range of colours available to perfectly match your steed, so for more info head over to 2pure.

This silicone bar tape from ESI provides excellent grip and cushioning without being overly bulky yet can be voluminous if you desire.

While the grip in dry conditions is good, we found that in deluges the silicone becomes quite slippery, particularly when riding with bare hands; not such a problem in spring but worth noting if you get caught in a summer downpour when you’re more likely to have ditched the gloves.

Our favourite on test is the Pro Digital Carbon Smart, ticking all the ideal bar tape boxes.

The Silicone material is strong enough not to tear and is supple enough to allow for easy application, while being easy to keep clean.

Pro says that having silicone gripper on the back rather than glue means it's reusable.

We liked the classic look and feel of the Specialized S-Wrap handlebar tape.

The leather-like material makes for a comfortable and highly grippy finish but it took us a few attempts to get it to sit right on the handlebar.

Bike Ribbon offers a number of handlebar tapes to suit most styles and budgets, but we decided to go for the Wafer as a budget option.

Wrapping was a little tricky to get on as the material doesn't stretch, meaning it was hard to get it right.