In this work, the laminar convective heat transfer performance and the pressure drop of water-based nanofluids containing Al2O3, TiO2 and SiO2 nanoparticles flowing through a straight circular tube were experimentally investigated. The experimental results showed that addition of small amounts of nano-sized Al2O3 and TiO2 particles to de-ionized water increased heat transfer coefficients considerably, while the SiO2 nanofluids showed the opposite behavior attracting the authors' interests. An average of 16% and 8.2% increase in heat transfer coefficient were observed with the average of 28% and 15% penalty in pressure drop for Al2O3 and TiO2 nanofluids.