In this video I'll be testing seven of the most popular all-weather tyres to find out exactly which tyre is best for you and in the snow and ice at least comparing them to a dedicated winter tyre. If you're new to the YouTube channel my name is Jonathan Benson and I've been a professional tyre tester for over 10 years but this is the first time I've tested this all-weather category of tyres and I'm very excited to do so. Not only do I have the obvious tyre choice the Michelin Cross Climate 2 I also have the leading competitors from Bridgestone, Firestone, Goodyear, Nokian, Prelli and of course Toyo. Not only will I be testing them in the obvious, the snow and ice, I'll also be testing them in the dry and wet and testing the noise and comfort levels and the rolling resistance levels of the tyres, meaning this should be the most in-depth all-weather tyre test that has ever happened and will allow you to drill down into exactly which of these tyres is best for your own driving needs. An all-weather tyre tries to do everything well.
Can any of them actually do that? Let's get on with the testing. Okay, wet handling.
Now, all-weather tyres. If you don't know what an all-weather tyre is, let me quickly explain. North America has all-season tyres, designed to be working in all seasons. However, some people, including myself, think they should actually be renamed three-season tyres, because they're not that great in snow generally.
So, America has spun up this new segment called All-Weather that have tyres like the Cross Climate 2 in, that are three-peat marked. That means they're severe snow rated. So they have... more snow ability so in theory they should be better at working in all weathers it's in the name i guess all season is in the name too however making a tire work well in the dry wet snow ice we're going to test all these things is very very difficult in particular wet and snow are opposing design qualities that means generally speaking if you want a tire to be excellent in the snow you're going to struggle in the wet and vice versa. So that means when tyre manufacturers are deciding how they want their all-weather tyres to perform, they could pick, I want equal dry, wet and winter performance.
Or they could say, actually, I think winter's more important for the market we want, so winter's going to be ahead of wet or vice versa. And it seems like in this group of tyres, there have been some differing opinions on what an all-weather tyre should be. Now, none of them are budget, so none of them are... yikes you're gonna die but there are some varying different performances amongst the premium manufacturers the first group of tires is bridgestone firestone and toyota bridgestone and firestone are a related company so i guess it's no surprise that their products perform slightly similarly although the bridgestone is ahead overall all of these tires seem to struggle a little bit more not seem they did struggle a little bit more around the lap they had quite high levels of understeer They weren't super precise and when you're trying to brake and turn and do all sorts of things, they did struggle.
Then you had the next group of tyres which was Nokian, Michelin and Pirelli. Now the Nokian in braking felt a little bit more like the Toyo, Bridgestone and Firestone we just talked about. It didn't feel super sharp on braking but turning laterally it did feel quite good. Now that's another compromise tyre companies can make, they can go all in on braking and kind of give up a bit of lateral or they can try and make a rounded product and it seems maybe nokia and has cared about laterally whereas some of the others haven't the michelin was the most fun tire around the lap now this is unusual for the cross climate till i've never described it as a fun tire before but it did allow the vehicle just to rotate a little bit more than the others maybe that's because again they were focusing on braking more than anything so you could get the front end turned in on the brakes and then the rear would wander but that did help the time And then you have the Prelli.
The Prelli was just a nicely rounded tyre overall. Offers good levels of grip. I guess the only negative about the Prelli is once you're in a slide it just takes slightly longer to recover but these are very small differences as with all the good tyres differences aren't becoming very tight.
And finally there was one tyre that did wet better than everyone else, quite clearly better than everyone else and that was the new Goodyear Assurance Weather Ready 2. Sorry I've just finished a European all-season test, my name is confused. It is the newest tyre of the test and they have done excellent work in the wet. Not only did it have the fastest lap time, it was also the most summer feeling.
So it just turns quickly, it was stable, you didn't get any of this like buckets of understeer you got with maybe some of the worst tyres in the test and it was a very very lovely tyre to use. Speaking of summer tyres, there was a summer tyre in the test. Now it's actually a central European Touring tyres, so it's not exactly the grippiest wet handling tyre in the world in terms of summer tyres, it's not a performance tyre, however round the lap it was significantly better than all the all weathers, it turned sharply, it fed back more and you could just like, the braking was stronger, it felt like a big improvement and it was a big improvement. The improvement. The top three from wet handling were also the best in wet braking.
In fact, the only difference was the Bridgestone and Nokian swapping places and the summer tyre pulling out an even bigger advantage. The deeper water of the straight hydroplaning test mixed up the order a little, with the Bichelin and Nokian performing best and the Goodyear dropping down the order. You can see the curved hydroplaning data on the tyre reviews website.
Unfortunately for tyre manufacturers and us, dry is another area where they have to compromise between the four qualities you need from an all-weather tyre. Saiping, which is the little cuts in the rubber that you see in winter tyres, is excellent for snow and ice performance. That's why they're there.
But what you need in dry, you need a very stiff, solid compound that doesn't move around a lot. And obviously cuts in the rubber allows compound to move. So the dry performance of a tyre that does well in the snow, like in the wet, is compromised.
And once again, we have some different opinions on how the compromise should probably be. Once again, the Toyo, Firestone and Bridgestone were the worst now the gap is very small around this track there is a lot of lateral movement on this track very little braking where differences will spread out we'll see in a minute but they were the three tires that really seemed to struggle a little bit more again understeer you just didn't have that front axle bite and when doing extreme maneuvers the tire carcasses of the bridgestone and firestone just felt a little bit soft and they didn't really have the stiffness to sit upon the tire and control the body of the vehicle like in the wet the next three were the michelin nokian umbrella Like in the wet, the Michelin felt very good on the brakes, but did struggle a little bit when cornering. So they've obviously gone for this, let's put everything into the braking category, which is fine because braking is safety critical and they're not expecting people to be doing track days on their all-weather tyres.
And the Prelli was a really lovely tyre. The final tyre, once again, was the Goodyear, with crisp steering, good stability and the most grip. It was the only tyre that dipped into the 73, so good job from Goodyear.
Luckily, as I said, braking sounds great. great on these tires luckily as i said braking did spread things out however i'm gonna have to check my phone for this the michelin cross climate 2 did its usual party piece it was the best michelin the cross climate 2 is always just let's stop this vehicle as efficiently as possible and for that i respect it because that is key in safety metrics next second place and i'm not calling this a close second place was a good year which continued its excellent dry and wet performance however two meters back is fairly significant Then it was another two meters back to Prelli and Nokian, then another two meters back to Toyo, and then another two meters back to Breefstone and Firestone. So that point, dry braking, that is a huge difference and that's just from the best all-weather tyre to the worst all-weather tyre.
We've not even got to an all-season tyre and the summer tyre was way ahead, I'll put the data on screen. One metric I calculated, I'm just gonna check my phone here, if you were braking from 80 miles an hour, which is the legal speed limit in large parts of America on the interstates, I'm gonna go from 80 miles an hour to 80 miles an hour. The Michelin would have you stopped in 63 meters and the Firestone 75 meters and I just realized this is an American test so I'll put the feet on screen.
However if you were breaking down from 80 miles an hour on the Michelin by the time you've stopped on the Michelin you'll still be doing 20 miles an hour on the Firestone. So that is quite a big difference like I said we're not even comparing this to the summer tyre this is the best or weather to the worst or weather. So there is quite a variance in dry performance as we found in wet performance.
I'm hoping, assuming, hoping that the Bridgestone and Firestone and maybe the Toyo, they pull some of this disadvantage back in the snow, which I'm excited to test. But finally, before we move to snow, I'm just going to have a quick look at the comfort and the general livability of the tyres. The good news is noise and comfort isn't something a tyre manufacturer has to compromise on to create a tyre that works good in all weather. So none of these tyres are exceptionally bad and they are all fairly close, both in objective and subjective noise and comfort. However, there are some slight differences, so I'll quickly discuss them.
The Firestone probably had the best comfort levels overall. So that means on the big impacts, which I'm on the medium impacts now, and the small impacts, it just rounded everything off the nicest. Comfort is very complicated, but the Firestone did a very good job overall.
However, even at new state, the Firestone did have a bit of whine in the cabin, a bit of tread pattern noise that was a higher pitch than you would really want. Then you had a tyre like the Goodyear. Now the Goodyear...
Felt like it had a composed control over like the cobblestones where there's lots of movements, but when we were hitting the impact bars, the step up and step down impact bars, the Goodyear did feel fairly hard. So that's a negative for that. The Toyo was fine in noise on all of the surfaces.
It was very quiet, but it did feel a little bit firm on the cobbly surfaces. Basically every tyre had some positives and negatives, but if you are focused primarily on on road noise and comfort if that's your number one criteria there was one tire that did a very good job overall in all three of the tests and that was the preli it just rounded out all the impacts really nicely it was very quiet in the objective noise and it was very quiet in subject noise so if your one focus is noise and comfort definitely think about the Pirelli. Okay the all-weather tyres in the snow the good news is I've been surprised all of these tyres have been pretty capable in the snow none of them are bad which is great news for the consumer buying tyres but probably not so good news for the likes of Bridgestone and Firestone where I hypothesized at the start of the video that perhaps they've traded some wet grip for snow grip and it doesn't look like they have they just don't have enough wet grip really they are very very very good in the snow but they're not the best in this group the worst and i say the worst because it was only three percent between the very fastest and the very slowest this is of small amounts of time was the toyota and goodyear now these were down on time and you could really notice it subjectively too both of them just lacking a little bit of front axle bite so you could tell you had less grip but 3% less grip.
Like these are still vastly more capable than a US all-season and definitely way more than the summer tyre. So they're still very usable tyres in the snow. Then you had the group of the Bridgestone, Firestone and Prelli.
Now the Bridgestone and Firestone, again they felt quite similar. I'm starting to wonder if these are essentially the same green tyre, the same blank and then they just press a different tread pattern into it. I'm sure there's more to it than that and Bridgestone are going to be angry. But they perform pretty similarly again. Both of them, there was a slight delay on the front axle as you turned in, but once you were turning, both of them had very good lateral grip.
They gave you confidence in the corner, which I enjoyed. The Prelli, now the Prelli was the most fun. Fun is something you probably only experience on a lap, so perhaps not that relevant to the road, but I enjoyed driving the tyre.
It gave a little bit of oversteer at the rear end, but the rear did take a little bit longer to settle than is ideal, I guess. That's where you mark down the preli. Very good tyre still. Then you have the Nokian and the Michelin.
Now the Nokian, I don't think it had the most grip out of all the tyres on test, but what it did have was the nicest grip circle. That means laterally and longitudinally, whether you're accelerating and braking or turning, everything felt very even and predictable. So I managed to get a good lap time out of it repeatedly. The Michelin, on the other hand, well... We know the Michelin Cross Climate 2 in Europe, which is a slightly different tyre, is always one of the best, if not the very best, in the snow, and I was curious as to whether the US version would live up to that.
Let me tell you it does. Not only was it the fastest, but I think it had more grip than the lap time suggests, because you can't quite extract the grip out of a Cross Climate 2. You never can because it's quite an understeer primary tyre, which means you're really, really waiting on the front axle in the corners to give you the grip, which on a car like this is... very very frustrating but the grip just felt monumental so I imagine in traction and braking it's going to be even further ahead so good job Michelin with the cross climate and Nokian and pretty good job to everyone actually. Okay what about the reference winter tyre now I didn't include a summer tyre we know it would be pretty much entirely useless I have videos comparing it I'll link them in the description if you want to see that and I have videos comparing a regular American all-season tyre to an all-weather tyre in the snow so I'll link that as well. However, the winter tyre, not only did I just include a good winter tyre, I included the best, the Hakkaplita R5.
Now, the all-weather tyres, they all felt like your friend in the snow. They felt like they wanted you to get around the lap, and that was lovely. But then switching to the winter tyre, it felt like an obsessive girlfriend or boyfriend.
Something, its sole purpose was to give you confidence and ability in the wet. And while there was only 3% between the best and the worst all-weather tyres, the winter tyre was another... 10% ahead of the best all-weather tyre, which just goes to show how much extra performance you get from a winter tyre. You get so much more confidence, you feel like you can really lean on the car and trust everything it's going to do. And I've done this as a reminder for those of you who live in a severe winter climate, these all-weather tyres are getting really, really good in snow and ice, but they're still nowhere near a match for a proper, proper winter tyre.
So keep that in mind when you're deciding what type of tyre to use. The traction and braking data backed up the handling, with the Michelin Cross Climate 2 being the best in snow traction, closely followed by Firestone and Nokian. Bridgestone jumped to the front in snow braking, with the Michelin second and the Nokian again third. In both tests, the full winter tyre had a significant advantage over the pack. As promised, I got some ice data on smooth ice, which is the hardest type of ice to get grip on, and where compound really does make the difference.
The Prelli proved to be the best overall, having the best ice traction and the second best ice braking, but the Michelin was again also excellent. Nokian finished third with very good traction, but lost out a little bit in braking. And as we saw in the snow, the Goodyear Firestone and Toyo struggled.
The full winter tyre had its biggest advantage yet, finishing in a totally different category to the all-weather tyres. There is quite a spread in rolling resistance levels of the tyres, in fact over 30%, with the Michelin the best and the Goodyear the worst. As a tyre uses around a fifth of the energy for a gas-powered vehicle and around a quarter for an electric vehicle, that means in theory you could be using around 4-8% more gas or electricity.
It's not massive, but it is also pretty significant. Finally and sadly, I couldn't do a wear test this time to work out which tyre offers the best cost per mile in the real world. But as all these tyres do have treadwear warranties, I can work out the warranted cost per mile, which I think is worth looking at.
There is a 40% difference in cost per mile between the most expensive, which is the Michelin, and the cheapest, the Toyo. However, if you take the time to compare that to the final results, you will see that more expensive generally means more better. Donut Media would be proud.
Okay, so now we've gone through all of that data, which of these tyres is actually best? Well, this is where it gets personal as best. isn't the same for everyone.
As I think a lot of the people buying these tyres will be using them in all weathers, I've given my score weighting a pretty even split between the dry, wet and snow performance of the tyres. But if you want to weight the scores based on your own driving requirements, you can go to the link in the description and calculate your own results. It's a really useful tool.
Unfortunately for the Toyo Celsius 2, there is no score weighting which will help its overall results unless you just put everything on cost as it was the cheapest per warranted mile. It performed well in the snow even if it was the slowest around the lap but it was pretty bad on ice and performed poorly and wet compared to the best. It seems like this tyre is just too focused on the snow and needs improving in other areas to be a really balanced all-weather tyre.
Next up was the Firestone just a tiny amount ahead. Like the Toyo this was fine in the snow and was good value but lacked grip in the dry and wet costing a lot of points. It was quite a lot better on ice when compared to the Toyo and it wasn't that much more expensive per mile so of the two it is the better buy. Next up was the Bridgestone Weather Peak.
I had high hopes for this tyre. There was a lot of people online recommending it as a serious Michelin Cross Climate 2 alternative but in this size at least it's just not. It was nearly 20% down on the best in dry braking, 10% in wet braking and had limited traction on ice.
The good points it had very high levels of grip in the snow and a low rolling resistance. If Bridgestone could improve the braking performance of the tyre for the next generation it will shoot up the results and I'm sure they're working on an excellent tyre to replace it. The Nokian Remedy WRG5 was the best tyre in the snow, had excellent ice traction, low noise, good comfort and a low rolling resistance and it was the best tyre overall in deep water of the hydroplaning test. Its wet and dry braking do need to be improved if it wants to challenge the very best of these year-round products, however it could be the tyre choice if your winter is really your priority because it was a good tyre.
In joint second place are the Prelli Scorpion Weather Active and the Goodyear Assurance Weather Ready 2. Two excellent tyres but with slightly different personalities. The Prelli was good in the dry, good in the wet, though a little bit behind in hydroplaning. Okay in the snow, though definitely not the best of the group, but it was the best in the ice and it had the best noise and comfort levels overall. The drawbacks, well it had an average rolling resistance but it was only 10% off the best and it could do with a little bit more dry braking but otherwise the Prelli is an excellent all-weather tyre.
I really like that tyre. The Goodyear was a little bit more biased towards dry and wet. It was a fraction of the best in the dry. It was the best in wet braking and the best in wet handling, although like the Pirelli, it did struggle a little bit in the deeper water of the hydroplaning test, and it had good comfort. It was the worst overall in the snow, but as I've said a million times, it was close, only 4.6% behind the best and the worst.
So a really close group in the snow, and it was also pretty average on ice. The biggest drawback, it had the highest rolling resistance of the group by quite a margin, so perhaps not the best tyre if you're an EV driver focused on range, but otherwise an excellent all-round product. I really like this new Goodyear.
But there is one tyre that is a clear number one. The Michelin Cross Climate 2 might be getting on in years, but it is still the gold standard of the all-weather segment. It was the best in the dry, the best overall in the wet, thanks to blending shallow and deep water ability better than the good year.
Excellent in the snow and ice. and had the lowest rolling resistance which is an insane blend of qualities. Its drawbacks?
Well it was the most expensive tyre in the test and I did mark it down slightly for comfort as it felt a little bit firmer than the best but the margins were small. The French tyre is certainly the most recommended all-weather tyre I see online and it seems that the people are right. But that said the Goodyear and Prellion even the Gnocchi are great products worth looking into too.
I hope you've enjoyed all of this geeky data, I know it's a lot. Let me know your own experiences with these tires in the comments below or on the Tire Reviews website. Leaving a review on the Tire Reviews website really does help me out. If you want to see how all-weather tires compare to other category of tires, such as all-season, summer, winter, I'll link some further tests in the description.
Any questions, of course, please ask below.