Have had great experience with Bridgestone Blizzaks
Defenders are a great all-season tire, but they are not as good as a dedicated winter tire in the snow.
This is true, to a point... you're really looking for 3PMS, 3-peak mountain snowflake icon. All snow tires will have it. In recent years, good summer tires have been introduced with 3PMS.
These have a 3PMS. I've put them on 4 cars. They handle like snow tires in the snow. My wife, a teacher, does fine getting to school early. They are not as good on ice as one of the studless ice tires, but they'll last through the summer, and be fun to drive to boot!
Don’t put too much faith in the 3PMS. They are required to perform marginally better than all seasons. The BFG all terrains I used to have on my Sprinter had it, and it performed poorly in the snow. The tread would pack with snow and I would have no traction. Dedicated snows are a very worthwhile investment.This is true, to a point... you're really looking for 3PMS, 3-peak mountain snowflake icon. All snow tires will have it. In recent years, good summer tires have been introduced with 3PMS.
These have a 3PMS. I've put them on 4 cars. They handle like snow tires in the snow. My wife, a teacher, does fine getting to school early. They are not as good on ice as one of the studless ice tires, but they'll last through the summer, and be fun to drive to boot!
Thank you for sharing. If the 3PMS is not so reliable, is there any other way for us to identify good snow tires?
Go check out customer reviews for a specific tire you are interested in on tirerack.com website. If a tire has a few hundred reviews and still holds to a high rating, then you may have found a great tire. Blizzaks dedicated snow tires score very high with consumers on tirerack.com website.
Thank you. I have learned some good tricks in this forum.
You will almost always find a few consumers that have had a negative experience with a tire and gave a 1 out of 5 star review. These are statistic anomalies and can usually be ignored. However, if you see a recurring theme in the negative reviews, then the consumer may be on to something. Tirerack.com is pretty good about identifying verified purchases, and listing how many miles the consumer has driven on the tires in question, as well as the total accumulated mileage. Sometimes in the millions of miles!
