Summer Tires vs. All Season Tires, Part 2: All-season Tires

Welcome back to our series on all-season and summer tires.

In Part 1 of the series, we focused on the benefits and drawbacks of summer tires. In Part 2, we’ll do the same for all-season tires to give you a better idea of which type of tires are best for your vehicle — or if switching between the two (depending on the season) might be the best choice.

Made specifically to be driven year-round, all-season tires have the ability to handle most driving situations adequately, but typically won’t perform as well as a more niche tire type like summer tires. For the average driver these tires can often be the right choice, as they can be used year-round no matter what the weather or season. That said, in severe driving conditions (IE: deep snow, or high-performance driving) they can fall short.

Benefits of all-season tires also include:

• They have more grooves and sipes (small slits in the tread) than summer tires for better performance in a variety of conditions like snow and rain
• Typically, they tend to last longer than summer tires — especially a quality brand like Firestone or Goodyear tires)
• Top quality all-season tires can have a tread-life guarantee of more than 50,000 miles, and some are even as high as 85,000 miles
• They are more quiet than summer tires
• Some all-season tires have low rolling resistance, yielding higher fuel economy than other types of tires 

Some of the downsides of all-season tires include:

• They provide less traction and performance than summer tires, making them a poor match for sports cars and other performance vehicles
• All-season tires provide less grip and precision than summer tires
• All-season tires need longer stopping distances
• The downside of their smoother, quieter ride and longer tread life, is less traction than summer tires
• If we’ve had an exceptionally bad snow storm, they won’t perform as well as all-season tires

As you can see, many of the downsides of all-season tires, as compared to summer tires, are performance vehicle-centric — and many of them are only detriments during the warmer months.

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