Bridgestone Ecopia EP422 plus

I drive conservatively but still found these tyres reach their limit easily. Especially when worn, they would squeal during tight turns, even when going slowly like in a car park.
They were quite comfortable but became very loud as they wore down especially above 80km/h.
My set were OE for my PHEV Outlander and were worn to .5mm of the indicator within 45,000km/28,000mi. I could maybe have babied them to 50,000km with a rotation around 30,000km.
These are not off road oriented tyres, but I drive on dirt roads multiple times a week. They gave good confidence when new, but became slippery on dirt roads as they began to wear.
It may be due to the low profile of my tyres (255/45/20) but I damaged 3 wheels from potholes in their short life.
Overall I was quite disappointed in these tyres, they were quite decent early on, but wore out quickly and became increasing bad in multiple ways as they wore down. I was excited to replace them and would recommend replacement with something else if your vehicle comes with these, even if you haven’t reached the tread wear marker yet.

This is the OE tire on my VW Jetta 1.4TSI Mk7

Comfort is the greatest strength of the Ecopia EP422+ with a compliant feel, excellent damping, and very low rolling noise. There is minor impact boom, but that is the only flaw with this tire's comfort on the Jetta. I have learned with other tires purchased for this car its comfort is a sensitive balance, so the excellent comfort alone makes the Ecopia EP422+ a great match to the car.

Steering response is also good - not too quick but linear and very predictable. Straight ahead tracking is good and compliments the comfortable character. There is nothing sporty about this car and tire combination, but the tire and suspension respond proportionally to each other and provide good cornering confidence. It has enough dry grip for a commuter car on the street, I think more dry grip would simply overwhelm the car's soft suspension tuning and produce more understeer.

Wet grip is a weak point with poor acceleration traction, but acceptable lateral traction. There is enough grip for the car to feel stable and predictable in wet conditions, but the low longitudinal traction is not confidence inspiring. This disappointing wet grip led me to look for alternatives when replacing these Ecopia EP422+ tires, but both options I have tried came with other compromises in steering feel and comfort that I do not think are worth the improved wet grip.

I have winter tires for this car and only had a few experiences unintentionally with snow conditions on these tires. They had notably weak snow traction, but handling was manageable enough to get home safely. I would never choose this tire to use in winter, it is best treated as a 3 season tire and would be quite tiring to drive in the snow on a regular basis.

At 33k miles I had 3-4/32nds left and felt wet grip had become poor enough to justify replacing these tires. Up to 30,000 miles the comfort remained strong, but there was more impact noise and harshness in the final 3000 miles before I replaced these tires. In hindsight however, this degraded comfort level was still better than 2 of the 3 sets of tires I have had on the car after the original Ecopia EP422+. Only the Continental VikingContact 7 has matched the comfort of the Ecopia EP422+. I will most likely get the Ecopia EP422+ again when I am ready for the next set of 3 season tires for the Jetta.

These tyres came as OEM on my '22 Yaris 1.5 hybrid.

The positives are:
- They are wonderfully comfortable, driving at a steady pace on the highway is very pleasant. They soak small bumps and they are quiet, both inside and out.
- The rolling resistance is very low, I can achieve 3.7L/100Km on average on each refile.

The negatives are:
- The dry grip & handling is good so long you don't push the tyres. If you try to have fun at a country road, the tyres reach their limit fast and the grip is lowering. The dry breaking is average, the ABS kicks in very often and the stopping distance is above average with the quality of the asphalt contributing to shorter or longer breaking. If you push the tyres they tend to be numb, by that I mean that you initiate the turn - the wheels turn - the car turns - and lastly you get the feedback on the steering that you start to turn.
- The wet grip, breaking and aqua planning resistance are bad. Comparing the Falken Sincera (165/60/16), Bridgestone WeatherControl A005 (205/55/17) and Dunlop Sport All Season (205/55/17) I've tried they resist aqua planning till 145Km/h with heavy rain and deep water puddles, were the Ecopia become unstable at 110Km/h.
- Compare to other Bridgestone tyres these started to crack at the outside at 10,000km and now at 21,000km they've cracked both inside and out even though the tread depth is high.

Would I buy them again? If it was just the overall handling against the low rolling resistance perhaps I would think about it, but considering they've cracked quite soon...I won't and I can't say I'd recommend them.

I received this tire as OE on my mazda cx9 , as soon as I got into the car I noticed that the tire was ok was silent and comfortable. as soon as I started to understand the car and started to drive it in a more spirited way I realized that the tires reach their limits quite fast. cx9 is an suv like no other which drives very well specially in mointain roads ( which we have a lot in my country) definitively this tire isn't for this kind of roads , perhaps will be a good option in long high ways .
weeks latere I was able to drive an exactly same suv but with the falken tires ( OE as well) and realized how much I was loosing with the bridgestone option, the suv was taughter, more responsive , the cuves could be taken in a much sportier way.
one thing that I really don't like about the bridgestone is that every time you get into a curve , even if you are not going fast the tire sounds quite loud , not a screech sound, just like if u had saddenly gotten into a more abrasive road.
so at the end this is a tire that I wouldn't buy again and to the mazda ppl, this tire isn't what the cx9 needs to show its potential.