Given
84%
while driving a
Skoda Octavia estate
(205/60 R16)
on
a combination of roads
for 4,240
easy going miles
This is a follow up review to complement my review from November 8, 2024.
I have managed to survive through the winter season and now I have installed summer tyres on my car.
The nordic winter this season was not very nordic. It was not very cold and the snow came in big blizzards covering everything and then slowly melting away. Most of the winter season was spent driving on salted wet roads and packed snow-ice covered areas. The occasional blizzards with huge amounts of snow made for some fun driving though.
Even though the conditions were changing heavily, I never felt like the tyres are lacking in any performance category. The grip on snow is excellent and the car feels stable. Grip on compacted snow-ice with occasional water lubricant coating, well, it's non-existent for any tyre but even then I managed to get up a 10% incline that was completely covered with the aforementioned substance.
The performance on wet and dry tarmac is good at least - I can not say that I went looking for the limits of these tyres on tarmac because at legal speeds around town and on highways the limits were nowhere near to be found. 140km/h (which is slightly illegal) on a cold wet highway was also comfortable and tyres performed well.
Comfort and fuel consumption are very subjective. I would say the tyres were very nice and soft absorbing many of the bumps on the roads. I have a short strip of very badly maintained street on my commute and just this morning, as I installed summer tyres yesterday, I felt how bad the street actually was. Winter tyres absorbed most of the bumps and felt like I'm rolling on a decent road. It does lead to a duller steering feedback but for the everyday family car, this is not a problem. Fuel economy change is negligible or at least not measurable since cold starts and bad conditions reduce economy and it is not easily determined how much did the tyres change.
Wear after 6822km is so minor I thought the tyres are brand new. Forgot to take the slide caliper but
All in all, for the price I paid for those tyres (240€ per set), they performed flawlessly. My driving style is calm with occasional "let's have fun" moments mixed in. I never felt that there is a "lack of tyres" or that I couldn't get past a particularly badly snowed or iced road. Everything just worked.
I recommend to buy if the price is right.
