Tested: Best All-Terrain A/T Tires in Snow & Ice

[TrailAdventurer]

...I'm not racing them around a track as this YTer is testing them as so lots of good choices.

Yep . Glad someone else does it for me. Its an interesting, entertaining source of input while shopping/researching.

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[coldtaco]

its not about how fast you can go around a track, it's what kind of confidence to they give you when encountering snowy/icy/rainy conditions. I drove from Seattle area to Anchorage last February and before I left I switched to the KO3's. On the drive they did good, but I never really encountered any difficult road conditions until crossing the border into AK. Lot's of hard parked/icy road conditions for the next 120mi or so. These tires where crap on the hard pack/icy roads. I replaced them with the Nokian nAT's but they didn't balance very well, some where out of round so replaced them with the Toyo AT3, which I had used before on my HJ75 for a few years and they did pretty good for the roads in the winter here, of course drive for conditions.
When I put winter tires on the wife's Rav4 I had bought a used set of wheels with good condition Bridgestone snow tires. I wanted to switch them to the Nokian Haka so I did a good drive around first with the Bridgestones and then drove around with the Nokian. The Nokian felt just that much more confident anytime you turned. When the Nokian broke tracktion they felt more sure footed, if that makes sense. Yes probably was not a very good apple to apple comparison due to the Bridgestones where used, but I get what that tire tester was trying to describe the driving experiences between the tires he compared.
Some of the employees I know that work at a 4x4 shop have good things to say about the Mickey tires for year round. The employees where part of the KO3 roll out that they did here last year and they all had these on their personal rigs. When winter hit they all got rid of them and put other tires on for the winter. I believe they still used the KO3's for the non-winter months as they are a good off road tire.
Just for fun info, I ended up putting mud tires on the HJ75 and they do surprisingly well in the winter, as long as I drive according to conditions. They are the Falcon Wildpeak MT