I Tested the BEST All Terrain Tires in the Dry, Wet, Snow, and Dirt!

Have you ever wondered who makes the best aggressive all-terrain tyre out of BF Goodridge, Falken, Kumho, Nitto and Toyo? I'm about to find out. I'll be testing these on-road, off-road, in the dry and wet and hopefully the snow to find out exactly which of these five tyres is best for your needs. Okay, starting the video with off-road. Now my original plan was to have an epic off-road shot of me sliding around this Raptor and it went badly. The off-road test day was absolutely ruined by rain. Luckily I had just about enough time to fit all the tyres in to do the test but as we started filming the heavens just opened and we had to stop the testing because the proving ground we were using or the test track we were using is an autocross track. They had an event that weekend and they were understandably pretty worried about a big heavy Raptor in rear-wheel drive mode ripping it up with all-terrain tyres. We have one drone shot of the Raptor and some shots of it raining so sorry about the footage. I'm just going to sit here and tell you about it. The tyres we have they're all aggressive all-terrain tyres so they're all pretty off-road focused, a kind of 50-50 split. We have the BF Goodridge all-terrain KO2. Sadly the KO3 isn't made in this size yet. The Falken Wildpeak AT4W, that's the new one. The Kumho Road Venture AT52. The Nitto Recon Grappler 80 and the Toyo Open Country 83. So it's a pretty good bunch of tyres. None of them were bad off-road. The Toyo and Nitto were the slowest two of the tests finishing on a very similar time. Now I say slowest it was a few percent off. All the tyres were very good as I just said. The Toyo just felt a little bit soft. It just lacked a little bit of bite compared to the others, the better tyres in this test. And the Nitto, it did have good bite but it just didn't seem to deliver the lap time. But both of them, like I say, none of them are bad. They just weren't as good as the others on the test. Next up was the Kumho, just a second ahead. Now this tyre felt like it had more bite, a little bit more traction in the hard pack dirt we were on. It just wasn't a very compliant carcass. So what that means is as you're bouncing over the bumps and everything, the car doesn't feel stable on the tyre. It's jolting the suspension a little bit more even with these big old Raptor shocks. You could really feel the difference between this and one of the more compliant tyres. And then as the car settles down it doesn't sort of settle down softly, it sort of bounces around a little bit more. So although there was definitely more grip on the Kumho, it just as an overall experience it was a little bit more difficult to extract the grip from. The best two in the dirt was the BF Goodridge and the Falcon. Now the BF Goodridge did have a little bit more grip and it was slightly faster around the lap, but I actually preferred driving the Falcon. And this comes down to what I experienced with the Kumho. The BF Goodridge had excellent grip, especially in traction. And we did have a bit of a mud puddle and where tyres like the Kumho, you just felt like the traction took a little bit longer to recover as you were going through the softer mud. The BF Goodridge was just excellent. It had good, good grip. But like the Kumho, the carcass was just a little bit firm and it was a little bit harder to extract the optimum performance from the tyre. So like I say, over the bumps, you were struggling a little bit more, you were really fighting the car. And when you were sliding, it just took a little bit longer to recover. The Falcon, on the other hand, it was a little bit softer in turning and maybe it broke into a slide a little bit earlier at the rear than the BF Goodridge. But it was just so lovely and controllable and compliant and predictable. And I've said this before about the AT4W, it feels like it's got a really, really rounded grip circle, which means when you're around the limit, at the limit, trying to have fun, trying to push on, you could just trust the tyre and vehicle to do what you were expecting it to do rather than being surprised. So while it didn't have the overall grip of the BF Goodridge, I did score it slightly higher subjectively. And I think, for me at least, I think subjective off-road is a little bit more important than objective, just because how you drive your tyres off-road, you don't drive them like you do on-road. So that is my final results. I like the Falcon the best, but the BF Goodridge definitely did have a tiny bit more grip. But overall, it was a very close field. Sorry, it's not been quite as dynamic to look at. Hopefully, I'll have more luck with the weather for the rest of the test. So let's move on. Wet handling. Now, a lifted Raptor probably isn't the best platform to learn really minute subjective differences between the tyres because it's big and soft and heavy. However, you do notice some general trends. And in this wet handling test, there's basically two groups of tyres. There is the Toyo Nitto and BF Goodridge. Now, all three of these tyres finished on very similar times, and they all had the same subjectiveness. And that is, unless I'm being a fool like that and trying to get it to drift, they just understeered a lot. And this Raptor, you can neutralise understeer with oversteer and get a good slide on. But that's not really representative of how you want to get around the road. So I've been trying to keep it neat and tidy, especially because this is a truck. The other two tyres was ever so slightly faster. And subjectively, you could feel they had a little bit more grip. And that was the Kuma and Falcon. Now, the Kuma was definitely the most grippiest of the two tyres. But like off-road, the Falcon was just a little bit more easy to manage. And it was a little bit more progressive. But the Kuma, like I said, ultimately had the best grip of all the tyres during wet handling. Wet braking did spread out the group a little bit more. Once again, the Kuma was the best, but BF Goodridge snuck up to second, narrowly beating the Falcon. Nitto did beat the Toyo in wet braking. The Toyo finished last about 11% behind the best, which is actually quite a big difference. And on a big, heavy truck like this, you're going to really feel that, especially when you're breaking down from really high speeds. Something to keep in mind. We also tested the tyres hydroplaning resistance in deep water. The Nitto was the best with the BF Goodridge a close second. The more closed off tread pattern of the Kuma struggled to evacuate water quite as well as the rest of the tyres. Okay, dry. What are these tyres like in dry handling or what are they like to live with? Well, firstly, dry handling. I did do the test knowing in advance after wet handling, it was going to be a largely pointless exercise, thanks to the Raptor and the small course. And it was. We didn't really learn anything from lap time. Subjectively, well, I'll put my subjective notes on the screen. They're not all that enlightening. Everything felt that similar. And if I was going to say anything, the Kumo was slightly sharper and had slightly less understood in the bunch. And I think the BF Goodridge did feel like it had the least grip. Dry braking kind of represents that, just that singular point that we found. Fulcrum was the best in dry braking, closely followed by the Kumo. And then the BF Goodridge was the worst. Now, the other important thing, and I think perhaps one of the most important things you are going to care about for these tyres, is what are they like to live with on the road? So I did a simulated road route that covered noise tests, comfort tests, coast down noise tests, turning noise tests, because all terrain tyres, we know one of the biggest issues with them is noise and comfort because they've got these big blocky tread patterns that produce a lot of noise, especially as they wear. So I really, really spent a lot of time digging into noise and comfort and how the tyres just, how they feel, like the steering response, whether the steering feels nervous, whether you turn the steering wheel an amount and get that amount back or whether the torque ramps up, it's just kind of like, what are they like subjectively in real life? Because it's an important quality that really applies to these tyres. Now, Toyo and Nitto, once again, finished pretty similarly. Their steering response and reactions weren't that far off each other. They were both pleasant tyres to drive. I think maybe the Nitto was ever so slightly firmer over the bigger impacts, but again, it was very close in terms of steering response, comfort. Everything was very tight. But where the Nitto did fall apart compared to every other tyre on the test was noise. My first run at noise is 50 miles an hour in gear, constant speed, and the Nitto was already noisy. And I don't think any other tyre was noisy at that speed. And then once we did the coast down, so I accelerate hard up to 70 miles an hour, put it in neutral and then coast down. And then the Nitto was really loud. And then I roll into a turn at 50 and slowly break down to 30. And you could really hear a lot of noise when turning. The Toyo, when I was first driving down the 50 miles an hour straight, I got to 50, I was like, oh, that's really quiet. This is going to be a quiet tyre. But then once I did the coast down, once I got above 50, so 55 and up, you could really hear tread pattern noise. And again, it was a little bit noisy when turning. So the Nitto is the one that sort of stands out from the pack in terms of noise. But remember, all these tyres are at new state. So I imagine as these wear, the noise profile is going to change. I can only test them at one state, but maybe leave your reviews on tyre reviews.com if you've had experiences contrary to what I'm about to tell you. Next up in my scoring system was Kumo. Now, like I touched on in dry handling, this was the sports tyre of the test. That is, it was the quickest off centre and you turned a little bit sharper. And you know what? In a sports car, I think that's a nice quality. In a truck, I know it just felt a little bit too reactive and a little bit nervous. I think something like the Nitto should be lazy and soft and not slow to respond, but also not quick to respond. So that perhaps wasn't ideal. But in terms of noise and comfort, the noise was very good. It was a very quiet tyre. And the comfort over the smaller imperfections was fine. It was a little bit firmer over the big impacts, but nothing too drastic. Then we had the BF Goodridge, lovely tyre to drive on. Not really have any negatives other than, again, over the really hard impacts, it did feel a little bit firm, like the Kumo, but perhaps not quite as firm. And it was, it just started, some noise started to creep in around 70, 75 miles an hour. Otherwise, a pretty nice tyre on the road. Unlike the Kumo, it had this nice, soft, relaxed steering. And while there was a bit of torque ramp up, I couldn't really mark it down for that. It was just, it was pleasant. Finally, we once again have the Falken. I feel like this might have a bit of advantages as it is the newest tyre on the test by quite a bit, I think. But the Falken had lovely soft steering, very linear ramp up. I'd say the most linear ramp up of all of them, which I really appreciate. And it was probably the quietest overall. I didn't really hear it at any speed. Obviously, there's always a bit of tyre noise, but it was none of that whine, even at 75 miles an hour, that a lot of the other tyres exhibited. So great job by Falken. Its comfort levels were really nice as well. Like we found in the off-road course, it just felt like quite a compliant tyre. So as an all-round road experience, once again, I think the Falken takes it by the edge. But like I said, it is the newest tyre. Now we've gone through all that data, let's go look at snow. OK, snow, good news and bad news. The good news is I actually did some snow testing. The bad news is the conditions were terrible, so the data isn't quite as perfect as I would otherwise like. So I'm not putting a whole lot of emphasis on it. Basically, we booked a week at the start of the year for snow testing. Usually, there's a whole load of snow, feet and feet of snow at the test facility. We got there, there was zero. Halfway through the week, we got a bit of snow. It froze overnight. It sort of melted in the day, froze overnight. And then the next day was the one day I had to test and it was so icy and disgusting. It just it was very difficult testing, as you're probably seeing on screen now. The short of it is if you want the best snow tyre for those conditions, it's the BFGoodrich or the Toyo. The BFGoodrich was best in braking, whereas the Toyo was just slightly ahead in snow handling. But the Kumo wasn't that far off and then the Falken Wildpeak was a little bit behind those again. Like I say, we didn't test the Nitto. The Nitto isn't severe snow rated. It doesn't have the three feet marking. So of these five tyres, I do expect it to be the worst by design. But I am a little bit sad I didn't get to test it. I'm sorry to Nitto. I was a little bit surprised by the Falken being last in snow because I thought it was a little bit closer to the others. I did speak to Falken about it and they said with the AT4W and LT sizes, it should be matching the AT3W snow performance. But they did sacrifice a little bit of snow performance in the LT sizes against the P-metric sizes to get all the other benefits was found from this tyre. So that's the balance they've chosen. The P-metric size will have stronger snow performance. But like I said, it is three feet severe snow rated. So it is still a better tyre in the snow than one in theory that isn't. Price is something people always ask me to comment on and I often don't because without a wear test, price isn't a relevant figure because it might be cheapest tyre to buy. But what if it only lasts 10% of the rest of the tyres? Then it's not good value. These are American tyres so they have treadlife warranty. So we can actually work out a purchase price against number of miles on the warranty to work out a cost per warranted mile. The Kumo and the Nitto were the cheapest to buy. But because the Falken is the only tyre with a 60,000 mile treadlife warranty and it's not the most expensive to buy, it actually turns out to be the best value. So another tick for the Falken. Other things I've noted during this test but I don't score on. The Kumo had pretty bad stone ejection. We noticed this after off-road. All the other tyres pinged out most of their stones apart from in some of the sipes, whereas the Kumo held onto them a little bit longer. And in terms of tread depth, the Falken starts with the highest tread depth and it is significantly higher than other tyres, especially the Kumo and the BF Goodridge. So that's another tick for the Falken and explains the longer treadlife warranty. Okay, so what tyre is best overall? Well, as I've said a thousand times before, an all-terrain tyre especially can be so many different things to so many different people, it's very difficult to tell you what tyre is best for you. I've score-weighted this test overall on quite an even score between dry, wet, off-road, snow, value, comfort, those kind of things. But maybe you want the tyre that's just the best in the snow overall or maybe you want a tyre that doesn't matter about the snow, you just want the best on-road comfort. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you my results with my equal score weighting but encourage you heavily to use the link in the description to go to the tyre reviews website to put in your own numbers for the score weighting and then find the best tyre for what you want from it. And if you do that, please let me know in the comments because I find it really interesting what people actually want from the tyre and it might affect my overall score weighting in the future. But for me overall, the Toyo was in last place. I think it's just, it's one of the older tyres in the test now and it just lacked a little bit of grip and finesse in most of the conditions, although it was very good in snow. The Nitto was next, then it was the BF Goodridge and Kumho. They were very close overall on points but they delivered it in quite different ways. The BF Goodridge was very good off-road and in snow, whereas the Kumho is definitely more focused on-road. It's less aggressive, there's more rubber in contact with the road that gives it that better on-road performance, but both these tyres were a little bit firm compared to the rest of them. And then finally for my score weighting, the Falken, the brand new Falken AT4W finished best overall and it was just a really well-rounded product. It didn't really fall back in any major area and it might not have excelled quite ahead of the pack in any one area, but over the course of the test it was just there or thereabouts and subjectively it's a very, very nice tyre to drive. Falken say they've spent a lot of time working on this new tyre to make it more comfortable, more drivable, better at towing, better wear, better chip and cut wear, better off-road, just a better package. So they've done an incredible job with this tyre. That's not to take anything away from these tyres, these are all good tyres, but for my score weighting in this test, on this vehicle, in this size, the Falken is definitely best overall. Like I said, if you go and play around with score weighting, let me know what you find. Any questions, please do ask below. If you've got any comments, queries, criticisms, feedback, I'm always open to it, so let me know. And as always, safe motoring.