Today, I will walk you through three excellent tires that I have logged tens of thousands of miles on, showing you that the race to find the best all-terrain tire involves a bit more mystery than people realize. We’ve torture-tested these tires in some of the most rugged environments, from the Idaho mountains to Moab to Baja, driving through mud, clay, rain, snow, ice, and even moon dust. By the end of this, you’ll have an answer—but not to what the best AT tire is, but to how to pick the best AT tire for you, which is an answer to a much more important question.
The truth is, it’s tough to make one tire good in all types of terrain. So, let’s look at some basic tire design principles. Think of road tires: they have smaller, closer tread, which minimizes noise, increases your miles per gallon, and minimizes wear on the tire. Think of mud tires: they have broad, open tread patterns for clean-out and grip. That’s, of course, terrible for miles per gallon and also makes much noise. Think of snow tires: snow tires have lots of siping—the little cuts on each lug. It gives your tire extra edges for grip in those low-traction areas. Do you see the problem? Many times, excelling in different types of terrain requires a tire designer to choose between two opposed goals, making it impossible to achieve both.
So, what do tire designers do? Essentially, they compromise. Compromise is built into the foundation of every excellent all-terrain tire. It has to be. Mapping these compromises will lead you to the ideal all-terrain tire for you. Many best all-terrain tires still favor a few functions while neglecting others. I will walk you through three all-terrain tires that we have extensively tested and are excellent, each favoring a different spectrum section. I’ll show you the differences, how to spot them, and what to look for so you can pick the right match for your specific use. Okay, let’s go ahead and jump into the tires, and we’re going to start with one that is a legend in the business.
BF Goodrich has been made for 153 years, taking them places nobody else has. The first car to drive across the United States in 1903, they sent their tires across the Atlantic on the Spirit of St. Louis and the first transatlantic flight, and they even sent their tires to space on the Space Shuttle Columbia. More appropriate accolades for our topic today is that Benjamin Franklin Goodrich—yes, that’s the guy’s actual name, Benjamin Franklin Goodrich—his tires have been on more than half of the Baja 1000 winners and atop the podium on 13 different pairs of car rallies. Tires have been tested, so it’s no surprise they revolutionized the tire market with the first radial all-terrain in 1976, followed by the BF Goodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2.
First, the pros: this all-terrain tire modeled heavily after BF Goodrich’s Baja KR2 racing tire is one of the most dominant tires in all off-road racing history. It’s a quiet all-terrain tire. This tire wears very evenly and carries a 50,000-mile warranty, a significant amount of miles. But it does land squarely in the middle of the tires that we will talk about today. This is an aggressive and great-looking tire, so by design standards, it passes the eyeball test. The KO2 is severely snow-rated. You can tell this from the three-peak mountain snowflake symbol, which will be on the side. This means the performance exceeds industry requirements for a simple mud and snow rating. However, there is also a better snow performer in the three tires that we will review today.
One of the areas where this tire shines is that it has a super strong sidewall. They have something called CoreGuard technology that’s taken directly from those Baja 1000 race tire projects. Baja is a sidewall torture test, and these tires are one of the best I’ve ever tested in this category. Another thing about the KO2 is that it’s a lightweight tire, which is excellent because rotational weight counts against you for about three times as much as the other weight loaded above the frame and suspension. This is big for vehicles like Subaru Crosstreks, which have relatively weak transmissions. When people are lifting these things and trying to stick massive tires on them, you’re seeing a lot of failed transmissions.
Okay, so the cons: there have been more issues lately with balancing these tires. This would be a quality control item that can quickly be addressed in manufacturing. While this happens for a little while sometimes, you can see it get fixed rapidly and return to normal. These tires do not do well in mud and clay. When I’m talking about king mudding clay, you have to understand something: we are not talking about driving through a tiny bit of muddy riverbed. We are talking about that ooey-gooey, deep, deep, super sticky mud—actual, true mud-bogging mud. Okay, most all-terrains do not do well in this category. This tire is okay at cleaning out mud as long as you keep your tires spinning, but it still holds on a lot more than you want sometimes, and you can find yourself getting stuck in the busiest of gooiest mud.
I’ve also noticed that this tire picks up rocks and gravel. It does have little ridges in between the treads that are made to eject rocks, but I haven’t seen enough of them there to do it adequately, and I find myself picking rocks out of these tires on a reasonably regular basis. If these tires were to get a trophy, they’d get the trophy they’ve already earned dozens of times, and I would call them the Baja Champion.
Here are some quick specs on these tires: I will compare 35-inch tires in all these categories just for your reference, but obviously, you want to do your homework on your size tire. This is a 35 by 12.5 R17 tire. I compared all the 10-ply tires, so the weight of a 10-ply on this one is 66.7 pounds per tire. The actual diameter of this tire is 34.5, which means it is half an inch less than a 35-inch. You will often find this tire in the forums where people are trying to figure out how to fit 35s on their trucks without doing many modifications. This one’s a good winner in that category because it’s not a true 35-inch tire; it gives you more room to work with. The actual width of this tire is, in fact, 12.5 inches. The tread depth is 15/32, which is deeper tread in this category. The following tire I want to talk about is the Falken Wildpeak AT3W. Falken Tire started in 1983 and is owned by a Japanese company called Sumitomo Rubber Industries—Sumitomo; it’s fun to say—and, as of late, has been exclusively focused on the ultra-high-performance market. The Falken Wildpeak AT3W is the wet and winter champion, and that is reflected in its name, where the three W’s stand for wear, moist, and winter. Snow testing was done in Michigan, and their U.S. factory is in Buffalo, New York, so that they may know a little about snow. This is pretty much what Buffalo looks like right now.
Okay, so let’s talk about the pros of the Falken Tire. They do have the deepest tread in their category, or at least they’re tied for the deepest tread in their category. That tread depth helps them achieve a 55,000-mile warranty, the farthest of the tires we’re reviewing today. They are very aggressive and good-looking tires, so they have curb appeal. The Wildpeaks, of course, are severely snow-rated, just like the KO2s, but in my experience, they outperform in the snow category.
To clarify, in the snow category, when you’re off-roading out in the snow, you air down generally to single digits, and your goal is to float on the top of that snow, pack it down, and float along. All three of these tires do excellent in that category—they’re great for that purpose. In some ways, it’s kind of similar. Are they sound in the sand? Yeah, they’re all good in the sand. One of the most significant factors of the sand is, are you airing down to single digits? But when talking about snow, I’m more specifically about driving in snowy and icy conditions on paved roads. This is like the people going snowboarding and skiing in the blizzard because they want to catch fresh. So, in that case, you can have very thin-packed snow and ice on the road, and you need those tires that have much siping and many edges to grip that and do well. These tires are excellent in the snow and wet roads in the rain. If you notice, the tread blocks have this step-down tech where, if you look at the edges of them, you see these little steps built into them. It is fantastic for ejecting rocks. So, I also think this tire has some of the best-in-class engineering for not retaining rocks and potentially having that drilling issue where you can have holes and punctures from rocks stuck in your tires.
On the con side, they’re not the quietest AT tire, but that’s to be expected when you have some of the deeper tread depth. Technically, they are the thinnest sidewall of all the tires we’re discussing today. Their sidewall is only two-ply, but they did have some innovative engineering where they take two-ply down to the rim. Then they double it back up, whereas part of your sidewall, the part closest to your rim and about two-thirds of the way up, is four-ply. But there is a section right below the ridges on the side of the tire that is only two-ply. In cases like Baja, where you get many sidewall punctures from cactuses, there is still a point of weakness. Now, we do run these tires on our guide trucks down in Baja, and we have not had any—well, I wouldn’t say we haven’t had any issues; you’re always going to have tire issues in Baja, it’s again a torture test for tires—but we haven’t had any excessive issues. We haven’t had torn sidewalls.
Okay, so let’s talk mud and clay. This tire does not excel in mud and clay, just like the KO2s. It tends to fill up that tread with sticky, gooey clay and retain it, and you lose much traction. If this was going to get a trophy, it’s the winter driving champ. This is the tire I want on my vehicle for the winter when I’m doing much snowboarding. Let’s run through the specs real quick. Again, I compared light tires, so 35×12.5R17, 10-ply tire, weighing in at 75.4 pounds. So, this is a heavy tire. The diameter of these tires is 34.8, so it’s close to a true 35, but not quite there. The actual width is 12.5 inches, and the tread depth is 19/32 inches.
One interesting thing about the Yokohama Geolandar X-AT is that it is technically a crossover all-terrain tire. They took the opposite approach of most of the AT tires out there, where instead of starting with a road tire and trying to build in off-road performance, they started with a mud tire and wanted to make it into a road performer. You can see that the lug pattern is inspired directly by mud terrain tires. There are going to be wider gaps between the lugs. The compound they use in the tire is reflected in the overall mileage you get out of the tire at 45,000 miles. It is the lowest of the three that we’re talking about today.
Now, the pros of this tire: it’s very easy to balance. Tire shops love this tire, so they’re doing something right in their manufacturing where they produce a consistent product. It is an exceptionally aggressive-looking tire. You stick this on your truck, which almost looks as cool as a mud terrain tire. The sidewalls of this tire are super tough. Whatever Geo Shield Tech is—that’s their kind of brand name for the inner core of their tire—it’s no joke. It’s a tough tire. It can seem to be puncture-resistant. I would say it’s a Baja-proven tire.
I took this—there’s a trail that people are now referring to as the Baja Rubicon—but I took this down there last year in March and did a bunch of miles over many rocks and boulders, and this tire performed flawlessly. It was amazing. It’s a super grippy tire. As I said, it’s more like a mud tire than a typical AT tire. Excellent traction on the rock, and I think that comes from whatever compound they’re using. As I said, it doesn’t get as many miles, but if you want a stickier tire with more tread, it will excel in the mud and the rock. This tire is excellent.
Now, the cons for this tire: this tire is not three-peak certified. It is an M+S-certified tire, meaning mud and snow, but it is terrible. And you can tell—you look at the tire, the lugs, and the design—this tire wasn’t inspired to be a snow conqueror. It was inspired to be a mud and rock conqueror. At 45,000 miles, this is the lowest of the three. This tire is louder due to the broader tread, but it’s still amazingly quiet. And when driving down the highway, unlike regular mud tires that seem to grab every groove, you barely feel these tires. They feel like an all-terrain tire driving on the roads.
The specs for this tire are quick: again, we’re reviewing the same size tires, same ply rating, weighing in at 70.3 pounds. This is in the middle of the two, which is surprising with the size of the lugs on this tire. The actual diameter of this tire is 34.8, so it is very similar to the Falken. It’s close to a true 35. The width is 12.8, so it’s the only one wider than the 12.5. So, if you’re trying to fit this on a vehicle where fitting a 35 is going to be very tight, this is probably not the tire for you. You’ll probably experience some rub if you put this into a tight situation. Tread depth, just like the Falken, is 19/32, and this has a three-ply sidewall with what they call a full nylon cap. Clearly, with this tire, the best strength is that mud and clay—the exact thing that the other two tires can’t precisely conquer well, this one excels at.
Okay, so what can we learn from these three tires? Well, we covered three excellent AT tires that, while they can do a bit of everything, each had its distinct strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, you need to look at what you plan to do. The best AT tire is the one that matches your adventure. Ultimately, shopping for tires is not about brand preference but what you will do with the tire and what it was designed for.