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Unless you’re replacing your car’s tires with the identical set that it came with, you’re going to face some decisions. What’s the story with treadwear? Can you replace a run-flat tire with something else? Are winter tires worth the investment?

Here are some answers—and specific recommendations—to inform your search for a new set of rubber.

Treadwear Rating: How Much Should I Pay Attention to That?

Among the specs you confront when tire shopping, treadwear is one of the more mysterious. If one tire has a treadwear rating of 400 and another is 600, does that mean the latter tire will last 50 percent longer? Not really, because although there’s a standardized Uniform Tire Quality Grade test to measure treadwear on specific roads in West Texas, the test is so easy that most tires get crazy-high scores.

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Take treadwear ratings with a large grain of salt.

And while manufacturers can’t overstate their rating, they are allowed to understate it. How much it’s understated and why is up to them, but you can figure that each company looks at everybody else’s numbers for competitive tires and pegs their rating to that ballpark. For instance, Michelin’s LTX A/T2 scored more than 1,800 on the UTQG test. But Michelin gave it a rating of 500. Why? Because they don’t want people getting mad when their tires don’t last 120,000 miles. So: Take treadwear ratings with a large grain of salt.

Are All-Season Tires Really Good for All Seasons?

Jack of all trades, master of none, all-season tires are okay at everything but not particularly great at anything. If you just want to mount one set of tires and forget about it, then get all-seasons. They won’t have the grip of a summer or three-season tire when it’s warm out, and they definitely won’t have the traction of a winter tire in the snow. But they won’t be useless in either context, either. Ideally, if you live in a cold climate, you’ll have two sets of tires—winter and everything else.

Explaining Aspect Ratio

In practical terms, aspect ratio is the height of your sidewall, and a lower number means less sidewall. Which means that, if you want the low-profile look, you shouldn’t just buy new tires—you have to buy new wheels, too, in a larger size to compensate for the loss of sidewall. Otherwise, you’re effectively regearing your car, as shorter tires will make your engine rev higher at a given speed, as well as causing your odometer to rack up the miles at an accelerated rate. And you don’t want that. So, if, say, you want to go from a 205/60/16 tire (where 205 is the width in millimeters, 60 is the aspect ratio, and 16 is the inner diameter for the wheel) to a 50-profile, you’d also need to upgrade to a 17-inch wheel to maintain the same overall diameter.

That’s the general rule: If you drop aspect ratio by 10, you increase wheel diameter by one inch. Just remember that those rubber-band sidewalls might look cool but could actually hurt your car’s performance, after a point. That’s because huge wheels and thin tires probably weigh more than modest wheels and tires with more sidewall, and adding rotational mass to your wheel and tire are horrible for performance. Plus, you might bend those wheels a lot more easily, given that a thin sidewall won’t offer much protection from potholes or inadvertent brushes with the curb.

To Run Flat or Not?

You might think that if your car came from the factory with run-flat tires, you have to replace them with run-flat tires, which might be more expensive and almost always offer a harsher ride than non-run-flats. (That’s because of their super-stiff sidewalls, which have to be robust enough to enable driving when the tire is deflated.) But that’s not necessarily the case, even though your run-flat car won’t have a spare. You could always choose an option that’s becoming increasingly common from OEMs, which is to use non-run-flat tires and just carry a tire repair kit, which is basically a can of Fix-A-Flat. That stuff works, at least for the kind of punctures that are repairable. Tire-inflation goop can get you home and thence to the shop for a new tire or a more permanent repair.

Winter Tires: Yes, They’re Worth It

Frank Cezus

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Winter tires offer so much of an advantage in the snow that you should consider them mandatory if you live anywhere with more than occasional snowfall. With rubber compounds that stay soft at low temperatures and tread designs that hold snow (because snow-on-snow offers better traction than rubber-on-snow), winter tires can transform your car. The difference is pronounced. “Two-wheel drive with winter tires beats all-wheel drive on all-seasons all day long,” says Wyatt Knox, special projects director at the Team O’Neil Rally School in New Hampshire. “You’ll probably accelerate about the same either way, but there are also these things called stopping and turning. They’re nice, too.”

“Two-wheel drive with winter tires beats all-wheel drive on all-seasons all day long.”

If you’re getting winter tires, buy a complete set with rims so you don’t have to mount and balance everything each fall and spring. And if you’re balking at the cost, remember that your winter tires effectively extend the life of your rest-of-the-year tires—so you’re not really spending extra money, except for the wheels. And on that front, you should scour eBay or junkyards for “take-off” wheels, which are stock factory wheels that someone removed in favor of custom rims. Take-offs are a good call for winter wheels because if you bend one on a midwinter pothole, it’ll be easy to find another matching wheel. That could be a lot harder with an aftermarket wheel, which might have gone out of production since you bought your set. One other note: You can order an extra set of the tire-pressure-monitoring sensors that go inside the wheels, if your car has a TPMS system. But if you can live with a lit dashboard warning light for the winter (and no insight from your car regarding tire pressures), you can save money and skip the sensors on your winter rubber.

Do You Really Need Off-Road Tires?

The short answer? It’s complicated. If your tires regularly touch dirt and the terrain is rougher than an unpaved road, you might. Aggressive all-terrain or mud-terrain off-road tires can really boost traction. They’re built to withstand grueling conditions, so they have thicker sidewalls to protect against punctures and meaty tread blocks to help grab onto rocks and churn through mud. That open-spaced, deep-lug tread design will slough off mud as soon as you hit the throttle, pulling you right through the slop. And on rocks and loose dirt, those big tread blocks grip the trail where a milder tire would just slip and spin, perhaps leaving you stuck.

Are there drawbacks? Yes indeed. First, off-road tires are noisy. The more tailored they are to venturing beyond pavement, the louder they’ll be at freeway speeds. That’s partly because the tread blocks have large, open voids, meaning there’s less rubber touching the tarmac than on a conventional street tire. So there could be less grip available. And those thick sidewalls? They can contribute to a firmer ride. The good news is, more and more tire manufacturers are building mild adventure-type all-terrain tires for crossovers and SUVS. These are a great compromise, in many cases providing just enough off-road capability without many of the drawbacks thanks to the less aggressive tread pattern and more street-friendly sidewall construction.

Our Tire Recommendations

We hit up Woody Rogers, VP of marketing (and former director of tire information) at Tire Rack, for some specific recommendations across a few popular classes of tire. Tire Rack conducts its own in-house comprehensive testing (and compiles thousands of real-word consumer reviews), so Rogers knows of what speaks. And these are several top choices.

Max Performance Summer: Michelin Pilot Sport 4S

Courtesy Tire Rack

Runner Up: Continental ExtremeContact Sport

The Michelin Pilot Sport 4S has been on our list as the top summer tire since it launched nearly three years ago. “It’s just so well balanced and communicates so well at the limit,” says Rogers. “I put a set on my own Honda S2000 and it transformed the car.” The Pilot Sport 4S is his top choice, but it isn’t inexpensive. So, he says, “The next best all-around summer tire would have to be the Continental. It comes in a huge range of sizes, has attractive pricing, and offers a really good balance of performance and road manners.”

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Premium Traction All-Season: Michelin CrossClimate 2

Courtesy Tire Rack

Take a look at the tread pattern of the CrossClimate 2 and it’s clear, this aggressive all-season is designed to work well in the snow. The “Premium Traction” class of all-season tires really prioritizes inclement weather traction. And Rogers says this Michelin works very well. “They’ve done a lot of work on the compound and refined the tread pattern in terms of angles, spacing, notches, and grooves to aid drivability in the snow,” he says. Indeed, the CrossClimate 2 carries the 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake on the sidewall, which means it has met a minimum level of snow traction set by the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association (USTMA) and the Rubber Association of Canada (RAC). Those driving crossover SUVs and minivans can opt for the CrossClimate SUV rated for larger vehicles. “You still won’t beat a winter tire on the ice,” says Rogers. “But they are continuing to incrementally push the snow traction boundary, and these will satisfy a lot of people, particularly those a little lower in the snowbelt.”

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Courtesy Tire Rack

This class of all-season tires delivers maximum comfort and quietness. Bridgestone says there’s a 20 percent improvement in wet traction and 44 percent in snow traction over the previous generation Turanza Serenity Plus tire. Yes, it’s a very good all-season tire than can handle snow. But it’s simply a more pleasant tire to drive in every other road condition, too. “Cars are quieter today, so there’s clearly a desire for smooth and quiet all-season tires,” says Rogers. “And Bridgestone has found a way to deliver comfort and quiet without really sacrificing good snow and wet traction.”

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Dedicated Winter: Bridgestone Blizzak WS90

Courtesy Tire Rack

When the weather turns, nothing beats a dedicated winter tire for traction on snow and ice. And Rogers says that Blizzak leads the category and has for many years. “They own the winter market,” he says. “The WS90 provides a nice incremental improvement over the WS80 in snow and ice traction but also made a real step change in the wear life of the tire.” Bridgestone says you should be able to get an additional season out if the WS90 compared to its predecessors. So really, you’re amortizing the cost of the winter tires over a longer period and extending the life of your other tires, too.

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Rogers says there’s a growing demand for mild all-terrain tires, ones ideally suited for the adventure crowd that occasionally drives off pavement. He likes the quiet and smooth-riding Falken Wildpeak A/T Trail for smaller, lighter crossovers like the Toyota Rav4 or Subaru Outback. “It’s a milder tread, so it’s not too loud for commuting or a road trip,” he says. “Yet it still has enough capability if you do venture off of the road a little bit.” But for heavier SUVs and pickups, Rogers likes the Pirelli Scorpion All Terrain Plus. “It’s the Leatherman tool of tires,” he says. “It’s going to do everything for you. If you want to go on a mild two-track trail, no problem, it will get you there.” The Scorpion All Terrain Plus has the three peak mountain snowflake rating and comes in heavier LT truck sizes and load ratings. “It’s really important to meet or exceed the load capacity rating of the tire that was spec’d for your vehicle,” he says.

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One More Thing

If you’re overwhelmed by all the choices and want a simple recommendation that factors in your preferences along with hundreds of tire tests and big data from consumer surveys, check out Tire Rack’s Tire Decision Guide. It will generate a recommendation in about two minutes or so.

Ezra Dyer

Senior Editor

Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He’s now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.

Ben Stewart

Ben is a lifelong enthusiast of anything with wheels. He has been contributing to Popular Mechanics for nearly 20 years and lives in Venice with an eclectic collection of vintage pickup trucks, muscle cars, and motorcycles scattered in various garages around SoCal.