Top Rated Winter Tires: A Closer Look At Consumer Reports’ Best Of 2022

If you’re looking for top rated winter tires to get you through the cold season, today’s post is for you. Read on to review results from winter tire tests by Consumer Reports and the Automobile Protection Association, or contact your local TIRECRAFT for personalized snow tire recommendations.

How Does Consumer Reports Choose Their Top Rated Winter Tires?

Each year, Consumer Reports tests dozens of tires specifically engineered for cold-weather traction at their auto test center in New York state, then synthesizes this performance data with the results from previous years to crown the top rated winter tires.

To assess how tires perform in icy conditions, they take it one step further, putting them to the test on skating rinks at the Northford Ice Pavilion. Using an indoor skating rink gives Consumer Reports researchers much greater control of test variables, as they can set the exact ice temperatures and see how drivers perform “in a vacuum,” without changing wind and visibility conditions.

During their ice rink runs, Consumer Reports testers focused on each tires’ performance while executing panic stops, defined as “aggressively pressing the brake pedal in an emergency.” In this case, panic stops were executed from around 16 km/h. The team used optical sensors to monitor speed and measure total braking distances, as well as traction and time required to bring each vehicle up to speed from a dead stop on ice.

This year, the Consumer Reports team tested a total of 16 winter/snow tires for cars and crossover vehicles, 7 performance winter/snow tires for sporty cars, and 8 specifically designed for pickups and SUVs.

So which products emerged as the top rated winter tires of 2022? Let’s find out!

Consumer Reports’ Top Rated Winter Tires: Best Of 2022

After the tire tests concluded and the data was synthesized, Consumer Reports researchers crowned the following 5 products as the top rated winter tires of 2022:

1. The Bridgestone Blizzak WS90
2. The Michelin X-Ice Snow
3. The Continental VikingContact7
4. The Hankook Winter i*cept iZ 2 W616
5. The Goodyear WinterCommand Ultra

And they weren’t the only ones to land on this winter tire lineup. In fact, all 5 of these top rated winter tires were also recommended by the Automobile Protection Association after their 2021-2022 winter tire tests in Montreal, Quebec, which included a number of emergency maneuvers on a variety of road surfaces, including hardpack, loose snow, ice, clear pavement, and wet pavement on secondary roads and highways.

Browse All The Top Rated Winter Tires At Your Local TIRECRAFT

If you’d like to check out all 5 of Consumer Reports’ top rated winter tires in one place and learn more about what makes them stand out from the pack, contact your local TIRECRAFT. Our techs can help you understand the pros and cons of each, and we can provide personalized recommendations based on your unique budget, vehicle, and driving needs.

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