The Best Bang-For-Your-Buck Tires You Can Buy, According To Consumer Reports

No matter what kind of car you drive, it needs tires, and if you care even the slightest bit about safety, it needs tires that aren’t worn down so much that they look like they might be racing slicks. But which tires should you buy? There are so many options, they can’t all be essentially the same, but how do you know which one is better than the others? Should you go with a premium set of Michelins? Can you get away with something cheaper? What tires are actually a good value while still being somewhat affordable?

It can all be tricky to figure out, especially since you can’t usually test-drive tires like you can cars. Unless you’re like our friends over at Consumer Reports, who have this rare thing called “the budget to do cool stuff” and actually do test tires. So, based on their testing, which tires offer the most bang for your buck? It isn’t necessarily the most expensive tires on the rack. Let’s take a look at the tires that Consumer Reports believes offer the best value.

Michelin is known for making some of the best tires you can buy, and as a result, it’s become the default brand for a lot of drivers. You might be able to find other tires that will meet your needs for less money, but you also can’t really go wrong with a set of Michelins. That said, they do tend to be pretty expensive. 

Thanks to their long tread life, though, it’s going to be hard to beat the Michelin Defender2 for value. They’re just great all-season tires that fit a wide variety of vehicles, and Consumer Reports estimates they’ll last long enough to bring the cost down to $0.20 per 100 miles. 

Alternatively, you could look at a set of Hankook Kinergy XP. They’re typically a little less expensive than the Defender2s, and in CR’s testing, they performed slightly better in the handling test, while offering similar hydroplaning and dry braking performance. The only downside is that their estimated cost per 100 miles is slightly higher, coming in at $0.24.

If you have an SUV and want a new set of all-season tires, Consumer Reports recommends two tires that each come with an estimated cost of $0.28 per 100 miles. The Michelin CrossClimate2 is the better-reviewed option (even if technically, it’s considered an all-weather tire, a distinction that increasingly makes no difference these days), but it’s also expensive. As in, “about $250 each” expensive. 

If you don’t have that kind of money, then you may want to consider a set of Pirelli Scorpion AS Plus 3s, which still offer great handling, dry braking and hydroplaning performance, even if they didn’t score quite as high as the Michelins. They should be less expensive, too, even if they aren’t truly cheap. Then again, one of the benefits of paying more money up front can be getting a longer-lasting tire that brings down the overall cost. 

After all, if you go with cheaper tires that you have to replace more frequently, are you really saving any money, especially when you account for mounting and balancing?

For decades, if you owned a performance car and lived in an area that actually got cold in winter, it typically made more sense to switch between sets of summer and winter tires or simply garage your car through the winter. These days, science has advanced to the point that you can actually buy high-performance tires that can handle winter temperatures, as well. They won’t be quite on par with a dedicated set of high-performance summer tires, but for most people’s purposes, they’ll do just fine.

Here, Consumer Reports recommends two options that may cost less than you expected while also lasting long enough to maintain that all-important bang-for-your-buck factor. If you deal with a lot of rain, you’ll want to check out Vredestein’s HyperTrac All Seasons due to their superior hydroplaning resistance. But while the Vredesteins are projected to cost about $0.30 per 100 miles, Nokian’s Surpass AS 01s come in at an even more impressive $0.23 per 100 miles, while also offering superior dry braking.

Typically, you want to put different tires on a truck versus a sedan, since trucks are heavier and also tend to have a higher center of gravity that can impact their handling. In this case, both of the tires Consumer Reports recommends also come with higher running costs, even if they aren’t the most expensive to buy. Incidentally, they’re also both projected to cost you the same $0.34 per 100 miles.

The Firestone Destination LE3s have the lower initial purchase price of the two and should be better in the rain, thanks to their superior hydroplaning resistance. However, while a set of Continental TerrainContact H/Ts will be more expensive upfront, they last long enough to even out the overall cost, while also returning a better overall test score, particularly when it comes to handling. As long as they’re in stock, and you can afford it, give the Continentals a look first, if only so you won’t have to replace them as fast.

Some people buy their trucks knowing that the most it will need to haul is whatever they can fit in their cart at Costco and that the only off-roading they’ll ever do is park on the grass occasionally. But that isn’t the case for every truck owner. Some actually do enough driving on unpaved roads that they legitimately need the performance boost that you get from a set of all-terrain tires. There’s also a third group of truck owners who want to look like they off-road regularly but really just drive around making a lot of noise. 

Either way, if you’re looking for a set of all-terrain truck tires, Consumer Reports found in its testing that the Hankook Dynapro AT2 Xtreme and the Bridgestone Dueler A/T Revo 3 perform very similarly. Both offer good hydroplaning resistance and dry braking, even if their handling is middling, and they earned overall scores that were almost identical. The biggest difference appears to be that the Bridgestone is expected to cost $0.34 per 100 miles, while the Hankooks are likely a better value, coming in at $0.30 per 100 miles.