[benamin]

Always good to qualify a comparison in a review. Comparing a snow-rated tire against a standard all-season isn't exactly a fair test since they have different performance characteristics. I'm not sure if you had them on there long enough, but how is the fuel economy of the Hanooks compared to the Continentals if you can comment?

If someone were to compare some Blizzaks WS-70s against the Hankooks in serious snow, I would bet that the Hankooks would be bested in similar fashion.

Ya I wasn't expecting the OEM's to compare from snow tire perspective, what I was surprised by is how much better the Hankook's felt when not in the snow. 4S's are supposed to be Low rolling resistance,but not enough time to tell. As to the BLizzaks, I have a set on my other vehicle. I go through a lot of snow tires here and have used most. (plus I manage a fleet of 1200 vehicles) These Optimo 4S are just as good in deep snow, but I suspect the Blizzaks would win out on Ice. I need traction year round as I am off road often as well, so I was looking for a tire that stays on year round and performs.

 

[4wheeldog]

I just got back from a 4k trip from NM to PA and back. The tires are still performing well, now with 30k on them. But, as others have noted, the stockers get noisey. It was like someone flipped a switch, right about 28k miles, tire noise started up, all at once. No balance issues, tires still worked fine through hundreds of miles of snow......but they are definitely noisey now.
The rest of the car performed just fine as well. No oil consumption, (5k since last changed) and I will now never, ever buy another car without heated seats.
All it needs is a good washing to return it to pre-winter trip condition.

 

[Bobaru]

I put 57k miles on my OEM Conti Pro Contacts (car is a 2010 3.6R Limited), with no complaints. They still had some tread left, but winter was approaching and I wanted more than minimal tread for driving up to Tahoe.

I replaced them with the slightly-different ProContact ECOs, which have a higher treadwear rating. All in all they seem pretty similar. The ECO's seem slightly harder, which I don't mind at all. The dry-handling seems about the same, although I've read some reports that imply that the ECO's dry-handling is perhaps a tad worse than the non-ECO's. But the rubber compound used in the ECO's is very good in the rain - minimal degradation in handling and braking distances in going from dry to wet. They are a little quieter than the OEM tires were towards the end of their life (but they were never noisy, unlike some other people's experience).

So far I have 18K on the ECOs. I rotate every 10K, but the wear seems very uniform from front to back (maybe partly due to the 3.6R's 45/55 nominal torque split). I've never had to re-balance, either the OEM tires or the new ECOs. (Also never had steering/vibration issues, despite having an early 2010 model.)

I'm forgetting what other tires I considered getting - I didn't want to pay Goodyear or Michelin prices, but looked hard at a Yokohama tire (not the AVID ENVigor, but some other fairly new model), and also a BFG tire of some kind.