Tyre Reviews Winter Premium Touring Tyre Tests

For the 2025/26 Tyre Reviews Nordic Studless Winter Tyre Test, I have tested five friction winter tyres plus two reference sets (a studded tyre and a Central European winter tyre) across 21 tests in 6 categories: snow, ice, wet, dry, comfort/noise, and rolling resistance. If you drive in regions with frequent snow and ice, this is the group test you need. All these tyres are available to buy in North America and Europe!

Snow tyres, studless friction tyres, extreme winter tyres, nordic winter tyres. This category of tyre goes by many names, and they have one design goal, to be the very best on snow and ice for harsh winter climates, where studded tyres aren't appropriate, or for people who don't want studs.

To find out which is the best, Tyre Reviews has taken 7 of the most popular tyres available to both the North American and Nordic markets, and will be putting them through a full range of tests, including ice, snow, wet and dry testing to find out which is best at what. Also, to help you understand where these tyres fit in the market, I'm also including the very best of the central european and studded winter tyres, the Continental WinterContact TS870 and the studded Nokian Happapelliita 10.

For this year's Tyre Reviews winter tyre test, we've got nine sets of the most popular winter tyres, half of which are brand new tyres for this year!

As always I'll be testing in the snow, wet and dry, and looking at rolling resistance, noise and comfort, to ensure you get the best overview of all the new winter tyres!

Here are the Tyre Reviews best winter tyres for the 2020 winter tyre season.

As usual, all these tyres have been picked based on data from Tyre Reviews testing, other tests from around the world, and user reviews - think of this as one big meta-analysis of the best winter / snow / studded tyres on the market. This video covers European, Nordic and North American winter tyres / tyres, and covers cars, SUV's and Electric vehicles (EVs.)

Are cheap winter tyres safe? To find out, we travelled to Finland, twice, to do snow, ice, wet and dry testing.

All tests were done using two cars, a VW Golf wearing 205/55 R16 tyres, and a heavier, larger Volvo S90 fitted with 245/45 R18 tyres.