I like the look of All-Terrain tire on Land Rover Defender, but I've never tried that type of tire on my own vehicle. Can anyone share their thoughts on how the driving feel compares between All Season and All Terrain Tires? For example, things like ride comfort or road noise. I usually just drive to work daily, not off-road. Thank you

 

All-terrains are always going to be louder and have a stiffer ride than an all-season. You will also take a slight fuel economy hit.

All-terrains have much deeper sidewall for better off-road traction and are constructed to be more robust than an all-season, and most come with a three-peak mountain snowflake (3PMSF) rating, which allows for enhanced traction in light snow.

If all you do is commute, you're probably going to want to stick with all-seasons

What tires are on your Defender now? Do you have the Goodyear Wrangler Adventures? Those are an on-road all-terrain tire - basically an all-season with deeper tread for moderately better off-road traction. Or if you have Pirellis, Continentals, Michelins etc. then you'll have an all-season.

I will say, the Defender looks so much better with an all-terrain. The all-seasons just don't have that aggressive look to them that the all-terrains have.

 

Now I'm going with Firelli All Season. So, you mean Goodyear Wrangler Adventures is All Season with All Terrain look?

 

The factory Good Year All Terrain tires that come from Land Rover are just ok tires. They are not as aggressive as other Good Year or all terrain tires. If you do not do a lot of extreme off roading, you will be fine with those. If your driving is just city and highway and never go to extreme off road adventures, the all season is all you need and you get better fuel mileage.

 

I would avoid the Pirellis. Pirelli tires are not what they used to be. They still make good R-compound performance tires, but their summer and all-season tires are junk. I'd get the Michelin Primacy all-season over the Pirelli Scorpions.

Here are some visuals so you can see the difference. First is an all-season tire, followed by the Goodyear Wrangler Adventure (road-biased all-terrain) and the Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac (a proper all-terrain).

 

The ‘look’ of an All-Terrain tire is just that. A look. Looks great parked, sitting still. But I would never buy a tire based on how it looks, unless it’s a show car. If you drive that vehicle, do the research, read the reviews and carefully choose a tire on where and how it is driven, the conditions you expect to encounter, the climate you live in and the expectations of the quality of the ride, the handling and the road noise, which is a big factor. On a walk the other day a pickup passed by me emitting the most annoying, loud drone. I can’t imagine being inside that vehicle for any length of time or distance and not emerging either with a headache or a buzzing in my ears, it was so loud. And that was just from my few seconds in proximity to it. Cooped up inside the cab would be torturous in no time. The ‘look’ of a tire is much less important than the ‘feel’ of a tire, especially when it comes to handling, comfort and ‘seat of the pants’ feel. Humorous watching some of these road warriors with monster rims, skinny sidewalls bumping down the road as if their car has no suspension, making every seam in the road feel like a cratered pothole. But hey, looks cool. 🤪

 

Nearly every OEM tire these days is just a cheap tire to get the vehicle from the assembly line to your driveway. Most have rather shallow tread as car companies do everything possible to get a higher MPG number on the window sticker. The Toyo A36 tires that came on the CX-5 our daughter drives looked half worn when brand new and were scary in rain. Replaced those at 3K miles with Michelins.
The Defender OEM Goodyear all-terrain tires are garbage as well. Not great in rain, horrible on snow and ice, plus fragile sidewalls if actually used off road.

 

^Completely agree. I'll add a warning about the Falken Wildpeak AT4W's that many of us here like. By 25K miles they were half worn and got rather loud with an annoying rhythmic thumping noise at highway speeds. The previous AT3W's did not do that as they wore down. My tire guy talked to his Falken rep and confirmed that they changed the compound from the AT3W to the AT4W to much firmer so they wear longer. I just got rid of my loud AT4W's for Cooper Discoverer Road & Trail tires and what an improvement...so far.

 

For a true AT tire, I don't think you can do better than a BF Goodrich AT KO2. But there are some AT tires that are nicely positioned halfway between all season and a true AT. I would look at the Hankook DynaPro AT2 and the Cooper AT3. They're both brilliant tires and great values.

The Goodyear Wrangler AT that comes from the factory on certain trim packages from Land Rover would also give you a nice look. It's just not a tire I'd ever go off-road with.

Good luck, and come back here and let us know what you end up with.

 

While Goodyear ATs come with Defender isn't truly offloading worthy, I think it's great tires for 85-90% city use for comfort and 10-15% light outdoor duty.
I would say I use maybe 10% of time for national parks, etc. of light offloading and I'm pretty pleased with it as it's very comfortable for city use and does its job for my need.