All season vs Summer Tires
 

Hi Everyone,
It's time to change the tires on my BRZ. I have stock rims, and am looking for something that'll grip well, somewhat low road noise, and doesn't wear out too fast (not sure if all can even be in one package..). I live in Southern California. So there won't be any snow.. I was looking at Summer tires, but they seem to wear out way faster than all seasons. I never do any tracking. So I'm wondering if there's a big difference in performance between all seasons vs summer tires in daily driving. What do you guys think?

"looking at Summer tires, but they seem to wear out way faster than all seasons", there are loads of completely different tires between summer tires and similar among all season tires. If low wear and noise is what you are after, then search such tires that are made with those properties prioritized, don't think that it's summer or all-season. And if anything to be generalized, all-seasons might be noisier and wear faster, due having softer rubber and more thread sipes to handle at least some snow/winter.

dont get tricked into buying extreme performance summer tires or even max performance summer tires. there is simply nothing wrong with the tires on the honda pilot that is sitting next to you in traffic. id be looking at tires in the ultra high performance summer category. those are a nice blend of mileage, price, and performance on road conditions you will encounter on the street.

a "performance tire" does not perform better on the street than a street tire.

trackday tire performs great at a trackday and pretty much garbage everywhere else(road noise, wear, grip in less than optimal conditions)
winter tire performs great in winter and garbage everywhere else
street tires perform great on the street and garbage anywhere else

Do you have any suggestions? Most summer tires don't even seem to have any mileage warranty. The ones that do seem to be 30k max. And those seem to be around $200 more in total than most of the a/s tires I checked. Ideally I don't want to spend more than $150/tire unless there's a significant difference in performance in daily driving, which is mainly what I'm trying to get an input on.

The Dunlop Direzza DZ102 is a summer tire with a 460 UTQG. No mileage warranty, but I image you would get 40-60K miles from these. These are the highest UTQG of the summer tires on Tire Rack.

My 300 UTQG wore like iron, I can't imagine you would ever need a higher UTQG.

I'll say the same thing I say in every other vague tire thread.

Hankook ventus v12 concept2. Amazing long lasting all-rounder tire

I was never into low wear & noise, rather opposite, prioritizing maximum grip and usability also on track, so not going to suggest something i have little experience with. I evaluate wear with how many trackdays tire will last, not how many seasons or how many 10K miles it will last as i trash set in single summer or even quicker depending how often i've been on track :)

You can wait for suggestions from others only daily driving theirs, or look into low rolling resistance eco tires with higher threadwear numbers or in general tires with high threadwear, see reviews/tests of such to see how well they do noise wise. Not going to advise about class of tires i have no own experience or interest in.
Though not sure such tires are that well fit for these particular cars. After all, these cars are imho more meant for driving fun, so people probably will tend to concentrate more on grip/handling. Driving sedately for fuel saving, getting tires that will last eternity (at expense of grip) .. people prioritizing that usually buy different cars, that net more practicality & comfort, not small coupes with limited people or cargo capacity, harsher suspension & lack of noise insulation and higher insurance premiums.

I have these on my Mazda 2 and like them.

Although if I was in SoCal, I'd probably get something from the Summer category.

I guess it depends on what you use your car for, and where you live but I see zero point in summer tires. As far as all seasons, I've been very happy with the Bridgestone Ecopia EP422 Plus Tires on my car, I'm now my second set. Got over 60,000 miles off the first set. They drive about like the original Primacies, but with enough extra grip you aren't squealing around every turn.

All seasons are terrible, in all seasons.

+1 for hankook
Better than stock, more grip, lasts long. Perfect for daily driving and fun enough do some windy roads.

Some of the options I'm considering are: bridgestone potenza s-04, Michelin pilot a/s 3+, continental extreme contact sport, hankook ventus v12 evo2 k120. All are summer tires except for michelin. Wondering if michelin would still provide good performance based on it being "all season sport".. or whether continental would be so much better than hankook for me to feel any difference in daily driving and occasional spiritual driving (not track). I was almost set on bridgestone but the general consensus on it seems to be that it wears out way too fast. Hankook is the most affordable one on the list, however there are some rebates/deals on the rest of them, so the price difference will be $100-$150..

I get the sense you are looking for specific brand/model recommendations, not really the methodology behind why we are recommending the particular tire. so instead of flooding you with jargin about why these tires are the most popular and well suited, the top picks in the community for summer street tires are:

Michelin PSS
Hankook v12
General gmax RS
BFG sportcomp 2
bridgestone re71r (trackday tire)
firestone indy500
conti sportcontact
sumitomo htr z5

spend some time on tirerack.com sorting tires by category and price, the hierarchy of performance level goes Max performance>Extreme performance>ultra high perf summer>UHP all seasons>All seasons. I would stick in the UHP summer category for a nice affordable summer street tire, my last set of tires was bfg sportcomp2 summers, and im now on general gmax rs on my new wheels.

I'm surprised this tire was mentioned. I thought I was the only one that ran these. Survived two Chicago winters. I had WS80's in the garage but I really didn't feel like throwing them on because I knew my concept2's handled the previous winters pretty fine. Might have to throw the WS80's on this year though!