“Off-road” winter tyre
If the tread pattern is made up of separate elements, often shaped like diamonds, cubes or snowflakes, up to 9-10 mm high, with fairly wide gaps between them (both lengthways and across) - this is a tyre for snowdrifts and untouched snow.
A tyre like this will work wonders off-road, but on dry tarmac it will be noisy, will raise fuel consumption and will reduce braking efficiency. If it is also directional (shown by a V-shaped arrangement of the tread elements and a large arrow on the tyre’s sidewall marked rotation), it will behave a little more confidently in a slushy snow-and-mud “porridge”. Either way, a tyre like this is definitely not suited to safe driving at high speed, whatever speed rating it has been given.
It is exactly this kind of tyre that shows up, more often than not, as the “best” one in motorists’ reviews. And that is because, thanks to how badly the road-clearing services do their job, most small streets even in big cities in Ukraine turn into genuine “off-road terrain” the moment snow falls. Hence the stereotype that a winter tyre’s most important quality is how well it copes off-road.
Read the whole guide on how to choose the right winter tyres