snow tire season-Hankook IceBear Experience?
 

Thinking hard about these tires (Hankook IceBear W300) due to price/value and the fact that I have Hankook Ventus V12 on my M3 and think they are great.

rated last on consumer reports. michelin and nokian each had 2 in the top 5. pick one of them...


you seem to be trying to equate price with value. that is not usually true. as my father in law says, "I ain't rich enough to buy the cheap stuff...."

Hi, on the wife's 4.4 X5, I ran the Hankook I Pikes, and they are awesome. I switch them out after winter for a Toyo all season because we have a lot of dirt and muddy roads. My kids have run the I pikes for a couple of years on their Subarus in the Colorado Rockies with great results. I think the IceBears might be a little more agressive tread design. Good luck.

i had them before on my pilot....not bad, i'm mainly in the city...never had an issue...now i have them again on my x5. i mean not the cheapest brand out there, and not the most expensive....middle of the bunch and priced well. are you going to be out in the mud, the heavy snowfall areas...its like having a hummer and never taking it out into the bush!!!!

Yeah, mostly highway, want a quiet, good on dry roads snow tire. Usually I prefer the "high performance Snow" category. I figure the AWD only needs a little help, know what I mean. They have to be far better than the Michelin MXV4 that I have on there now.

I had a set of Hankook W300 on my subaru wrx and they were great tires in winter. not the best but they were a great cross because they were still decent on dry pavement, speed rated and they were amazing on ice. Where they did lack a bit in comparison to other winter tires is in deep snow, which I do not really see very often just loads of ice. Overall a great winter performance tire for a decent price.
SO sounds ike they would be good for you as they are not to loud on the highway and they are leaps and bounds better than the stock michilen all season. hope that helps.

I ran these very same tires last winter on my 2000 X5. Excellent All-Around performance. Understand, We live in the foothills of the Cascade Mtns. We have three 4WD vehicles that we use for primary transpo and the last 2mi. of road to our home & property is 2 miles up hill on a winding gravel road. In Nov.-Jan if no 4WD you wil not make it 50% of the time. So yes, my X5 gets dirty. Also, the Hankook was the first tiime I have run withOUT studs as I wanted an All Around Tire. Handles the cold wet pavement very well & surprisingly good on ice. All of our other vehicles run studded snows in Winter.
As for Consumer Reports and "ratings" by other similar organizations: I value CR when I know nothing about a product & want some foundation info. It is a sound resource. However, the more personal & specific knowledge one has about a product, the less value you tend to place on CR. Definitly the case here. I have run Michelins exclusively on P/U trucks, my 92 BMW 750iL (Pilots), Suburbans, Explorers & Bronco II's. My tire guy said, "This is what you want (The Hankook) on that X5", I sd. OK. :thumbup:

as skid says, he runs Michelin on all his vehicles. there is a good reason for that...

I ended up going with the Blizzak DM V1. Oh well. Thanks for the input. I will post later this winter on how they are doing!

you will do well with the blizzaks. congratulations on the winter tire purchase. it keeps us all safe!

The W300's are complete, unadulterated crap. I ran an e46 M3 with Dunlop Wintersport M3's that had better traction than the w300's on an xDrive 328. Forget them. Junk.

Ive run the IceBears for the past 4 winters on 3 different cars. Best value out there in my mind.

First ran them on my Audi allroad, loved the way they worked in all but the deepest snow.

Ran them for two years on my 528 but switched over to Dunlop M3 snows last winter. They're better in heavier snows and the 528 needs all the help it can get. But before I switched, I ran the IceBears into June that summer because I was too busy to swap wheels and tires on 3 cars (X5, 528 and wife's Explorer)

And for the past two winters on my '04 4.4 X5, I've put away the Sport 19 wheels and tires and run 18" IceBears. They've never failed me in any midwest snows. I've even had the race car trailer hooked up and driven 900 miles towing 5,000 lbs with the snows on and the tail of the X5 was rock steady.

So what are the pros and cons?
Pro:
Inexpensive
Very quiet, in fact they were quieter than the Dasmarais summer tires I used to run
Great in the wet and let's face it, we see more wet conditions in winter than heavy snow
High speed stability is fantastic. On my old allroad and the 528, I'd do road trips on dry winter roads and never had a moment where the tires felt squirmy even at speeds close to triple digits
Very good in snows up to 4 or 6 inches, still good above that

Cons
There are better snow tires for the heavy 12"+ snows, like the Dunlop M2 or M3
The Dunlops clean the slushy stuff out of the tread easier at highway speeds

But for me the IceBear is the best all around tire for our upper midwest winters, for highway trips, for occasional deep snow, and are fantastic in the dry and wet which is 75% of my winter driving.