Falken Wildpeak A/T3W

I drive well within the vehicle's capabilities on the bitumen, so I will not provide a subjective rating for wet grip, dry grip, etc. I have the Light Truck variant, which obviously increased the unsprung weight and makes the ride harsher. The trade off being a more resilient tire on rocky and gibber dirt tracks. The first bit of advice I would give is that the AT3W Light Truck tires need to be run with much higher pressure (on bitumen) when compared to HT or standard AT. Otherwise there will be uneven wear. At my axle weights, I run closer to 50 psi to get correct wear rates. Regardless of which tire, buy a tread depth gauge (only a few dollars), and keep a record of wear. This will guide you to set the correct pressures. For example, at placard pressures, I was getting classic under inflation wear (on the outside). Better yet, buy a set of tire pressure monitors and use the classic 4 psi rise (6 psi rise for light truck tires) to set the correct pressure. While 50 psi is for the highway, obviously, air down when off-road ti make the tire more compliant. Overall, considering my application and the tradeoffs, I am happy with this tire. Not sure about the AT4W as a replacement, but that is a decision for another day.

I chose the P-Metric option for my vehicle because I don't do enough heavy towing or experience many sharp objects for my region with the off-roading conditions I experience to warrant the added weight and stiffness. Brand new these tires gripped dry road and gravel amazingly with minimal road noise. It existed, but it was a fairly quiet low hum/whistle that slowly increased with age and miles. Even when new, wet grip left a slight desire for improvement, same with snow, and especially with ice. I discovered this within the first 3 months/3,000mi of installing.

To be expected with going from a highway tire to an all-terrain, and increasing from 265/65/18 to 275/65/18 (an optional stock size), I found I lost about 3~4mpg on average between city and highway. These tires are significantly heavier than the previous tires and have a strong rolling resistance. My transmission temperature also on average began running 5~10º warmer.

As they have aged, dry grip has stayed fairly consistent, wet grip has decreased somewhat as expected, but snow/ice traction towards the end-of-life has fallen off significantly. I live in the northern Midwest where we frequently get heavy wet lake effect snow, it's a difficult substance to drive in no matter what but these tires struggled in it frequently enough that even additional weight over the drive axle did not do much to help and I utilize 4WD often. On average we end up with snow for roughly 4-5 months, starting as early as October and staying as long as March/April With the occasional exception even in May. Over the course of winter we will often receive daily daytime snow followed by nighttime sub-zero temperatures, as low as -25º. Anyone familiar with these conditions will tell you that salt no longer functions to melt the snow and ice, and that the heat from vehicles will bring the road just to the point of starting to melt, then after they drive off it will refreeze, repeatedly until it's an almost glass-smooth surface. Nothing is going to handle this well except the best snow tires, but these Wildpeaks were significantly worse than a highway biased tired at the same wear mileage.

What I have really noticed with these tires they do not like to be cold. I have seen as much as a 5psi swing from morning startup to mid-day driving. When cold at factory specified PSI I noticed for the first portion of driving that the tires have very noticeable flat spots, so much so my entire truck bounces driving down the road to a rhythm until they can be worked out. I also found over-inflating by 1-2lbs helps this as well as fuel consumption.

Overall I'm pretty disappointed in their performance compared to the glowing reviews they got over the years. If you live in a more arid climate I think these would be a pretty decent tire.

Scores are slightly skewed as these are the biggest tires we can fit on our 2.5 inch lifted Jeep JK 2 door. So these are big heavy tires on a small and relatively light vehicle (each tire's load rating nearly covers the entire vehicle weight).

Dry and wet are about the same, nothing terrible, but I have driven tires with better grip in both situations. The road feedback I knocked off some points just because of my particular setup. On a heavier larger vehicle I would expect it to be a point or two higher. Its pretty binary, you either dont feel the bumps and texture or you REALLY feel the bumps and texture. Handling also gets dinged harder due to the vehicle, you can feel the tires want to give up as they get pushed a bit at highway speeds. Again a heavier vehicle is likely to feel that less. The noise is about what you expect out of an AT tire, and as far as comfort goes, its better when I keep them at around 28-30 PSI on the road. By default the Jeep wants to see 37 PSI which is like driving on rocks. They do ok in the snow, but ice is pretty sketchy, especially on a short wheelbase vehicle.

Overall the tires have worn at less than expected rates (the advantage of a light small vehicle on these tires), and they are quite reasonable on road. They also handle the off road well enough for the trails we run (moderate difficulty in the rockies).