Goodyear EfficientGrip Performance

About a month ago, I fitted a set of Goodyear EfficientGrip Performance tires after the tire shop manager strongly recommended this specific model.
My previous tires were Apollo Alnac 4G in a different size, 195/55 R15, which is a much more budget-oriented tire. My rims officially support both sizes.
The Goodyears definitely feel better in terms of road noise and comfort over bumps compared with the Apollos.
However, I lost a huge amount of steering feel. The steering became vague, and the car no longer inspired any confidence if you wanted to drive in a more spirited way.
What surprised me even more was the grip. In the dry, I honestly cannot say they offer any noticeable improvement over my four-year-old Apollo tires with around 20,000 miles on them. In the wet they initially feel a little more stable, but they provide almost no feedback, so you never really know how much grip you have available.

Unfortunately, this became very clear while I was driving home on a wet downhill road before a dry turn. I entered the corner that would never have caused any concern with my previous tires and I have gone through many times, but I ended up having the first crash of my life. Thankfully, the damage was relatively minor and mostly cosmetic.

Initially, the car felt unable to hold the turn and started to slide. While keeping a steady steering input, the front suddenly regained grip, while the rear lost grip completely. The car then snapped into a much more violent oversteer instead of progressively recovering the grip, which is what I expected from the previous tires I had.
I somehow managed to somewhat straighten the car, but it was still sliding with very little grip until I eventually scraped a wall.
I am not claiming to be the best driver in the world, but I have experienced much worse situations in the past without such sudden and violent reactions from the car, regardless of the tires I was using.

As other reviewers have mentioned, these tires have a very soft sidewall which I found out after fitting them. In my experience, this takes away a lot of steering feedback and makes it difficult to understand what the tires are actually doing or how close you are to the limit.

Once I repair the car, these tires are coming off.

The previous tire was Michelin P4. The P4 had a mileage of 35,340 miles, and the tire was very noisy as the rubber hardened, after which I replaced it with Goodyear EGP.
When new, both the P4 and EGP were barely quiet at about 73 decibels on the highway, but after exceeding 20,000 miles, the noise became louder.
The dry and wet grip of the P4 and EGP is sufficient for daily use, but after 20,000 miles, I felt a decline in performance. There are no issues with high-speed water drainage.
The current mileage of the EGP is 40,000 miles, manufactured in Poland, and it has been 4 years without reaching the safety line, so it can certainly continue to be used. I feel that the tire has not hardened and is wear-resistant, but it is noisy.
This is my experience with the P4 and EGP, and I am recently considering the mainland tire UC series as the next choice. The EGP2 is also under consideration.

These Goodyears came factory-fitted on my second-hand Golf Alltrack. On both motorways and in city driving, in wet or dry conditions, they perform fairly well, giving a comfortable ride and showing little wear after three seasons. (Most likely, the previous owner also used a dedicated set of winter tires.)

On winding B-roads, the first thing I noticed compared to my previous car, which had Falken ZIEX ZE310 EcoRun tires fitted based on reviews here, is that the Goodyears provide noticeably less feedback about how much grip the front axle has. The Golf in its Estate/Alltrack form is naturally understeer-biased and not the sharpest choice for quick driving, even with dynamic suspension in Sport mode, but with these tires you don’t really feel how much grip is left when cornering and can sometimes be caught off guard by the amount of understeer.

Dry braking performance also leaves something to be desired. The car itself feels like it could brake harder and more precisely, but the tires make the response feel a bit vague and muted.

OE tire on a VW ID3. Very unusual tire for me. In terms of NVH, they show excellent comfort and are whisper quiet.

In terms of driving dynamics, they are suprisingly peaky on the limit of grip of the rear axle. With the RWD electric ID3, when torque is applied in a turn, a sudden oversteer happens with audible screeching. The limit of grip is hard to navigate and makes the rear axle of the car slightly unstable under spirited driving, with plenty of ESP intervention. The front axle has a better stability but with still quite low grip limit on turns, with understeer appearing progressively. The tires can be scary on straight heavy braking at speed by they low general level of grip making the heavy electric ID3 longer to stop than I anticipated, even on perfectly dry roads.

In the wet, these imperfections are magnified, making the car unsafe to drive sportily and imposing a more relaxed style.

I would personnal opt for a more performance oriented tire as a replacement. The balance is set too far on the side of efficency for the tire to be suitable for my use on country roads. The safety feels compromised in the wet.

I bought these tires as an efficient but premium replacement to the Michelin PS4's that I had on prior, and I was really disappointed. I bought these through KwikFit as they were A for Fuel and B for Wet Grip so they looked like a great option. However, the tires were less grippy in the wet and dry compared to the PS4 and I noticed cracking between the tread and along the edge of the sidewall. My car is a Mk8 Fiesta ST which does a lot of motorway miles but has the odd sprint on a backroad, these tires (nor the car) have ever been used on track and the cracks appeared quickly on the front pair and also eventually after a few months they appeared throughout the back pair of tires. I had the front ones changed prematurely due to my concern about the structural integrity of the tire. I complained and sent them back to KwikFit and they said they would send on to Goodyear for investigation, however after numerous chase-ups and calls I never received a verdict or a refund.

Maybe it's my fault for going with a more efficient tire over something like a Michelin or Continental UHP tire but I can confidently say these tires are not a high performance tire and do not have the longevity I have come to expect from the PS4's before it and the Continental PremiumContact 7's that I replaced them with.