We live at the end of a four mile class four road in Vermont. Snow and ice are a daily reality for 4-6 months per year. If you have to drive through real snow and real ice, this is your tire. Ours are studded, and not only will you not get stuck, you can also have braking action! The one downside is that when the snow melts and everything turns to mud, I find these tires don't do very well in mud. I feel too much lateral movement. When I am confident the last ice night has passed, I will quickly switch back to AT tires for the mud.

Remember the TRIX cereal commercial where it goes, "Silly rabbit, TRIX are for kids"? Well, look at the review categories and figure out how ANY dedicated winter tire, let alone the top of the line winter tire - before studding - and then stud them and what do you get? You get the "8". Dry handling is mushy, wet handling OK, rides fine, tread life as expected for the soft compound and studs are noisy. If you bought this tire considering those criteria YOU made a MASSIVE mistake. I bought the "8" because I MIGHT have to travel in the winter in situations where I don't have the option to wait for fairer weather. On the several occasions I have actually used this tire, the experience has been outstanding. I have total confidence in this tire to augment my limited snow/ice driving abilities, since I now reside in the South - tidewater Virginia, but travel North when needed. I must add that I have the tires mounted on spare rims and only use them when necessary.

Ride noise was not a fair question, as I ordered these snow tires studded. This quality of a tire for the price is exceptional.

Studded tires are noisy but are the absolute bomb on ice! Nokian makes the best winter tire out there. Can recommend

Nothing really comes close to these tires for winter driving, studded tires outperform everything and by a very large margin

waiting on the colorado rocky snow at 8600 feet to test them out this winter