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Last updated 10/23/2024 - Originally published 10/23/2024
Written by SimpleTire
Light trucks, Jeeps, crossovers, and SUVs are the biggest selling segment of the vehicle market these days, and in most cases, all-season tires are a versatile, sensible choice for them. While all-season tires offer a great package of reliable traction year-round with long treadwear, predictable handling, a quiet and soft ride, and civilized, composed road manners, they will not be suitable for a truck equipped with 4WD where your driving tends to take you off the pavement in mud, snow, gravel, or loose dirt (or if you have to deal with severe winter conditions). Even if not in the beginning, you’ll eventually discover that those all-season tires are not going to be capable of getting the job done. Modern all-terrain tires are designed for little in the way of compromises, offering drivers durability and superior off-road performance, along with composed street behavior.
The design teams at tire manufacturers center their all-terrain tires around the horsepower, torque, center of gravity, weight, handling, and braking properties of modern trucks and SUVs. They’re designed to be durable with dependable, tenacious traction off the highway, but they’re still good for the kind of ride quality and road manners during hours on the Interstate that won’t leave you worn out from noisy, bone-rattling rides. Today we’re going to look at premium all-terrain tires Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T and Yokohama Geolandar AT G015 to see which one would be a better buy.
Both the above tires are from top brands, boasting a reputation for quality and performance, and both are packed with top-shelf materials, great features, and innovations. In this head-to-head comparison, you’ll see us refer frequently to the SimpleScore numbers for each tire. If you aren’t acquainted with SimpleScore, it’s the system that the team at SimpleTire developed to give you a quick at-a-glance idea of a tire’s performance and value. We look at reviews, specs, and other data points, then take that info and process it down to a 1-10 numerical value for the categories of handling, traction, and longevity, as well as an overall average SimpleScore for any given tire. For the Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T and Yokohama Geolandar AT G015 the SimpleScore numbers are as follows:
Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T
- Traction: 8.5
- Handling: 8.4
- Longevity: 8.8
- Overall average SimpleScore: 8.5
Yokohama Geolandar AT G015
- Traction: 8.5
- Handling: 8.6
- Longevity: 8.5
- Overall average SimpleScore: 8.3
Like with any 1-10 rating system, any tire with a SimpleScore of 9 or better is obviously delivering some pretty good performance and value in that category. The Mickey Thompson and the Yokohama are both very competent tires, but of course, the 30,000-foot view for SimpleScore is that it hasn’t really been designed to go into detail on a tire’s strengths and weaknesses. While the Mickey Thompson and the Yokohama are both great tires, they have some key differences that we’ll take a closer look at in this head-to-head comparison.
Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T tires
We’ll start with one of SimpleTire’s favorite picks for an all-terrain tire, the Baja Boss A/T from Mickey Thompson. With an asymmetric all-terrain lug tread and Mickey Thompson’s innovative Extreme Sidebiter wraparound lugs at the shoulder, the Baja Boss A/T is a tire that you can count on for tenacious grip in mud, loose dirt, gravel, or other difficult terrain. When the snow starts piling up, you can rest assured that Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T has the Three Peak Mountain Snowflake rating for severe winter service.
The Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T is tougher than a five-dollar steak too, with a durable silica-infused tread compound and Powerply XD construction that’s designed with over 50% more denier cord in its reinforcement layers. Mickey Thompson covers the Baja Boss A/T with an up-to-60,000 mile limited manufacturer tread life warranty. Even with those unbeatable off-road credentials, the Baja Boss A/T is surprisingly civilized (and quiet) on the pavement, thanks to that asymmetric tread and an optimized contact patch. This tire is suitable for an average SimpleScore of 8.5.
Yokohama Geolandar AT G015 tires
The Geolandar family of all-terrain tires has been part of the product line at Yokohama for a long time, and the Geolandar AT G015 is one of the latest iterations. It has innovative features that deliver excellent performance in mud, loose dirt, gravel, sand, and snow, balanced out with road manners, handling, and ride quality on the highway that are first-rate and ensure an average SimpleScore of 8.3.
The Geolandar AT G015 is designed with Yokohama’s proprietary Enduro tread compound, which is engineered with long-chain polymers and silica for dependable year-round traction and damage resistance. Its contact patch is optimized for a long, flat, wide footprint that encourages even wear, great handling, and braking performance. Its all-terrain tread is right in its element in mud, loose dirt, and snow (earning the Geolandar AT G015 the Three Peak Mountain Snowflake certification for severe winter service). Built-in Edgetec grooves help to fling mud, snow, and debris out of the tire, making sure there’s always a clear section of the tire to dig in as the wheel turns. A high tread depth and a dense pattern of sipes give the Geolandar AT G015 an extra degree of traction and confidence in mud and snow.
Yokohama’s Endurocore construction system means the Geolandar AT G015 gives the Geolandar AT G015 great stability at highway speeds. And speaking of highway speed, the tread pitch of the Geolandar AT G015 is computer-tuned and arranged to cancel out certain frequencies and resonances, helping to keep road noise muted. Yokohama covers the Geolandar AT G015 with a 60,000 mile manufacturer’s treadwear warranty for P/E metric sizes and a 50,000 mile manufacturer's tread life warranty for LT-metric sizes. Select sizes of the Yokohama Geolandar AT G015 have an outlined white letter sidewall that looks great on a wide variety of trucks and SUVs.
Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T vs Yokohama Geolandar AT G015 on traction
With the same SimpleScores of 8.5 for Mickey Thompson and the Yokohama in the traction department, this one can work in favor of either product. Both tires deliver great traction in snow and slush and both have the 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake rating for severe winter service. The Mickey Thompson is built for traction in difficult terrain, though, with its Extreme Sidebiter lugs that extend from the shoulder down onto the sidewall and help enhance the tire’s lateral traction for cornering, controlling, or clawing its way out of deep ruts and mud. The aggressive all-terrain tread, along with the tough silica-rich tread compound, give the Baja Boss A/T a distinct leg up when it comes to grip.
On the other hand, the tread depth on the Geolandar AT G015 is significantly lower. The special Enduro compound ensures great traction and the EdgeTec Grooves push mud and dirt out from the tread for extra grip. Triple 3D sipes change shape as the tire wears, ensuring biting edges for traction during the entire year. Additionally, an advanced tread design is responsible for capable off-road traction.
ADVANTAGE: Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T
Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T vs Yokohama Geolandar AT G015 on handling
Traction is obviously going to be closely tied in with handling and control; if a vehicle’s not able to get a good purchase on the pavement as you go into a corner, then handling and cornering are going to be pretty dicey (it just stands to reason). That’s exactly what’s reflected in the SimpleScores for handling for these two tires: 8.4 for the Mickey Thompson and 8.6 for the Yokohama. High stability and precise steering response help the Mickey Thompson resist the forces and inertia of cornering, ensuring that the tire remains firmly planted on the road. The silica-infused tread compound also plays a part in handling performance, as does the asymmetric tread pattern.
On the other hand, Endurocore construction on the Yokohama leads to stable off-road performance. An Enduro compound is available here for better handling, and the tire offers a great blend of off-and-on-road performance.
ADVANTAGE: Yokohama Geolandar G015
Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T vs Yokohama Geolandar AT G015 on longevity
When it comes to the longevity category, things get a little more complicated. Both the Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T and the Yokohama Geolandar AT G015 have 60,000 mile limited manufacturer’s tread life warranties for certain sizes and 50,000 miles for LT-metric sizes. Usually, the tread life warranty and SimpleScore for longevity are tied directly in with each other, but there’s a slight disparity as the Mickey Thompson is slightly out in front with a SimpleScore of 8.8, as compared to 8.5 for the Yokohama due to PowerPly XD construction, Extreme Sidebiters, and the silica-infused tread compound that minimizes damages due to cuts and chips.
In instances like this, it’s usually the customer reviews that move the needle a bit on SimpleScore rankings. We listened to our customers, and our call is:
ADVANTAGE: Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T
When to use each
When it comes down to this question, it’s when you need to ask yourself a couple of questions about what your driving style is and what your real needs and expectations are with a set of all-terrain tires. If you’re going to be taking on deep mud, huge boulders, and other such obstacles, or if you want to do some aired-down rock crawling over steep rocks and logs, then the Mickey Thompson and Yokohama might fall a little short of what you need from a set of tires and mud-terrain or rugged-terrain tires would be a better pick. If your truck spends most of its time on pavement and hardly ever goes off into the rough for some adventures, maybe all-season or highway-terrain tires might suit you better. If, on the other hand, you live in a part of the country that has serious winter weather every year (the kind that leaves several inches of snow on the road for days or weeks at a time), the 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake ratings on both these tires make them great choices that are unlikely to let you down in difficult winter driving. Similarly, if your driving destinations include rough ranch roads or oilfield lease roads, unimproved construction job sites, logging trails, or remote country gravel roads, these are both great choices for your driving needs.
The Mickey Thompson and the Yokohama represent the best of next-generation all-terrain tires and their balance of off-road performance and durability alongside great road manners, handling, and ride quality on the pavement.
Which one should you choose?
Let’s take a minute and recap what the Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T and Yokohama Geolandar AT G015 really have to offer drivers. Both the Mickey Thompson and the Yokohama are tough and tenacious, with generous limited manufacturer’s tread life coverage to back them up. Both have the 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake rating, and both have surprisingly pleasant dispositions on the pavement. Yes, the Mickey Thompson crowds out the Yokohama with an overall average SimpleScore of 8.5 vs the Yokohama’s 8.3. That doesn’t mean, though, that the Yokohama is a bad choice or a drastically inferior tire in terms of quality and performance. So let’s factor price into the equation too: the SimpleTire price on the Mickey Thompson starts at $183.39 per tire ($733.56 for 4) vs $144.99 per tire ($579.96 for 4) for the Yokohama. That’s a pretty considerable spread in prices, one that would add up to well over $200 for the whole set, after figuring in taxes, mounting, and disposal fees.
We would just phrase it this way: if you can afford the Mickey Thompson Baja Boss A/T, that would make a great tire for you. For the sake of traction, Mickey Thompson always had the stronger reputation, but as demonstrated by the SimpleScore, the two have obtained the same scores. If you want to save a considerable chunk of money and decide on the Yokohama Geolandar AT G015, that would be a great choice as well, considering how close the score are.
Still not sure which tire to buy? Fortunately, SimpleTire is here to help, as our helpful agents are more than happy to assist you in selecting the right tire for your ride and budget.