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Last updated 7/19/2024 - Originally published 7/18/2024
Written by SimpleTire
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Light trucks, Jeeps, crossovers and SUVs are family vehicles now; they’ve taken the role that used to be filled by sedans, minivans and wagons. In most cases, all-season tires are a great tire option for them, for all the same reasons that people have always loved them. All-season tires are the solution for consistent traction year-round with great tread wear properties, capable handling, a quiet and compliant ride and civilized, composed road manners. But (a pretty big but)...if your truck is equipped with 4WD and you need to venture off the pavement on a regular basis in mud, snow, gravel or loose dirt (or if you have to deal with severe winter conditions), you’re likely to find out right off that those all-season tires are not going to meet your needs.
Modern all-terrain tires are designed as a compromise for the best of all possible worlds: durability and off-road capability paired with behavior on the street that’s sedate and predictable. Tire manufacturers’ design teams shoot for their all-terrain tires to handle the horsepower, torque, center of gravity, weight, handling, and braking properties of modern trucks and SUVs. They’re tough with confident, consistent traction off the highway, but can still deliver the kind of ride quality and road manners on a long road trip that will treat you and your passengers right.
Today we’re going to look at the Mickey Thompson Baja Legend EXP and Yokohama Geolandar X-AT. These are both premium all-terrain tires from prestige brands, with a proven track record of quality and performance, and both are packed with top-quality materials, excellent design, and innovations. In the course of this head-to-head comparison, you’ll see us make reference to the SimpleScore numbers for each tire. If you aren’t familiar with SimpleScore, it’s the system that the team at SimpleTire came up with 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 Legend EXP and Yokohama Geolandar X-AT, the SimpleScore numbers are as follows:
Like with any 1-10 rating system, any tire with a SimpleScore of 8 or better is obviously delivering some pretty good performance and value in that category. The Mickey Thompson and the Yokohama are both very capable tires, but of course SimpleScore is designed as a 30,000 ft view that doesn’t really go into detail on a tire’s strengths and weaknesses. While the Firestone and the Yokohama are both great tires, they have some key differences that we’ll narrow down as we take a closer look at in this head-to-head comparison.
Mickey Thompson brought all their all-terrain tire expertise to bear with the Baja Legend EXP. Tough and tenacious, the Baja Legend EXP delivers a great balance of off-road traction and on-highway performance, with the T4 silica-enhanced tread formulation that’s designed for great wear properties, resistance to cuts, punctures and abrasions, as well as improved wet-weather traction. Its next-generation high-tensile steel belted construction gives the Baja Legend EXP excellent durability and stability as well as cutting overall weight. Its Baja-inspired all-terrain tread draws on Mickey Thompson’s years in the motorsports and rally word, with Extreme Sidebiters that extend from the shoulder onto the sidewall for enhanced lateral grip (great for clawing out of ruts) and aggressive block tread with a full 18.5/32” tread depth. The high void ratio of the tread gives the Baja Legend EXP great self-cleaning of mud and debris, ensuring there’s always a clear section of tread to dig in as the wheel turns. All in all, this is a great hybrid all-terrain tire that you can depend on for uncompromising performance in the rough and composed road manners and handling on the pavement. Mickey Thompson covers the Baja Legend EXP with a 50,000 mile limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty. SimpleTire’s price on the Mickey Thompson Baja Legend EXP starts at $214.99 per tire.
Now let’s talk about another great all-terrain tire from Yokohama, the Geolandar X-AT. Rugged and ready, the Yokohama Geolandar X-AT is positioned between all-terrain and mud-terrain design and performance. It features Yokohama’s damage-resistant HD-2 off-road tread compound and Geo-Shield design package that includes multiple sidewall plies, dual sidewall protectors, high-turnup casing, and a full nylon cap for stability and durability. Large shoulder blocks in varying lengths, combination grooves with a dense sipe pattern and aggressive offset center blocks all add up to excellent traction. The Geolandar’s ellipse-shaped contact patch ensures good handling and even wear. Yokohama covers the Geolandar X-AT with a 45,000 mile limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty. SimpleTire’s price on the Yokohama Geolandar X-AT starts at $221.99 per tire.
With SimpleScores of 8.4 for the Yokohama and 8.3 for the Mickey Thompson, this one’s obviously a pretty close call. While neither tire has the 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake certification for severe winter service, both are very capable when it comes to off-road performance in mud, sand, gravel, or loose dirt. We’re impressed with the M-T’s SideBiter design for lateral traction, but the design of the tread blocks, grooves, and sipes with the Yokohama make the difference when it comes to braking distances, control, and overall grip, with a more marked improvement on the pavement. As close as this one is, our decision is:
ADVANTAGE: Yokohama Geolandar X-AT
With SimpleScores of 8.5 for both tires, this one’s closer than close. Neither M-T and the Yokohama will offer the kind of cornering and steering response you’d get from a performance tire (would you really expect them to?), but both have handling properties that are predictable and neutral, with no twitchiness, good road manners with little wander at highway speed, and steering that’s direct and connected-feeling. That’s about as good as you can expect for most light truck all-terrain tires, to be honest: control and driving dynamics that are solid, balanced, and stable. Our decision:
ADVANTAGE: Tie
Now here’s one where there’s more of a disparity on SimpleScore rankings, with the M-T showing a SimpleScore of 8.7 vs 9.0 for the Yokohama. In most cases, the longevity SimpleScores all hinge on warranty coverage, but the Yokohama has 45,000 miles worth of limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty vs 50,000 miles for the Mickey Thompson. Don’t get us wrong, there’s no question that the Mickey Thompson is durable, with its T4 tread compound and 10-ply rating. The Yokohama, though, has their comprehensive GeoShield design package with multiple sidewall plies, dual sidewall protectors, high-turnup casing, and a full nylon cap, and that’s more than enough to move the needle when it comes to longevity. Our call:
ADVANTAGE: Yokohama Geolandar X-AT
Maybe the most relevant question to ask yourself here is this: what do you really need out of your 4WD-equipped truck or SUV? If you go off-road regularly, if you live on a farm or a rural area with gravel roads, ranch roads, oilfield lease roads, or logging trails, or if you’ve got a work truck that has to negotiate job sites and haul heavy loads, all-terrain tires could be perfect for you. Or, if you live in a part of the world where you have to deal with rough winter weather and snow that stays on the roads for days or weeks, a premium set of all-terrain tires is a great choice. Neither tire is 3PMSF certified for difficult winter conditions, but we’re confident that they’re both capable of getting you around in conditions where all-season tires are going to fall short. They’re also tough and reliable enough to really get the job done in rough off-road conditions but are refined enough to not drive you nuts with road noise, vibration and squirrely handling on a long road trip. Both tires are capable and composed for everyday driving duties, so if that sounds like your situation with your truck, we’d recommend either the Yokohama or the Mickey Thompson with few reservations.
Here at the SimpleTire team, our job gets tough when we have to make these kinds of calls, considering the overall average SimpleScore of 8.6 for the Yokohama Geolandar X-AT vs 8.4 for the Mickey Thompson Baja Legend EXP. In most cases, we’d probably defer to the price point of both tires, but even there it’s just a few dollars’ worth of difference between the starting prices of the two. They’re both tires that are very good at what they do and you can’t go wrong with either one, but the Yokohama shows a little bit of an edge in the SimpleScore categories, and in the end, we’d probably recommend it over the Mickey Thompson.
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