Check out this comprehensive Tire Buyers Guide.
The truth is, we're not big fans of tire guides; they offer little objective data and take space away from cooler stories we could be running. But the surge of new, cheap, and sticky tires within the last year makes them worth mentioning. Since we're just as tired of writing generically unique tire descriptions as you are of reading them we're taking a different approach this time. On top of just regurgitating and listing facts we've dug up about the tires, we've added icons to depict our evaluation of the tires that we've driven on. Of course this is completely subjective, so you'll just have to trust us.
In addition to classifying by tire segment, UTQG (Uniform Tire Quality Grading), and sizing information, we've graded each tire in three oversimplified categories; price, grip, and overall handling. Pricing, denoted by a dollar sign, is a rough estimation of how each tire is priced relative to the most expensive non-runflat tire on the market (regardless of segment). Fewer dollar signs mean fewer dollars out of your pocket. Overall grip and handling is rated only for the tires we've driven on and are represented with tire and steering wheel icons, respectively. In these cases, more is better.