AutoGuide Tests: Michelin X-Ice Snow Tires

Just looking at the tread says this isn't an all-season tire. It has big tread blocks; wide channels and a distinct Vee to squish out slush; and multi-directional sipes, which are the little cuts molded into the tire. Like you might expect, the chunky treads do a lot of the work in loose snow, but on slippery surfaces, whether icy, slushy, or just cold and wet, the sipes both bite in, and deform slightly to increase surface area and give you grip. The X-Ice Snow's sipes are full depth, meaning you'll have them as long as you have tread, which Michelin says can be up to a whole winter longer than competitors.

The rubber is made with "Flex-Ice 2.0," which is a low-temperature, full-silica formulation; and "EverWinterGrip" rubber inclusion technology, which is a stiff, high-density silica and carbon black compound that resists thermal degradation in warmer temperatures, like highway driving above freezing. Silica in snow tires also aids in traction.

Michelin X-Ice Snows are available in 127 sizes from 14 to 22 inches, in H or T (130 or 118 MPH), depending on the size, and have a 40,000-mile treadwear warranty. We're running the 205/55R16 94H XL size on our winter beater, a FWD six-speed 2014 Mazda5.

Our X-Ices got their first exposure to snow on a December 2022 Christmas tree run. We started in the rain at an elevation of about 780 feet, and headed up five miles of mountain singletrack dirt road to use our harvest permit from a wilderness area. The rain changed over to light snow at the base of the mountain, and accumulated to a couple of inches by the time we were back down. The tires plowed easily through slippery mud, as long as we turned off the traction control and let them spin. Braking was uneventful. In dry or above-freezing conditions over the next two weeks, we found them easy to live with, and both quieter and less bouncy-feeling than Blizzak WS90s.

Two weeks later, we put our life on the line.

We knew—as did most of Eastern North America—that a major winter storm was on the way. We made a final supplies run, and got caught in a changeover from rain to a blizzard. The 17 miles back to home base were in some of the worst winter driving we've ever done, with a layer of ice on the road, heavy slush, and whiteout conditions. This would have been a workout for any tire, and there were times when then we lost forward progress due to the traction control limiting wheelspin as the tires (and everything else) packed up at low speed. Sometimes you do need wheelspin to clear your tread, so turning it off kept us going.

And we did keep going, at one point passing three spun-out cars in a stretch locally known as Death Valley. We won't say the Michelins made the drive easy, but they did make it possible.

Since the storm, it's largely been above freezing. We've found the X-Ice Snows to be excellent in cold and wet conditions, and essentially unnoticeable on the highway. They're also doing great on the mud bogs that our rural dirt roads have turned into.

We're pretty sure that any tire that brought us through the Blizzard of '22 is good enough for us to recommend. They did take a fair amount of weight to balance, but we also did it at a garage that uses old-school clip weights, and not beads or stick-ons, so we're not going to draw any conclusions from that. We'll post another update in February when, we hope, we've been able to drive them in more typical winter conditions but at least for now, they're as good as anything else on the market.

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