Cooper Endeavor Plus Review

Cooper Endeavor Plus is entry-level crossover/SUV All-Season tire made for your everyday drives, offering a quiet and smooth experience. It promises secure and steady handling in wet conditions, making your rides safer. The handy indicator lets you know the tread life left, adding to your peace of mind.

Tire Sizes

The Cooper Endeavor Plus comes in 16 to 22 inches wheels, and they come with the following specifications.

• Speed ratings: T, H and V.
• Load ratings: SL and XL.
• Tread depth range: 10.5 to 12.5/32″.
• Weight range: 22 to 42 lbs.
• Treadwear warranty: 65k miles.
• UTQG rating: 680 AA.

Tread Design

Speaking of the tire’s outer shell, the Endeavor Plus comes with a 5 rib design.

In the middle there are 3 longitudinal ribs which although seem to be divided up by lateral grooves, they are actually not all the way.

Basically all these ribs are sitting on a continuous running secondary rubber layers, and they can be seen after 5/32″ of the wear.

This allows the lateral grooves to act as in-groove notches, and powerful biters.

Though the sipes are full depth, which allow for maximized wet traction.

These sipes although are interlocking in the middle, they get to be rectilinear on the shoulders.

Speaking of which, the shoulders are also pretty packed up. They although have lateral voids in between, they are joined up by a continuous running rib (moving towards the middle).

This actually blocks the air to come in and produce noise. Cooper calls it the whisper grooves technology.

Find all the tires compared with Cooper Endeavor Plus.

Highway Performance

The Cooper Endeavor Plus excels across multiple aspects of performance, whether it’s dry traction, steering response, or stability at high speeds. Let’s get into these factors.

Dry Grip

The effectiveness of a tire’s dry grip is directly correlated with the contact patch it forms with the road surface. In simple terms, the more the tread interacts with the road, the better the friction generated, leading to improved grip.

And improving that friction are the tread biters.

Now, the Cooper Endeavor Plus comes with an impressive combination of both these components.

It establishes an impressive amount of rubber contact with the road, where its middle most rib is almost made continuous running, (as lugs there have reinforced foundational supports underneath).

Whereas the interlocking in-groove notches these (central ribs) provide added longitudinal traction, which translates into impressive braking and acceleration efficacy.

Steering Response

When it comes to handling and steering feedback, the Cooper Endeavor Plus is good enough. Let’s put it like that.

I mean, its not what one would call “sporty”, but it’s still pretty precise and to the point.

Don’t get me wrong, the tire provides one of the best lateral traction values (measured with g forces), compared to others in the category, but with slightly limited steering response, it’s overall handling trails back a little.

That’s why its overall lap times (on average), comes in middle (of the tires in its all season category).

Wet Traction

While the Cooper Endeavor Plus incorporates interlocking sipes throughout its tread, enhancing overall driving control, it falls short in wet conditions, in terms of grip, due to its stiffer rubber compound.

So what’s happening?

Well, sipes play a crucial role here, as they absorb and disperse water from underneath the tire. To perform this function efficiently, they need to flex easily (or properly contract and expand), thereby creating suction to remove water.

Unfortunately, the stiffer rubber composition on the Cooper Endeavor Plus inhibits the sipes’ ability to flex effectively, making them less efficient in soaking up water.

But still, the tire is saved by its superb wet steering response, which in fact allows it have very impressive overall handling times (as seen on lap tests).

And yes, the tire also does pretty great in another crucial aspect of wet traction, the hydroplaning resistance.

It comes with pretty voided up design constituting of 4 wide longitudinal grooves interconnected with each other by lateral tread voids.

This allows water to effectively channeled away from the tread, particularly in a lateral direction, leading to both great straight and curved aqua speeds.

So overall, although the tire lacks a little wet grip, its overall performance is pretty great.

Fuel Economy

Fuel usage depends on a lot of variables, where of course, the rolling resistance is there, there’s also speed/load ratings, tread depth, tire’s weight and structure and so on.

That’s why I am going to be talking relatively here, considering all sizes.

So the Cooper Endeavor Plus comes out with, simply put, average rolling resistance values and therefore MPGs (comparing other tires in its category).

I mean there are no complaints here, but there are still better tires out there (offering superior fuel economy), like for example the Firestone Destination LE3 (review).

Winter Traction

To achieve enhanced traction in winter conditions, highway-terrains often borrow certain features from specialized winter tires. These typically include:

• A softer rubber compound that remains resilient in the frigid temperatures, so it could bite the snow.
• A multitude of sipes that offer micro-level grip mostly on icy terrains.
• Notches and grooves designed to trap snow, to provide snow to snow contact.

For your info: Snow sticks better on other snow particles, instead of rubber. So this contact is important for the tires to properly grip on snowy tracks.

Now out of these elements, the Cooper Endeavor Plus incorporates a few of them. So although its not able to achieve the 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake certification, it still does okay on mild snowy roads.

It’s numerous interlocking siping carrying multiple angles and in-groove notches (comprised of zigzag designs) offered pretty decent overall traction abilities with ample snow to snow contact.

That’s why there are no complaints in the snow braking and acceleration departments, though it could use a little more refined steering.

I mean, although (on tests) it stayed balanced on turns, once it got out of the way, it was pretty hard to recover.

Overall Comfort Performance

Highway-terrain tires are generally engineered to prioritize a smooth and comfortable ride on paved roads. And here the Cooper Endeavor Plus comes with mixed results.

I mean although it does offer a decent and quiet enough ride, its not able to effectively soak up the road bumps. Let me discuss both separately.

On Road Vibrations

So when it comes to on-road comfort, there are two things involved, how well the tire settles the road imperfections, and how much stability it offers while maneuvering.

Now although the tire offers pretty stable ride, thanks to its above average steering control, it’s stiffer internal construction (especially its rigid cap ply), can not offer a good enough ability to effectively absorb the road shocks.

Though one thing to note is that sizes having tread depth greater than 12/32″ surprisingly do a lot better here.

Noise Generation

Noise is undeniably a significant factor that contributes to the overall quality of a ride. While the insulation of a vehicle’s cabin plays a role in mitigating road noise, an inherently loud tire will still be noticeable.

Now here the Cooper Endeavor Plus comes out with acceptable noise levels on rougher, cross-cut concrete surfaces but it still produces louder, more distinctive cyclical noise when transitioning to smoother road surfaces.

Now noise is a very complicated subject, so I am not going in its details.

But yes, I should mention that the cross-cut concrete typically has patterns cut into the surface, which can produce noise as the tire’s tread passes over them. And in this case, the tire emits a noise level which is acceptable and not overly intrusive.

And once the tire moved to smoother road surfaces, it exhibited more of a repetitive noise that occurs with each rotation of the tire. This noise is usually due to the tire’s tread pattern interacting with the road surface.

Tread Wear

When considering tread life, two crucial factors should be taken into account.

• Firstly, it’s essential to consider the rate at which the tire’s rubber deteriorates or its susceptibility to rapid wear.
• And secondly, it’s critical to note how long it will take for the tire to wear down to 2/32″, the legal limit in the United States, up to which you can keep your tires.

In this context, the Cooper Endeavor Plus, composed of a tougher rubber compound and reinforced foundations beneath all its lugs, demonstrates substantial resistance to wear.

And with a tread depth of 12/32″, it ensures considerable duration before a replacement is needed.

Side Note: One of a very nice feature of this tire is the Wear Square Indicator, which conveniently informs you about the remaining tread life.

Off Road Performance

It’s essential to remember that highway all-season tires are generally not aggressive enough to adequately handle challenging off-road terrains.

However, the Cooper Endeavor Plus offers a certain degree of off-road capability.

I mean it offers enough biters in the form of lateral (interlocking) groove notches to manage gravelly roads, sandy conditions, very light rocky terrains, and even a little amount of mud.

But keep in mind, the tire is missing with LT sizes, so you’re only stuck with XL (lacking towing benefits).

Conclusion

So what do we have here?

Well, the Cooper Endeavor Plus is a well-rounded tire with remarkable dry grip and tread life, attributed to its sophisticated structure and stiffer rubber composition.

The tire although gives you a reliable winter and wet traction, it can still improve on its steering response there.

Though that does not go for dry, where its overall handling feedback is pretty impressive.

And yes, same goes for the tire’s fuel economy and tread life. I mean there are no complaints there as well.

But yes, the tire can still improve its comfort performance a little, in both noise and impact performance areas.