With the Falken EuroAll Season AS210, is a great update, (to its predecessor), coming with an 8% improvement in aquaplaning resistance and a 6% enhancement in wet braking capabilities. But does this tire truly rise above its peers in the highly competitive all-season category? It’s time to explore its full potential.
Overall, the tire offers impressive tread longevity, strong hydroplaning resistance, and good winter traction, but requires enhancements in dry braking, wet handling, and noise reduction.
Table of Contents
Available Tire Sizes
The Falken EuroAll Season AS210 comes in 104 sizes in 13 to 20 inches, with:
- Speed ratings: T, H, V and W.
- Load ratings: SL and XL.
- Weight range: 16 to 33 lbs.
- Tread depth: 10/32″ on all.
- UTQG: 540 A A.
- Treadwear warranty: None for now.
Note: All it’s sizes have the M+S and 3PMSF ratings.
Key Takeaway
So overall, the Falken EuroAll Season AS210 is a great tire, when it comes to:
- Tread longevity, where the tire is pretty notable, exceeding the 50,000-mile mark easily.
- Hydroplaning resistance, thanks to its well-engineered directional tread pattern that efficiently channels water away from it’s middle.
- Winter traction, thanks to it’s tread equipped with numerous biting edges and interlocking sipes that optimize snow-on-snow contact.
Though the tire needs improvements in:
- Dry braking (or longitudinal grip), as the tire creates a lot of momentum with it’s heavier structure.
- Wet traction and handling, as the stiffer rubber composition and non-full-depth sipes limit the tire’s performance here.
- Noise comfort, where the tire comes with a design that leads to pronounced in-groove resonance and cavity noise, making it one of the louder tires in its grand touring AS category.
Construction Features
The Falken EuroAll Season AS210 comes with a pretty nice looking directional pattern.
It forms a curving V shaped lugs, which although have prominent lateral voids towards the shoulders, they get pretty closed up, towards the middle.
This way, the tire enhances the grip, forming consistent rubber-to-road contact, particularly form its central area, enhancing dry grip.
For wet grip, the tire features a lot of wave-like siping. These go in deep enough, but not all the way (down to the tread’s base, I mean).
Same is the case with the zigzag biters/notches you see (running parallel to those sipes), cutting the lugs, joining lateral channels together.
Though with inter-connectivity of (lateral swooping/curved voids), you do get efficient water dispersal properties, that for sure.
And yes, the central (most) lateral voids also help with that.
Basically, to enhance tire’s handling, and tread longevity, all lugs have reinforced foundations, (as they sit on a secondary rubber layer underneath), so all tread features aren’t full depth.
Tread Life
Now when it comes to touring AS tires, the EuroAll Season AS210 stands out for its exceptional tread life.
And since it already comes as a budget pick, this enhanced tread life further adds to its overall “value”. In fact, its the main reason, why I included this tire in my list of best grand touring all-season tires.
I mean this tire typically surpasses the 50k-mile mark with relative ease, an impressive feat for a premium all-season tire that also offers 3PMSF rating.
So it makes sense why the tire comes with a treadwear rating of 500, indicative of its durable composition.
It utilizes a rubber blend that is especially resistant to wear. Although this “less flexible” rubber may slightly detract from wet and winter performance, this is where it pays off, literally (adding to it’s value).
Yet, there is room for improvement, as I feel it’s overall weight could be lowered.
It’s heavier construction basically puts more stress on the lugs, as they rub against the road, and sure, the tire is saved with a durable rubber here, it could have done a lot better with a lighter build.
Dry Performance
Overall dry performance is two parts, traction and handling.
Let me explain them all one by one.
Longitudinal Grip
Longitudinal traction refers to a tire’s capability to sustain adhesion as it propels forward in a linear/straight-line motion.
This critical performance characteristic is influenced by a variety of elements including tread design, composition, and most notably, the central section of the tire’s footprint.
Moreover, this form of traction can be quantified by examining a tire’s braking proficiency.
Now, having said that, it can be explained why the Falken EuroAll Season AS210 is below average here (when comparing it with other all season tires, I mean).
Primarily, the tire’s heavier weight is a drawback here. I mean a lighter tire would naturally be more nimble and easier to slow down due to reduced momentum. (In other words, the heavier the tire, the more effort is required to slow it down).
Another area with room for improvement involves its tread pattern, where the tire might achieve enhanced braking smoothness if the lugs had chamfered edges.
Currently, the lateral channels in the tire’s middle (tread area) press against each other without these chamfered edges, leading to a less refined braking experience, compared to what I observed with some of it’s competitors.
Now the funny thing is, these lateral voids meant to function as in-groove notches/biters, which should help with traction, but ironically, they do the opposite.
Overall Handling
When navigating through corners, there is a pronounced shift of the tire’s weight onto its sides (from the middle). This shift enables the tread blocks on the shoulder (ribs), to forge a more robust engagement with the road surface.
Now, this brings two questions to light.
- How much of the shoulder area is there, meeting with the road?
- How stable is that connection? (reflecting the tread’s overall pliability).
The first aspect tells you about the tire’s lateral traction, and here Falken AS210 needs some improvement, given that its design features significantly voided shoulder blocks, which compromises its effectiveness in this domain.
The second point pertains to the tire’s steering feedback, and there are no complaints here.
As steering depends on the lug flexibility, this tire is doing great here, as it comes with a sturdier construction, (with a stiffer rubber sitting beneath).
This keeps the lugs from bending, when the tire is introduced with steering inputs, (meaning less delayed response times).
Additionally, the tire’s rounded contact patch design aids in a more fluid weight transition across the tire, promoting better stability during cornering.
Nevertheless, there is potential for further refinement. I mean, the tire’s handling performance could reach higher levels with a reduction in weight and more compact voids in the shoulder tread blocks, which would sharpen steering precision even further.
Despite these areas for enhancement, the tire does show a marked improvement in handling over its dry braking capacity, presenting a better-rounded performance in active driving situations.
Wet Performance
The evaluation of a tire’s wet performance hinges on several aspects: hydroplaning resistance, as well as overall wet traction, handling, and steering response.
Let’s discuss all of these one by one.
Hydroplaning Resistance
Now water is not compressible, so it has to be evacuated out of the tread efficiently, otherwise it would come in between (the tread, and the road), causing a tire to float or hydroplane.
Now, tires combat this risk with specially designed grooves that channel water away from the footprint, and the Falken EuroAll Season AS210 benefiting from a well engineered directional tread pattern, excels in this regard.
While it’s lateral grooves provide clear pathways for water to leave out, the tire rounded contact patch further aids the whole (water clearing) process.
Simply put, it not only enhances the tire’s grip on the road by concentrating pressure efficiently but also accelerates water ejection as it passes through the tire’s curved lateral grooves and is dispersed via the shoulder voids.
And since these voids are interconnected with each other, you also get water displacement longitudinally, while it’s thrown out sideways.
Wet traction and Handling
Now, although, most of the water is pushed out with the help of grooves, the residual moisture trapped beneath the tire lugs can still compromise grip.
And this is where sipes demonstrate their value.
These are actually small cuts/slits in the tread, that pull in the remaining water, helping prevent slipping by contracting and expanding (creating suction), to soak up the (remaining) water particles.
Meaning, to achieve optimal wet performance, tires should have a generous number of well-designed sipes. And these sipes must be made from a supple rubber compound as well, (to allow for the necessary expansion and contraction, enhancing their water-absorption capabilities).
However, the Falken EuroAll Season AS210 struggles in this aspect.
Despite its tread featuring an abundance of sipes, (like a winter tire), they’re not full-depth, as the sipes rest on a stiffer rubber base.
This rigidity is compounded by the tire’s composition, which includes less silica, reducing the flexibility of the tread elements and ultimately detracting from its wet performance.
Though the good thing is, the tire comes with superior water dispersal from grooves, as I talked about earlier, so there’s less burden on sipes to begin with.
So overall, you get an average performance here. And to put things in to perspective, it falls short by merely two seconds compared to the Vredestein Quatrac Pro (review), which I have rated as the best in the grand touring all-season category.
Winter Performance
The suitability of a tire for wintry conditions is determined by its performance in snow and ice, particularly in terms of handling, steering precision, and acceleration.
In these aspects, the EuroAll Season AS210 delivers a good enough performance, justifying its 3-Peak Mountain Snowflake (3PMSF) certification.
For Your Info: This 3PMSF symbol indicates that the tire meets specific snow traction performance requirements and is designed for use in severe snow conditions.
The Falken’s tire is well-appointed with a high number of biting edges, where the strategically designed interlocking sipes, predominately, are adept at trapping snow within the tread.
This design basically encourages snow-on-snow contact, which is vital for traction in winter conditions, as snowflakes, with their intricate structures, lock together more readily than (tread’s) rubber, leading to improved friction and grip.
However, while the tire’s rubber compound is thermally adaptive and soft enough for cold temperatures, it can still be improved, as it’s slightly short of the pliability found in some of the top-tier premium tires (with the same 3PMSF rating).
I mean, a use of softer compound could enhance the tire’s ability to conform to the irregularities of icy surfaces, thereby improving overall winter performance, further.
Noise Comfort
At its core, tire noise is a byproduct of air interaction with the tire’s structure. Technically, as the tire rolls, air is compressed within its tread pattern, and the resulting turbulence against the tread walls is the primary source of the noise you hear.
Having said that, for the Falken EuroAll Season AS210 is relatively very loud.
It’s design with more voided up shoulder lugs, particularly, allow more air particles to play around, consequently resulting in a more pronounced in-groove resonance.
And this resonance is further intensified by the tire’s heavily siped tread pattern, which emit growling noise on their own.
And yes, the tire’s internal construction is also not sound friendly as well, where it leads to noticeable cavity noise. This refers to the resonant sound waves produced within the hollow chamber of the tire itself, akin to the echoing noise heard when bouncing a basketball.
Which is I think a good example here, as both a tire and a basketball contain trapped air within a cavity, and when this air is compressed against the surface, you get a distinct resonating tone.
That tone is actually exactly what you hear out of Falken tires, especially when the tire meets road imperfections.
So yes, despite the tire features better more advanced pitch sequencing technology, it’s still one of the loudest tires in the grand touring category.
For Your Info: This technology involves varying the angles of the lugs, which disrupts the pattern of the sound waves created by air hitting the tire. By altering the frequency of these waves, it ensures that they don’t synchronize to amplify the noise, resulting in a more varied and less resonant sound profile.
Ending Note
In summary, the Falken EuroAll Season AS210 offers a mixed bag of traits across various performance metrics.
Its dry performance is compromised by less than optimal longitudinal grip and braking smoothness, partly due to its heavier construction and tread design. Though, it still maintains decent handling capabilities.
In wet conditions, it achieves average performance, with excellent hydroplaning resistance but limited sipe effectiveness due to a stiffer rubber composition.
And yes this also causes problems for this tire on snowy and icy terrains, though the tire with directional pattern does okay here.
Moreover, it’s robust tread offers superb tread life, allowing it to reach 50k mile mark easily.
