Falken WildPeak AT3w Detailed Review

Falken Wildpeak AT3w provides the best purpose of an all terrain tire. It’s gets you through tough terrains off road and at the same time, provides you a smoother and very gripping ride on highways. The tire focuses on every thing and provides some of the features which you don’t see anywhere else. That’s why this tire got so popular without company investing a lot. We are going to cover all those factors here.

As an tire engineer, who test AT tires a lot, I can tell you that you can never go wrong with Falken Wildpeak AT3w. With this tire, the company focused on wet wear and winter performance, and I have to tell ya, it really nails it the first two “W”. I’ll talk about wear in a sec, as it’s slightly complicated. It offers amazing wet traction on pavements and at the same time has multiple biters to help it crawl on the toughest terrains out there. The Falken Wildpeak AT3w is simply the best of both worlds.

And after a lot of consideration, and looking at almost all other A/T tires out there, I finalized that this tire deserves the top position in my extensive list of best all terrain tires.

Things you can not miss on this tire (The Good and the Bad):

• Falken Wildpeak AT3w is the king of wet roads and rocks. The tire provides off the charts values there.
• It’s 3PMSF rated, and it provides ample traction there as well.
• The tire’s dry handling steering response could improve a little bit, and same would go with wear (but this depends on so many factors).

For Your Info: The Wildpeak A/T3w is being replaced by the new A/T4W.

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Tread Appearance

The Falken Wildpeak AT3w has a very unique design. It’s tread is taken up by a lot of real estate, with shoulder blocks which make wide and deep longitudinal channels.

These shoulder blocks provide most of the wet and lateral traction, which the tire is so famous for.

These have full depth interlocked sipes which make it’s blocks flexible in rain and winter.

The central area are closely packed slightly and is filled with sharp notches all over the tread.

On the sidewalls, things get interesting for this tire, as they have very biting lugs which provide impressive rock traction (discusses it in it’s section below).

Also mud, although is not a strong suit for an all terrain tire, Wildpeak does okay, as it has the deepest tread you’ll ever find in any of the popular ones out there.

Explore other A/Ts compared with Wildpeak AT3w.

Total sizes

The Falken Wildpeak AT3w provides you a lot of sizes and they come with all sorts of load ranges. Talking about rim sizes they are currently coming in 15″,16″,17″,18″,19″,20″,21″ and even 22″

The most sizes come in 17 inches.

In total the tire provides you with 76 sizes currently (I’ll update once any of this changes).

In 22 inches, there is currently just one size available 285/45R22, and its also only in XL load rating, and it has the smallest of all tread depth of 12/32″.

(Quickly learn how to read tire sizes).

Also if we talk about tread depth, the smallest after that 22″, is 13/32″ and they come in a few sizes, only one in 15″ and a couple in 16 and 17 and on two sizes in 20.

Other sizes go up to 19/32″ in tread depth, which is a lot. In fact this much is mostly seen on the mud terrain tires.

The load rating ranges up to all the way to F.

And the weight is seen as little as 35 lbs and it goes up to as much as 79.4 lbs (in 37×12.50R18LT, rated E, best for extreme off roading).

And yes worth reminding, the tire comes with UTQG of 660 A B.

Dry Performance

The on road performance is jaw breaking, and it really surprises you as the tire’s appearance tells you otherwise.

It’s sharp biters and wide spacing between all its ribs, which does not provide as much contact with the pavement, still have the capability to give you ample traction.

On pavements, the only room for improvement I see is it’s steering response, I discussed below.

Dry Traction

Dry traction is basically a mixture of a lot of other factors, but two main ones are grip and handling. The grip of a tire is calculated by stopping it from a specific distance, or in my case 50mph. The handling is calculated by how well the tire covers specific distance in terms of time (both in straight and curvy laps).

Falken Wildpeak AT3w is very impressive on the dry. The tire provides a very nice lateral stability, where you understand that the car is in control, even when pushed to the limits.

The only thing an expert driver would feel with these boys (on highway curves), would be the steering response. They are not too communicative in terms of responsiveness.

The slight steering changes takes a bit of time to inspect, as the feedback is slower. But that’s something which can be overlooked, given how aggressive the tires looks. I personally like the overall ride firmness and the g forces it gives on corners.

Wet Traction

The more aggressive the tire gets, the more wet capabilities it loses. That’s why when you look at Mud terrain tires, they provide little to no wet traction.

And in case of All Terrain tires, although there are some which provide very nice traction, they are mostly just good on roads.

The Falken Wildpeak makes a very nice compromise between these two areas, it’s not even a compromise, they perform really well on wet and off road as well.

Under normal conditions in heavy rain, these tires won’t engage the traction control of your truck, even once.

This credit goes to it’s massive shoulder blocks which have very interconnected sipes. These sipes all full depth and they are a lot in number and as the tire corners, these sipes open and close according to the g forces, enhancing stability and grip.

The water underneath have no chance to go anywhere, as these slits create up a suction and clear water from the tire’s path.

Wildpeak also provides 2 different siping designs and they both work with the tire’s high density silica to provide off the charts performance on wet asphalts.

Hydroplaning

Another aspect of wet highway traction is hydroplaning, which simply tells you, how fast you can go over standing water without floating or losing traction.

That’s why it’s measured with float speeds. The water needs gaps to move out of the tire and Falken Wildpeak AT3w provides the deepest tread in the category so there is ample spacing for water to gush out.

These tires do pretty well on both straight as well as or cornering, with no hydroplaning. You simply don’t find the need to slow down with these tires.

Noise

Noise is an another on road component which has gets a big share in overall ride quality, and Falken Wildpeak AT3w tackles it in a very cool way.

All of the tire’s blocks are slightly differently shaped, where sometimes you can’t even notice it from the naked eye. All of these variations make different sound wave frequencies, (when air particles hit the surface). And so they all cancel each other out and minimize the noise to a maximum extent.

You can learn more about that here: Are A/T tire noisy?

Moving on…

So on road even with your windows down, you will not feel too much of a noise with these tires underneath your ride.

But make sure you keep them rotated otherwise they start making a wobbling sound right after 10k miles (especially the ones with E load rating).

Impact Comfort

One thing I don’t see anyone talk about is how comfort of a ride is so much dependent on tire’s tread depth. Hear me out.

The more the tread depth, the more the softer rubber between your ride and the pavement.

So Falken Wildpeak AT3w with it’s more than enough tread depth (which goes up go 19/32″) provide a lot of rubber area for impacts to spread and dampen out.

The tire also provides a very high polymer density and these polymers act as sponges absorbing bumps and improving your ride’s quality.

Tread Longevity

Falken Wildpeak has UTGQ rating of 600, so the tire is going to last a while.

But I have to say, the tire still does wear slightly faster, as it’s high silica density (in its rubber), make its tread softer. And softer rubber is more susceptible to burning out faster.

Also keep in mind that the heat produced during the rolling of the tire and of course during towing is also a major culprit which causes a lot of wear in a tire.

Now in order to handle these issues, the Falken Wildpeak AT3w is provided with 2 main things. One, we already discussed, tread depth, where deeper rubber takes more time to rub out.

And second, the tire has a heat related technology, where on sidewalls, the tire’s structure become a very good point for the majority of heat to get dissipated.

Both these factors allow Wildpeak to have a decent tread life span.

Fuel Efficiency

Moving form a lighter tire, say from a touring tire to all terrain tires, you are definitely going to compromise a little on fuel economy.

Fuel economy is directly proportional to the rolling resistance of the tire. The good thing is Falken Wildpeak AT3w would not give you a below average economy here. It’s rubber is optimized for that.

For Your Info: All other AT tires I reviewed, by the way, the best fuel efficiency was seen on Firestone Destination AT2. These boys really pay for themselves.

Durability

Durability of Falken Wildpeak AT3w is often under-rated. Where in fact these tire are quite durable.

When you open up these tires, you are going to see 2 polymaide layers under the rubber, under those you’ll find 2 steel belts, and under those belts, you’ll find a hard casing of 2 more layers of polyester.

This last layer of polyester also covers the sidewalls and that’s why the tire is considered “2 ply” sidewall. But let me tell you it’s actually 4 ply if you think about it, as the tire also has 2 additional layers which are dedicated to just sidewalls.

These layers are also made out of polyamide and they run around the rim protector of the tire.

In my experience I have even seen these sidewalls tearing open, and I have owned a couple of sets and test them out frequently.

Winter Performance

With a good polymer the compound of Falken Wildpeak is able to keep it’s tread from freezing up and go stiff. That’s why the tire is also rated with 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake symbol.

Stiffness is very bad for snow traction that why winter tires exist which such spongy compound.

The strong C shaped biters of the tire also trap the snow and make a good friction as snow flakes stick better on snow.

The tire’s deeper tread also helps here with deeper snow where good deal of snow is scooped out of the tire (each of it’s shoulder block is staggered on it self).

Off Road Performance

These tires are a beast off road. The Falken Wildpeak AT3w aggressive tread really meet your expectations.

The tire’s saw tooth edges on the sides and sidewall lugs are very good at grabbing things. And it’s softer compound which helps in winter also provides stickiness enhancing friction on all terrains.

Mud Driving

Notoriously AT tires don’t do good on mud. But Falken Wildpeak is not too bad here. Even though you can not expect a mud terrain tire’s performance out of them, they are not going to do too bad.

The tire provide wide and deep outer channels and these tread voids also get interconnected with the central lateral voids.

So while the multiple notches break down the mud, the mud evacuates through these channels with a little ease.

The Sharp side bitters of the Wildpeak which have ramps make this tire a good digger.

So a scooping affect occurs with them (as well as the sidewall lugs), so mud is thrown back which pushes the tire forward. But I am talking about only light mud here.

Sand Driving

Deep sand is not a place for newbies, as driving on this terrain requires a lot of skills. I learned this the hard way.

The first thing that you do on sand, is you air down your tires. On sand, the best traction is achieved by producing more rubber to sand contact, that’s tire with minimum lugs do so good here.

For Your Info: Paddle tires are best for sand, if you ever wondered.

Falken Wildpeak AT3w is a slightly hard to move on sand, the tire’s sharp edges on the sides are good diggers. And on sand you don’t want that to happen, as you don’t want to dig, you want to make a forward momentum.

Luckily its several biters and wide lateral shoulder spacing help this tire a little bit with that, the sidewall lugs under lowered PSI also provide the scooping needed to keep you going.

But note, these tires are hard to maneuver on sloppy sand dunes.

Traction on Rocks

Falken Wildpeak AT3w is a champ on rocky terrains, In fact, after Nitto Ridge Grappler, I like this tire the most.

The tire’s stickier rubber really helps in gripping and the U shaped sidewall lugs come in handy when tire is aired down.

The tire’s full depth sipes also flex and bite the surface on a smaller scale. And it’s chamfered edges and sharp corners grab the rocks from all sides.

Also worth reminding, that during lowered pressure, most of the tires out there are going to generate a lot of heat, which damages the tire, but Falken Wildpeak offers heat differs on sides to handle this problem.

I have no seen this feature in any other tire yet.

And of course, with four ply inner constriction (as discussed above in durability) allows you to confidently take thees tires everywhere.

Although the missing stone ejectors of the tire does not provide these a good experience on gravel, especially when you get faster, but the tire has a decent chip resistant rubber which adds to it’s off road protection.

To Conclude

The Falken Wildpeak AT3w is simply awesome. And I don’t usually use that word.

This tire actually is pretty awesome as it deals with all types of terrains and at the same time, does not disappoint off-road. Plus it has impressive on road traction and comfort and provides ample snow traction and is awarded with 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake rating.

It provides features which no body does, the 2 extra ply on sides and heat diffuses really separates this tire from the crowd.

Overall, you can never go wrong with this tire, no matter you go off road or stay on highways most of your time. Reach out to me if you have any questions.