Goodyear Reliant All-Season Review

I recently had the opportunity to explore the capabilities of Goodyear’s Reliant All-Season tires, renowned for their robust durability and versatile performance across different weather conditions. Here’s an in-depth look at my journey with these exceptional standard touring all season tires.

Quick Takeaway

So, the Goodyear Reliant performs really well in the following areas, according to my tests (being a tire engineer).

• Dry Traction: With its lightweight and firm composition, it offers superior grip on dry roads, and decent steering response.
• Fuel Consumption & Tread Life: Its lightweight design and compact tread voids contribute to reduced rolling resistance, making it a fuel-efficient option. This very feature also helps with tread life.
• Impact Comfort: The tire provides a nice blend of stiffness and softness in its composition, providing appreciable impact comfort performance (though needs to improve in terms of noise).

However, it requires improvement in:

• Noise Comfort: It’s one of the weakest performance aspect of this tire.
• Wet Performance: Although equipped with full-depth sipes for wet grip, its performance could be enhanced further by incorporating a higher silica content.
• Ride Quality: The tire’s firm rubber compound doesn’t absorb bumps and shocks with good enough efficacy.
• Curved Aquaplaning: With longitudinally aligned ribs, the tire doesn’t offer good enough sideways water removal, so the curved float speeds are limited.

Tread Design

The Goodyear Reliant All Season offers a 5 rib symmetric tread design, where you get narrower three ribs (or block columns) in the middle.

These middle ribs have blocks, which run in pairs, and they are joined up with each other from underneath, adding to the tires directional stability and grip.

I am personally really impressed by the on-center feel they give out due to those secondary rubber they provide underneath ribs. Which basically means, they stabilize/straighten-out fairly quickly, post cornering. (relative to direct competitors),

These longitudinally elongated lugs carry similar laterally arranged siping, which vary in angle from rib to rib. And togehter they form 4 circumferential grooves with the shoulders, with the otuer two, more aggressive, joining up with the lateral voids of shoulders.

Speaking of which, the shoulders are pretty bulky and are equipped with curved in-groove notches, along with multi-directional siping slits, allowing for grip from all angles.

Useful Info on Sizes

So the Reliant All-Season is a radial tire, that comes in almost 40 total sizes with following specs.

• Rim sizes: 15 to 20 inches.
• Speed ratings: T, H and V.
• Load range: SL and XL.
• UTQG: 600 A A.
• Tread depth range: 10/32″ on all.
• Treadwear warranty: 65k miles.

Side Note: If you’re new to my site, and looking for an perfect all-season tires, for your specific needs, I highly recommend starting out here: https://tiredriver.com/all-season-tires/

Wet Performance

Wet performance encompasses how well a tire performs under wet conditions, including its ability to prevent hydroplaning and maintain grip on wet surfaces.

Let’s check out both these factors in greater detail.

Wet Grip

The wet grip requires two main things: ample siping and tread flexibility.

Sipes essentially soak up water particles (at a micro level). They basically compress against the surface, expelling air in them out, creating pressure differential, which sucks up water particles. So yes, their flexibility is important aspect here.

Having said that, the Goodyear Reliant is equipped with full-depth sipes (thin slits cut into the rubber), which are arranged at various angles across the tread, enhancing its grip and adaptability to a variety of wet road conditions.

Nevertheless, the wet traction exhibited by this tire could see further enhancement through the incorporation of a higher silica, and Silane additives in its composition.

This modification would make the rubber more pliant and “flexible,” consequently improving its performance on wet surfaces.

For Your Info: Because of the tire’s lacking wet traction (and noise comfort too, as you’d see in the upcoming sections), it couldn’t make it to my list of top standard touring all-season tires.

Hydroplaning Resistance

Hydroplaning is simply the floating of the tire. So, it’s pretty dangerous. To avoid it, tires are designed with grooves that allow water to escape.

The Goodyear Reliant AS possesses four evenly distributed channels that are effective at removing a substantial amount of water from the tread, preventing hydroplaning.

These channels are also somewhat interconnected by lateral grooves, though with a compact structure, they don’t offer as much sideways water evacuation.

Thus, it makes sense why the tire only performed notably well in straight water tests, and for curved paths, its performance can be improved (as seen in curved water tests).

Winter Traction

When assessing how well a tire performs in snowy environments, several important factors like grip, handling, and the surfaces it’ll encounter need consideration.

Whether it’s soft snow or icy roads, a “worthy” tire should excel across various conditions.

Now the Goodyear Reliant All-Season might not be the top performer in snowy conditions, but it certainly offers noteworthy performance that won’t let you down, I mean compared to other tires in its standard touring all-season category.

See all different types of all-season categories here, and end the confusion once and for all.

Even though it doesn’t have the 3 peak mountain snowflake certification like the majority of other standard tires out there, it remains a solid option for driving in snow, mainly due to its in-groove notches and the substantial sipes that connect them.

These features essentially grab up the snow particles to form snow-to-snow contact (which results in greater frictional forces), offering excellent grip and control.

Road Noise

The main source of noise is the movement of air particles within the tread.

Air particles infiltrate, predominantly through shoulder voids, and collide with the tread walls, producing unwanted sound waves.

And this is one of the weakest points of the Goodyear Reliant AS. I mean the tire really needs to improve here with multiple tones emerging with varying speeds, some cyclic tones, and cavity + growling sounds.

And that’s because of two things, first the tire doesn’t offer ridges between its shoulder blocks like most of its quieter competitors.

Plus it doesn’t offer good enough pitch sequencing, meaning the ribs aren’t engineered for variable pitch generation. So any air particles hitting the tread blocks from different areas don’t create varying tones in a way so they could effectively cancel out each other.

Fuel Consumption

Fuel consumption is closely tied to rolling resistance, which is significantly influenced by various factors, including the tire’s structure, encompassing aspects such as tread composition and weight.

The Goodyear Reliant All-Season excels in this area, thanks to its lightweight design and compact tread voids.

With a lighter weight, lugs have less pressure on them, and with compactly placed lugs, that weight gets more evenly distributed. As a result, lugs rub against the road with limited friction.

And since the tire also offers a relatively stiffer rubber composition, the lugs aren’t prone to flexing, which saves the fuel energy that could have been used for the rolling of the tire.

I talked about it more here: https://tiredriver.com/do-all-season-tires-use-more-fuel/

Dry Traction

Dry traction refers to a tire’s ability to grip the road in dry conditions. It is determined by various factors, including the tire’s structure, materials used, and tread design. It gets measured by braking distances.

Now, let me tell you why the Goodyear Reliant is doing so great here, as its characterized by lighter construction, firmer composition, diminished tread depth, and reduced tread voids.

Here’s how each attribute contributes.

A lighter weight means the tire generates less inertia, which, when paired with a firmer compound, allows the lugs to maintain a stronger grip on the road, enhancing steering responsiveness.

The tire’s reduced tread depth further facilitates this, preventing excessive bending of the lugs during cornering or braking, which results in more direct steering.

In other words, you get limited under and oversteering, and with it, quicker steering feedback.

Tread Life And Durability

The Goodyear Reliant All-Season exhibits slightly reduced rolling resistance values, a factor that positively impacts tread wear.

Essentially, its lighter weight means each lug endures less pressure, minimizing friction with the road and subsequently slowing rubber degradation.

However, there is room for improvement in its tread depth of 10/32″, as its shallower rubber depth would reach the 2/32″ replacement level quicker.

On the other hand, when we look at durability, this tire also has strong internal steel belts, a continuous protective layer, and extra reinforcement around the edges. All of these aspects come together to make it a sturdy (enough) and puncture-resistant tire.

Though it’s just another average internal construction that you see in the majority of other all-season tires out there.

For Your Info: Out of all the tires in its category, the Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack provides the longest lasting tread, you may review the tire here: https://tiredriver.com/bridgestone-turanza-quiettrack-review/

Ride Quality

The comfort level of a ride relies heavily on the materials used in the tire and its construction.

So softer tires do better? Well, not really, you don’t need too much of the softness here.

And this is where the Goodyear Reliant All-Season comes in. The tire comes with a softer internal build and a relatively stiffer outer rubber skin, providing more effective absorption of the bumps, acting out as a secondary suspension system for your car.

Plus the tire also comes with a dedicated inner layer made to soak up the bumps and shocks from uneven roads. Though it goes for particular sizes only.

Overall I am satisfied with the tire’s performance here.

But yes, since noise comfort is also part of the overall ride quality, that really brings down the tire’s overall scores still.

Light Off Road Traction

When considering off-road performance, it’s important to remember that all-season tires aren’t usually built to withstand the rigorous demands of tough off-road environments. However, the Goodyear Reliant All-Season seems to break this norm, showing decent ability in handling lighter off-road situations.

Fitted with a range of groove notches that act like small grippers, this tire allows you to explore gravel roads, sandy areas, and even light rocky paths to some extent, including a little fun in somewhat muddy places. These traits provide a bit of versatility, something not commonly expected from all-season tires.

But, a warning: don’t mistake these for off-road tires, which are crafted to navigate more rugged terrains with higher proficiency.

Take Home Points

The Goodyear Reliant All-Season tire is a versatile option, performing well in various conditions.

It minimizes road noise effectively due to its unique design and offers solid dry traction thanks to its lightweight and firm composition.

While its wet grip could benefit from some improvements, it has commendable hydroplaning resistance.

Moreover, it’s a fuel-efficient option, offering good durability and tread life too, though there’s room for improvement in the comfort and winter traction department.

Side Note: I always appreciate your feedback. Did you find this review helpful? Any suggestions for my next post? I also look forward to your tire related queries as well.