The Yokohama AVID Ascend GT, an all-season grand touring tire, promises improved handling and better wet braking capacity. Designed for year-long performance, it ensures a quieter and more comfortable ride, even when the weather turns wet and snowy. Let’s see if this tire is made for you.
The Yokohama AVID Ascend GT offers impressive directional grip in dry conditions, where its steering is less precise. In wet scenarios, it resists hydroplaning but falls short in braking efficiency. The tire excels in winter traction due to its specialized compound and siping. And its tread life and fuel economy is good enough. Noise levels are manageable, and the tire provides a comfortable ride by effectively dampening road vibrations.
Table of Contents
Available Sizes (Specs)
The Yokohama Avid Ascend GT comes with following specs.
- Speed ratings: H and V.
- Load ratings: SL and XL.
- Tread depth: 12/32″ on all.
- Weight range: 17 to 30 lbs.
- Treadwear warranty: 65k miles.
- UTQG rating: 740 A A.
Side Note: If you’re overwhelmed by (so many) all-season tire choices. Let me help you out. Explore my full category, I’m sure it’s would be worth your while.
Construction of the Tire
Yokohama AVID Ascend GT comes with a 5 rib, asymmetrical tread pattern.
Besides, shoulders, the 3 ribs in the middle, form 4 circumferential grooves. Where the tow ribs on the right (side of the image) have similar tread features.
They comes with lateral grooves, and in-groove notches, with slanted siping.
The remaining central rib on the left have longitudinal slits, combined with lateral siping.
The shoulder lugs are similar on both side, where they in-groove notches and lateral linear siping.
But if you look close enough, its notches on one side (right in the image, in this case) have thicker biters in comparison.
Internally, the tire features a single ply polyester casing, with 2 wide steel belts. And yes, you also get a full nylon cap ply on top as well.
Find all the All Season tires compared to Yokohama Avid Ascend GT.
Dry Performance
Dry Performance is focused on 3 areas. Tire’s directional grip, lateral traction, and overall steering feedback.
Let’s start with the first one.
Directional Grip
Directional grip refers to how efficiently a tire can stop, so this grip is measured by braking distance, (when a tire stops from a specified speed, 60 mph in my tests).
And here the most crucial factors influencing it are the tread composition, the weight of the tire, and its central tread area.
Now considering all, it makes sense why the Yokohama AVID Ascend GT is ranking among the top ones, where it featuring 3 continuous running ribs, with in groove notches and lateral siping are doing most of the job.
I mean there are lateral grooves, but all ribs are sitting on a continuous running secondary rubber layer, and so those grooves act as biters.
And that combined with the siping, you get a pretty decent overall grip.
Yes, I know, sipes are made for wet grip, but they also contribute here, where they basically open/close and bite in to the surface of the road, especially during straight line travel (as they are laterally oriented).
Lateral Grip
The lateral grip of a tire is reliant on the shoulders, which create more friction with the road as the tire corners, affecting the tire’s handling performance.
Basically as tire turns, the centripetal forces pushes the weight opposite of the turn, and so tread edges get the most weight concentration on them.
That’s why with minimalist shoulder design, the Yokohama AVID Ascend GT offers decent lateral grip, where it facilitates excellent rubber-to-road contact.
However, this superior traction doesn’t directly equate to equally impressive handling lap times, and this especially goes for this tire.
Steering Ability
Now, although this tire does provide commendable overall grip, its handling times seem to trail behind those of its direct competitors.
And that’s because of its lacking steering.
The Yokohama AVID Ascend GT has issues with steering that isn’t very precise, and it can quickly make the rear tires lose grip, making the back of the car slide and making it harder to speed up out of corners.
So what’s causing these issues?
Well, this is mainly because of the tire’s softer rubber and its comparatively deeper tread, reaching up to 12/32″, whereas its counterparts maintain a tread depth of 10/32″.
Both these factors basically cause bending of the lugs, which take time to recover, I mean getting back to their original shape.
And that takes, or I should say wastes time, lowering overall handling lap times (as seen on tests).
But in tire’s defense, its softer rubber does make the ride more comfortable by soaking up bumps better.
For Your Info: If you need to find a better performing Yokohama tire here, then you should check out the Advan Sport AS+ (review).
Road Noise
In terms of noise, the Yokohama AVID Ascend GT offers above average results, where its although not the quietest among its peers, its still one of the top ranking ones.
The tire only emits minor growl noise, which is pretty common with such siped up tread, like it has.
Moreover, the tire also generates some varying tones at slower speeds, though they still blend inside the white background noise and doesn’t really bother anyone.
So what make this tire great here?
Well this mainly is contributed to its innovative compound and its design.
It’s composition basically is very absorbent of reverberations, so the tire doesn’t make a lot of in-groove resonance.
Moreover, the tire employs ridges between the shoulder voids, so air is restricted to move in (it does mostly through shoulders), and hit the walls around (the impact of which generates noise in the first place).
Wet Performance
Investigating the wet performance of a tire involves examining 3 main factors, overall wet grip, steering response, and hydroplaning.
Let’s start with later.
Hydroplaning
Hydroplaning happens when a tire isn’t able to throw water out through its grooves. It’s actually another word for the tire’s floating on water.
And so when this happens, needless to say, tire isn’t able to grip.
Now this is not a problem for the Yokohama AVID Ascend GT, where 4 wide circumferential grooves offer pretty decent straight float speeds.
While the lateral grooves in the central ribs, interconnecting those channels, also allow for sideways water evacuation. So you also get above-average curved float speeds too.
Wet Handling and Grip
Although the tire lacks in directional grip, its wet handling is one of the strongest feature, thanks to the numerous biters seen all over its tread.
In layman’s term, all tread features like sipes/grooves have air in them, and as they meet up with the ground, that air gets expelled out, and a vacuum is created in them, which sucks up water particles coming underneath.
Now as already discussed, in the section above, grooves on this tire offer effective water evacuation in all directions. So most of the water burden is already lifted.
And the rest is easily taken care of by the zigzag longitudinal slits.
But since the tire is missing with interlocking siping in the lateral direction, its overall wet braking is compromised.
And that’s also affects its handling a little bit. Let me tell how.
So although you get a responsive steering, the tire is prone to understeer, mainly on corner entry.
And this necessitates early braking from the driver, where the tire taking more time to stop, inevitably affects overall lap times.
Tread Wear
When analyzing tread life, it’s very important to consider 2 main dimensions.
- The first factor to ponder upon is the pace at which the tire’s rubber decomposes or is prone to quick wear and tear, reflecting its durability and lifespan.
- Secondly, it’s imperative to understand the duration it takes for the tire to wear down to 2/32″, the limit in the United States, beyond which tire replacement becomes mandatory.
Now here the Yokohama AVID Ascend GT does pretty great overall.
It’s special tread compound with a lot of additives, including silica, carbon black, and antioxidants fight off wear very efficiently.
While with a relatively greater tread depth (where it has 12/32″ on all sizes), takes a good amount of time before reaching down to replacement tread depth levels.
So you get a treadwear rating of 740, and a confidence inspiring warranty of 65k miles.
Road Vibrations
The ride quality offered by a tire is significantly determined by its capability to mitigate the effects of road imperfections.
This capability is intrinsically linked to the tire’s internal and external composition/construction.
Now, where the Yokohama AVID Ascend GT offers decent results, where you get both, controlled and cushioned ride over bumps.
Snow Performance
Winter traction is the strongest point of Yokohama AVID Ascend GT (though the tire does not carry the Three-Peak Mountain Snowflake rating, just an FYI).
So what makes this tire so great here? Well there are a couple of points to note here.
- It features a special TriBLEND Compound Technology.
- It features a relatively narrower section width.
- Its the only tire among its competitors to have snow-oriented siping.
So basically its Triblend compound allows it to keep its biters supple, even during extreme negative temperatures. In other words, the sipes and biters don’t get stiffen up, or loose their efficacy.
And with narrower section width, the tire is able to put more pressure on the snow, forcing them to get trapped in the grooves/notches and sipes. And with this optimal snow to snow contact is achieved, which is much preferred here.
And that’s also where those thick snow oriented siping slits come in (referring to the zigzag longitudinal slits you see). They are designed in a way, that they forming snow contact, add to the tire’s lateral traction (for the most part).
For Your Info: If you are wondering, snow likes to stick with itself, and not with rubber. So that type of contact creates greater rolling friction, in comparison.
Fuel Efficiency
The Yokohama AVID Ascend GT showcases appreciable fuel efficiency, standing out without any shortcomings, especially when compared to other all-season tires in its segment.
This tire excels with lower rolling resistance, attributed to its relatively lightweight composition and well designed/engineered, aerodynamic central ribs.
Despite the lugs of this tire being slightly softer and seemingly stickier compared to its rivals, the reinforced foundations preserve their stiffness, eliminating unnecessary bending (of the tread).
Basically with lugs bending, energy gets wasted, as they have to reshaped back again. So Yokohama avoiding that increases its overall fuel economy to a good deal.
So What’s The Verdict?
The Yokohama AVID Ascend GT exhibits a varied performance across different conditions.
In dry conditions, its strength lies in directional grip, attributable to its tread composition and design. Though the tire needs improvement refining its steering.
Wet performance sees the tire doing well in preventing hydroplaning, thanks to its efficient water-evacuation channels. But while its wet handling is notable, there’s a compromise in braking due to the absence of interlocking siping.
As for winter traction, the tire shines brilliantly, benefiting from its unique TriBLEND Compound Technology and snow-oriented siping.
Moving further, the tire’s tread wear is good enough, marked by a 65k-mile warranty, and it stands out in fuel efficiency too with its aerodynamic design.
Lastly, while the tire doesn’t set the benchmark in noise reduction, but its still quiet enough for its category, and also gives you a comfortable journey.
