Review on X Ice North 4 by Adam Listopad ᠌

Name: X Ice North 4
Item: X Ice North 4
Rating: 5

July 06, 2023

The quality exceeds all expectations, I recommend to buy.

An good alternative for winter tires that can be used in the center lane. They are highly solid and steerable, and their behavior on ice is completely predictable. They do not sag as the ice thaws. The decision was obviously taken to go in the direction of a tougher compound and handling, and not in the direction of low-temperature characteristics and all-terrain capacity. As a result, they are less suitable for use in severe frosts than earlier models in the range.

Pros

Outstanding performance on both dry and wet pavement, during the winter as well as during the off-season. They produce only a moderate amount of noise, they steer perfectly on paved surfaces (the sidewalls are fairly stiff even on the 65 profile, the thrust wheel does not break in corners), and they do not become floppy when the temperature outside is positive. When switching to summer tires (a Michelin PS4 to a 55 profile with an even higher load index and a very stiff sidewall), it doesn't seem like you've changed from a car to a bog as it did on the XIN2. Instead, it feels like you've moved from a car to a bog. On ice, the grip is not as "anchor" as that of the 8 Hakkapelita, but the predictability of control is much better - sliding as the lateral load increases does not happen abruptly, but the car starts to be somewhat pulled, and this happens a very long time before the breakdown into a skid. When driving on ice, it feels like the tires are covered in coarse sandpaper rather than spikes, which results in a fantastic sensation regarding both the location of the car and the margin of the grip.

Cons

They "flatten" worse and row worse on soil or a yard covered with snow as compared to the XIN2, which is owing to the stiffer sidewalls of these tires. Traditionally, for the entire series of XIN tires, so-so directional stability in conditions of "track after a heavy snowfall" means that you continuously have to taxi, but on rolled snow it slows down better than XIN2. The composition of this rubber is rather rigid, thus it is difficult to predict how it will act when exposed to a temperature of -40.