Are Kumho Tires Better Than Goodyear? What Consumer Reports Data Says

As well as marketing tires under its own name, Goodyear owns a wide range of other brands that include everything from budget-friendly names like Kelly Tires to performance industry stalwart Mickey Thompson. But how do its own brand of tires stack up against the rest? That depends on who you ask. The folks at Consumer Reports sourced a selection of different tire models across various categories and put them through a range of tests to gauge their performance. Their results placed Goodyear in the middle of the pack overall, with some surprising brands ranking higher in the study. One such brand was Kumho, a Korean tire brand that makes its tires in multiple locations in Asia. Alongside its Korean factories, it also has facilities in Vietnam and China.

Consumer Reports ranked Kumho as the fifth-best brand on the market, while Goodyear was awarded seventh place. Topping the table was Michelin, while Continental took the second spot. Ranked between Kumho and Goodyear was Hankook, another Korean tire brand. Hankook has made inroads into top-tier motorsport in recent years and is the current tire supplier to the World Rally Championship. Kumho isn't short of motorsports kudos either, since it's the exclusive tire supplier to the FIA TCR World Tour.

While Kumho has the edge over Goodyear according to Consumer Reports' testing, other studies paint a slightly different picture. A 2025 report by J.D. Power found that its survey respondents were more likely to be satisfied with Goodyear's passenger car tires than Kumho's, although both brands were above the segment average. Goodyear was ranked the best in the market for satisfaction in the passenger car tire category, while Kumho was ranked sixth. JD Power's second most satisfactory brand was Yokohama, while Michelin was ranked third.

SlashGear also compared 21 major tire brands based on aggregated customer reviews, third-party testing, and availability at major retailers. In our comparison, Goodyear was the second-best brand overall, partly thanks to its broad range of strong-performing models in a variety of segments. Kumho came in 13th place, losing points within our ranking system because of the less-than-stellar winter performance of some of its all-season tires. While the exact ranking of the two brands varies between studies, both brands are broadly agreed to be competitive within their respective segments, although Consumer Reports is particularly enthusiastic about the performance of Kumho's tire range.