They are rubbish. In wet conditions provide very poor grip after only two winters of using(aprox.10000 km). I have allready changed them.

Bought in October 2013 to prepare for the UK "winter". Got from Tireleader all the way from Germany at cost of 460GBP for four and paid 55GBP for changeover (kept my alloys on the car).
Noticeable grip in wet conditions and hitting puddles athe side of the road goes largley unnoticed. Now April 2014 and considering leaving them on as the fuel rating improvement over my summer tires has improved cosnumption by around 3MPG. UK had no real snow since fitting but even at -10 with ice on the road these tires felt sure-footed. Now the temperature is around 10 to 15degrees I am conscious that the Fronts are now starting to wear on the edges. Do I change or do I leave on???? Dry braking in warmer temperature may be reduced compared to summer tires.
The rim protector rib is an added bonus.
Overall, I have done 6000 miles since fitment and have definitely been happy with the purchase. The runner-up was Vredestein Wintrac extreme but the fuel rating was much lower than the Nokian.

Just changed off for my summer tires. Great all round tire , very responsive in the wet + wear seems v minimal after 5mnths daily usage .I found the tire quite noisy in comparison to the Pzero Rossos's they replaced but leaps and bounds ahead in wet grip .

After having driven Michelin Alpin, Uniroyal MS66 and Vredestein Snowtrack before, these Nokian WRA3 are my preference by far. Reliable in every situation. Low noise levels, maybe not in measured dB, but the gentleness of the sound give a more comfortable ride than most other tires.

I bought these tires for a recent trip to Switzerland. Having only ever borrowed 4x4 cars before I was slightly sceptical about their ability to grip on ice and snow in a 2 wheel drive car. A long drive through a very wet France left me in doubt about the tires wet weather capabilities - amazing grip and security. So on to the mountain stage, snow and icy car parks.....not a hint of slipping on snow - not once! But then the icy car parks....not a hint of slipping until I'd parked up and nearly fell over after getting out of the car. Fuel economy was better then my summer Pirelli tires too. Brilliant amazing tires for winter time. 100% recommended.

Excellent tire. I am havin it for the seocnd winter season now. Mostly, it was dry and this tire works just perfect there. Fells just like my summer tires in the dry, really. Extremely nice. They are a bit noisier but still ok. On the wet the tires are not as well. They are good there, too, but ist is not their stregth. Unfortunately I had not much chance to test it in the snow, but whenever there was snow, I felt safe and comfortabel with this tire.

All in all, a pretty good deal that I would always recommend.

Fitted these to our VW Tiguan last November, now ran them for approximately 4000 miles. Slightly more road noise, but not significantly. Grip is good in wet and dry conditions. Also good on gravel tracks where we regularly drive to access work sites. Fuel consumption is poorer by about 4 mpg. No obvious wear apparent as yet. Nothing really wrong with them but sourcing them was not straightforward. We will probably go back to Vredsteins.

I bought these tires for my car having spent last winter on budget winter tires and paying the price with catastrophic understeer as soon as the weather warmed up.

The reviews on this site convinced me that Nokian A3s were worth a go and so far, after 2000 miles in normal, non-wintery conditions, I have to say that I'm delighted with them.

I spend half my time doing short local trips but my work means I also spend a fair chunk of time on motorways. Locally, the car drives as normal and much to my surprise, it does the same up and down the A1. Road noise is minimal and the economy doesn't appear to have taken a hit either.

Having read Mike's incredibly comprehensive review on these tires, I have decided to perform my own 12 month test with these tires to see how they fair in all conditions. If they hold up as well as the summer tires I've just replaced (I got 12,000 miles from the front 2), then I don't see any reason to buy summer tires again.

My initial conclusions on these tires is that for a winter tire, I doubt you can get better, not just for the money, but full stop!

Highly recommended!!!

Absolutely amazing grip. Put these on for our road trip across Europe and not once did they let us down. Excellent in snow and wet conditions and surprisingly brilliant in the dry.

Hands down, better than other winter tires i've experienced.

When I ordered new 16" alloy's for winter for my Civic, I chose Nokian WR A3 tires to go on them. My broter in law is driving his Nokians for the third winter now and has always been content.
I specifically chose the A3 (assymetric) over the cheaper D3 (symetric) cause I prefer assymetric tires so I can rotate to each corner. The reviews on this site helped a little, but since there were only 34 reviews not so much.

On my other car I've got the much more expensive, and simply fantastic, Michelin A4 winter tires. But to be honest, untill now the Nokians simply keep up for far less money. Grip is excellent in every condition, steering became much smoother compared to the 225/40 18 Goodyear F1 Assymetric 2 summer tires and these Nokian WR A3 are extremely quit.

I can't comment on wear because they've only been driven 2000 km until now, but I think for most people wear isn't the main concern when buying winter tires. I will write a new review after coming winter and when they've had some snow, but I thought it would be a good idea to write one now because these tires don't have many reviews untill now.

I will buy these again.

Very Usefull

Having read a lot of good reports about Nokian winter tires, knowing their market position as world leader in winter tire technology and the fact they’re designed and made in Finland, I thought they’d be more than good enough for me in Lancashire, UK.

I bought 4 x 215/50/17 WR A3’s (£400) from mytires and fitted them to my car in October 2012. My aim was not only to use them throughout winter but to leave them on all year and see if I notice any peculiarities with them in hotter weather.

You always read scare stories on the internet about “don’t use winter tires in summer” . . . “they’ll melt or explode” . . . “they’re rubbish above 11 deg C” and so on.

However, Michelin, Goodyear and Continental have all stated that “if you want to remain mobile all year round, using winter tires in the summer is far less of a compromise than using summer tires in the winter. Faced with choosing a tire to travel on all year round we’d choose winter tires.”

My findings . . .

Winter time

I live in the hills with only one cobbled road that accesses our village. This road is also unadopted by the council which means no gritters come up here to plough or spread grit for us – basically, we have well over a mile of road which is untreated, twisty and steep before we connect with the main road.

So far as I’m concerned we had a very good winter over 2012 / 2013 (plenty of below-zero days and lots of deep snow) and I have to say the stories you read about how good Nokian winter tires are true: huge amounts of tractive force can be generated on either loose or well-compacted snow. Great directional grip on those surfaces is confidence-inspiring and its ability to deal with conditions that constantly swap such as tarmac-slush-tarmac-slush at 50-60mph without the car being dragged offline is staggering. These tires enable you to leave most other cars, including Audi Quattros, behind in such conditions (probably because they’re using summer tires).

At the end of January 2013 we had 10-inches of snow fall overnight. My wife, son and I had to get to Haydock (60 mile round trip) in the morning, however, when we saw the car buried to just above the door sills we thought this might prove too deep. Anyway, we all got ready at 7am but we accepted that we might not be going anywhere – nobody else from our village, including Toyota RAV4 and Suzuki Grand Vitara owners, had attempted to leave.

Undeterred, I removed the snow off the car leaving it surrounded by about 14-16 inches of snow. I got in the car, reversed it a couple of feet, disabled the traction control and put the auto-transmission in ‘snow’ mode and set off reasonably quickly to break through the number-plate deep snow in front of the car. I managed to get half the car out of its parking space and it ground to a halt, beached on the snow. I hit reverse and the car, luckily, went back into its parking space. I tried again but with more aggression . . . . and blasted straight out!

Feeling super-proud of the Nokian’s I set off out of the village on my own to see if it was possible to get to the main road (it’s all moderate inclines on the way out of the neighbourhood then you head all the way down the twistyhill to the main road). As I drove passed all the neighbours’ homes I got a real sense of satisfaction as my front-wheel-drive car trudged through snow. The snow was constantly scraping the underside of my car, however, I was confident we weren’t going to be imprisoned in our home by the weather. Then I got stuck exiting a 90-degree turn on the narrow village road because I lost all my momentum. It took about 5 attempts reversing and going forwards to get me along a 50ft mild incline. I put this down to the car’s underside dragging (beaching) on the snow preventing the tires from biting effectively.

I managed to get to the main road and return home to pick up the family. We headed out to Haydock and tackled difficult conditions all the way there. For example, while everyone was avoiding the outside lane on the East Lancs dual carriageway due to snow / slush I made a path for myself overtaking (not dangerously) all the slow-moving vehicles on the inside lane. The look of disbelief on every 4x4 owner I passed on that road was priceless. Nobody had the confidence to swap lanes and follow me.

Of note – I witnessed the two neighbours (RAV4 and Vitara) who both got stuck exiting the village. The Vitara had to do a lot of shuffling back and forth to get out of its parking space behind where I was parked spinning all four wheels. The RAV4 slithered to a stop, with all 4 wheels spinning, on an incline up the road from my house and was rescued by 4 or 5 people with shovels. Both owners use summer tires but thought 4wd would overcome this.

Summer time

I have to say that these tires felt very much at home throughout summer. For readers outside the UK, this year’s summer was, for once, brilliant: long spells of hot weather and plenty of blue-sky days. Temperatures of28 deg C proved no issue at all for the WR A3’s; they gave superb levels of grip on roundabouts, twisty roads and responded well to sudden changes in direction as well as hard braking.

No matter the conditions, the WR A3’s are very quiet (massively more so that the constantly-droaning Nexen n3000 tires the car came with). I would say they’re probably the quietist tire I’ve had on any car I’ve owned. Directional stability on the motorway is excellent as is steering accuracy and the tires’ ability to track a particular line on the road or through a corner is as good as any summer tire I’ve ridden on.

It’s true to say that this is the 1st time I have used winter tires all year round and I have not noticed any loss of performance, drop in fuel economy or outright grip levels when driving hard.

Wear

In the 6,000 miles I covered in 12 months the front tires have only lost 1mm of tread and they have not been rotated with the rears. The rear tires still have the 8mm tread depth indictor number still stamped into the treadblock – a superb feature of Nokian tires; all you need do is read the built-in (8mm, 6mm, 4mm, *[snowflake symbol]) tread depth number stamped in the central band of the tire and it tells you how much tread you have left before the tire needs replacing.

Verdict

I used to cover 50,000 miles per year for 15 years in expensive company cars and have used every make of premium summer tire (Continental / Bridgestone / Pirelli / Michelin / Goodyear etc) at a cost of £500 per pair on quite a few cars. Most only lasted 10k miles before needing replacing. So I know what the best summer tires perform like in all conditions. I’m well aware of how long ultra-low-profile sticky tires don’t last, how expensive they are and how frighteningly unpredictable wide tires can be a low speeds driving on just a dusting of snow.

Believe me, even though Nokian are not priced like the premium brands (and are listed as ‘mid-range’ by TireReviews), I can assure you that their WR A3 winter tires are every bit as good in summer and comprehensively outclass them come winter time. This is a tire you can be totally confident of using every day of the year.

General observations

1) One of the great things about having winter tires is that all roads (short cuts, housing estates, A or B roads, country lanes etc.) are still viable options for you to use in the snow to avoid queuing and getting stuck with every other person on the road.

2) Using summer tires in testing winter conditions forces you to travel on the gritted main roads or stick on the motorway gridlocked with everyone else.

3) When the snow is coming down hard, most people in the UK are afraid to travel anywhere in their summer tire equipped cars (as they will likely get stuck, not get to their destination or back home, or risk an expensive accident) but with winter tires you can head out with the knowledge that you can go places and return home.

4) They work all year round as I have just proved. My findings back-up the statements from Michelin, Continental and Goodyear.

5) No need to buy a 4x4 and suffer the running costs of it all the time when there is no snow on the ground (To get you through the winter months - that’s why you bought it, right? Shame 95% of 4x4 / soft-roaders come fitted with summer tires, thus, leaving you no better off than most other folks come the frost, snow and ice. In fact, you’re probably worse off as you have a much heavier vehicle to stop or get round corners . . . )

6) I don’t have to worry when I’m out and about as I know my tires will handle any conditions thrown at them. Also, I can get my family, including my toddler son, back to our front door in some extremely tough conditions.

7) If you hate driving on snow it’s probably because you’ve had a lot of scary moments sliding about uncontrollably or you have been stuck a lot. My advice to you is to buy some winter tires, run them until they wear out and you will become confident once again in snowy conditions.

Nokian have a tag line: “Forget the Forecasts” – my experience with Nokian WR A3 wholeheartedly underlines this.

In Finland, a place renowned for severe winters ever winter, they have a saying the British would do well to listen to: “Winter tires first. 4x4 second.” I couldn’t agree more.

Mike