Best Tires for the Honda Accord in 2024

How do you decide on the best new tires for your Honda Accord? It can be a tough choice. When Honda built your car, they had a few priorities to keep in mind. Cost, safety and durability. Where they landed on that spectrum might not be where you’d land, depending on your driving habits and where you live. So let’s take a look at the best tires for your Accord, no matter your budget or driving style.

Have an older Honda Accord? See tire sizes for previous years.

Best Tires for the Honda Accord LX, EX, and EX-L:

Kumho Ecsta PS31 - Best budget tire

BFGoodrich Advantage T/A Sport - Best mid-priced tire

Vredestein Hypertrac All Season - Best mid-priced tire

Best Tires for the Honda Accord Sport and Touring:

Vredestein Quatrac 5 - Best budget tire

Michelin Primacy MXM4 - Best mid-priced tire

Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 - Best superior tire

Original Equipment Accord Tires

What tires are on my Honda Accord? The current generation Accord is sold in multiple trims with several tire sizes:

• The LX, EX, and EX-L trims come with 17-inch wheels with tires size 225/50R17. The OEM tire is either the Pirelli P4 Four Seasons Plus or the Fuzion UHP Sport A/S.
• The Sport and Touring trims come with 19-inch wheels and tires size 235/40R19 96V XL. The OEM tire for these models is either the Goodyear Eagle Touring or the Michelin Primacy MXM4.

Top Replacement Tire Brands for Honda Accord

No matter your budget, we’ve got a tire for you. We’ve sourced tires in both 17- and 19-inch sizes, so that you can find the right tire for any trim of the Accord. You don’t have to keep the same brand of tire that came with your car, and you can even change tire sizes to better fit your lifestyle and the way you drive:

17-inch Tires for Honda Accord

• Budget: Kumho Ecsta PS31 - There’s a reason that Kumho dominates in the affordable tire space. Their products are consistently rated among the best, and carry excellent treadwear ratings
• Moderately Priced: BFGoodrich Advantage T/A Sport - The all season tire from BFGoodrich is one of the best rated tires for the Accord at any price.
• Cost-No-Object: Vredestein Hypertrac All Season - Vredestein’s Hypertrac tire is brand-new and has garnered good reviews in its short time on the market.

19-inch Tires for Honda Accord

• Budget: Vredestein Quatrac 5 - Vredestein recently made its way into the North American tire market, and the Quatrac 5 is already making waves. It’s rated for severe snow conditions and has excellent customer reviews.
• Moderately Priced: Michelin Primacy MXM4 - The MXM4 is the tire that Honda installs at the factory, but as it turns out, it’s a great replacement tire for the Accord as well.
• Cost-No-Object: Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 - While it’s true that the Sport Cup 2 is an all-out performance tire, it’s one of the highest rated tires you can buy for your Accord with 19-inch wheels. Just count on replacing them far more regularly than a “normal” tire.

When Should You Replace Tires?

There are two regular milestones that will suggest that it’s time to replace the tires, not only on your Accord, but any vehicle in your driveway: Time and mileage.

Considering most drivers cover between 12,000 and 15,000 miles per year, the vast majority of Accord owners are going to be past the mileage that their original equipment tires were intended to cover before they’ll go past the tire’s usable age.

The life of your tire can be somewhat predicted by its UTQG (Uniform Tire Quality Grade) rating. Tire manufacturers apply their own grades to tires for treadwear, traction and temperature. When you’re researching tires online, a UTQG will come up next to the tire name in three digits and a number (ex. 500 A A).

You can glean a bit of info from the tires by reading this rating:

• 500 - The durability rating of a tire, compared to a control tire with a treadlife of 100. To obtain a grade, tires run on a 640 kilometer course for 11,520 km. Every 1,280 km, the tread depth is measured, to provide a projected tread life. The higher the number, the longer the predicted treadlife.
• A - This is the Traction rating of a tire, which indicates how well a tire stops in wet conditions. The highest letter grade is AA, followed by A, B and C.
• A - The second letter in the UTQG is the Temperature rating, which indicates how well a tire holds up to extreme heat. A is the highest, followed by B and C.

Original equipment MIchelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires on the Accord are performance-oriented and opt for traction over treadlife. They earned an awful 180 AA A UTGQ rating. Unless they are damaged, these tires could last as long as 18,000 miles before you need to replace them.

The other consideration is time. Each tire has a raised date code on the sidewall. The number begins with the letters “DOT” followed by 12 digits in three four-digit groups. The date code is the third group of four digits. To decipher the date of your tires, the first two digits represent the WEEK the tire was produced, and the second two digits represent the YEAR.

For example, if your tire’s date code is 3217, that indicates the tire was manufactured in the 37th week of 2017, or some time between September 11 and 17th that year.

Once tires go beyond five years old, it’s time to consider replacing them. Tires are made up not just of rubber and steel or kevlar belts, but chemicals that help the tires resist UV rays, temperature changes and a lot of other environmental hazards. Those chemicals start to break down after five years or so, and the tires aren’t doing the job that they need to do.

See our recommendations for the Best Insurance for your Honda Accord

See our recommendations for the Best Extended Warranty for your Honda Accord

Why Not Replace with Original Equipment Tires?

There’s no harm in replacing your tires with the shoes it came with from the factory. However, depending on what kind of driver you are, there are significant reasons to purchase something different.

You only need to purchase ONE set of tires for your car every four years or so, depending on how much you drive. When an auto manufacturer purchases tires, they buy them by the hundreds of thousands. For the manufacturer, the decision to choose a supplier one brand or another comes down to a price point.

For you, your consideration may be completely different. If you could get a tire that stopped 20 feet shorter for an additional $10 per tire over the original equipment, you’d probably do it. Similarly, if there was a tire that made less road noise for a minimal investment over stock, you’d probably decide on the slightly more expensive tire (that is, unless you’re trying to drown out the conversation of your back-seat-driving spouse.)

Changing Honda Accord Tire Sizes

Depending on the year and model, you may be shopping tires to fit anything between 15-inch for older models to 19-inch wheels with various widths and sidewall sizes along the way. It is possible to change the wheel and tire sizes, but a general rule of thumb is to keep the total diameter of wheel and tire the same. So, that means that downsizing an 19-inch wheel to a 18-inch wheel would include a proportionate upsizing of the tire sidewall to compensate.

Downsizing wheels has its advantages. Benefits include:

• Better ride quality – More rubber means more cushion for poor road conditions.
• Cost reduction – Big tires are expensive, so moving to a smaller wheel size will mean less costly tire purchases
• Seasonal changes – Winter and snow tires are available for a larger selection of smaller wheel sizes and the narrower footprint will provide better traction.
• Off-road – Many people choose to downsize wheels for off-road use to increase the vehicle’s shock absorption capabilities and bump traction on loose surfaces.

On the other side of the coin, going up in wheel size has its benefits:

• Better handling – Slimmer profile tires makes for less rubber to move around.
• Better looks – This one’s subjective, but many people feel that larger wheels look better than smaller wheels with more rubber.
• Better braking – Larger, wider wheels provide a bigger patch of rubber on the ground to slow the vehicle, reducing braking distance.

How to Read Tire Sizes

When reading tire sizes, it’s important to understand what the numbers mean. The Honda Accord’s 19-inch wheels come with P235/40R19 96V all-season tires:

• 235 - indicates the width of the tire from one sidewall to the other in millimeters. This tire is 235 millimeters wide.
• 40 - indicates the aspect ratio, or sidewall height, as a percentage of the tire’s width. In this case, it’s 40 percent or of the tire’s width.
• R - means radial tires. Radials are the most common type of automotive tire and have fabric woven in at various angles with tread that is strengthened with additional layers of rubber.
• 19 - indicates the wheel diameter.
• 96 - is the tire’s load rating.
• V - is the tire’s speed rating. V-rated tires have a maximum top speed of 149 mph.

You may have noticed that the Honda Accord’s two tire sizes have different diameters and also different aspect ratios. Generally, automakers choose tires that have the same outer diameter. This allows them to have only one speedometer setting.

Now that you know what comes on a new Accord and how to read the size numbers, let’s look at the different types of tires available to you. Depending on the type of driving you’re doing, where you live, and the weather, you have a variety of choices for tire types:

• Touring and All-season tires - provide a smooth ride, good wet and dry traction, decent winter traction, and longer tread life. These tires are acceptable for winter use but can’t be expected to provide the traction and stopping power that a dedicated winter tire can.
• Performance tires - are focused on providing confident handling, better wet and dry traction, and a sporty feel. Their higher grip and speed ratings come with a tradeoff of shortened tread life and reduced ride quality.
• All-terrain tires - are built to maximize off-road traction and provide good durability overall. Their construction means more noise and less comfort on the road, but winter traction and tread wear is acceptable.
• Winter and snow tires - are made with special rubber compounds that maintain grip and pliability when temperatures drop. They are also built with special tread patterns to maximize the vehicle’s ability to start and stop on very slippery roads.

Tires Sizes By Year

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