This is to report experiences with Continental TopContact Winter tires. So far I have ridden for 2 weeks under conditions ranging from occasional snow and ice patches to uniform layer of snow or iced snow, with one such tire mounted on the front and a regular tire in the rear. The latter was either Marathon XR or Conti TT 2000 and all tires were in 700C/35-37 size. The TopContact Winter has no studs but some sort of grain particles embedded into the rubber. Otherwise, presumably the rubber formulation is different than for the regular tires.

My idea of getting TopContact Winter has been to cover the times when there is some ice and snow on the ground but otherwise plenty of bare pavement. Up to that point I have been riding with Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106 at least in the front under such conditions that had an unpleasant aspect of being excessively slowed down. Under tough snow and ice I would normally switch to Hakkapeliitta W240. Due to laziness with switching of the tires, I ended up riding with my TopContact Winter/regular combinatio even when the ground was covered with a uniform layer of 1-2 inches (3-5 cm) of snow or snow completely iced over after melting and/or frozen rain.

One issue when getting the tire (second is in the mail) was whether vendors actually sell the Winter or regular version of TopContact, due to confusing info on the websites. The Winter version has 'Winter' printed on the opposite side of 'TopContact' on the tire. Otherwise, the tire sounds differently than regular when rolled over the floor, as if fine sand was sprinkled over the floor (cellophane crackling). The tire is equipped with a white reflective strip.

The regular tire in the rear gave me a reference for the performance of TC Winter. I have not fallen during the 2 weeks with the combination, although I had 3 near-fall experiences. I definitely owe the ability to recover to the grip provided by TC Winter. The grip is not as firm as of Haka 106 but turned out to be good enough. Two of the experiences were classical, involving a sharp turn over what turned out to be slippery surface covered by a thin layer of snow. In one of those cases, the surface underneath was a smooth sheet of ice. The rear tire went sliding, but the front held enough to allow me to recover. The third case was a slippery groove between slabs of concrete, covered with snow. Besides the above, I had some cases of hesitation, usually but not always, involving just the rear tire.

On the bare pavement, TC Winter feels just like regular tire. Presumably it is a bit slower but I really cannot tell. Once you put on some heavier clothing you are not that much into speeding.

So far this winter I have been either riding W240 or TC Winter but not W106. In the end, it looks like TC Winter is edging out W106. As I mentioned, I ordered already a second TC Winter.