General G-Max RS vs Yokohama Advan Neova AD09 tires

For most drivers of sedans, coupes, minivans, and crossovers, all-season tires are a great, versatile, all-around choice. All-season tires are designed for great wear properties, year-round grip, handling, and steering response that are accurate and capable, a composed and quiet ride, and road manners that are stable and solid. While that’s a nice set of attributes for most drivers, all-season tires tend to not quite get the job done for people who like to crowd the envelope and test the limits of their vehicles’ handling, cornering, and braking performance. That’s where summer tires or ultra-high-performance (UHP) tires do well.

Summer and UHP tires have some notable design differences compared to all-season tires, including a more rigid tread and sidewall for high-speed stability and improved cornering, a redesigned contact patch and tread design, and a tread compound that’s softer and “stickier” for better adhesion to the road. Summer and UHP tires do mean there will be some tradeoffs, including shorter tread life, a ride that can be firmer and less forgiving, and poor cold-weather performance (we’ll touch on that a bit later). Still, many drivers of sporty models are willing to live with those compromises to get the performance they want out of their vehicles and tires.

Today, we’re going to look at the General G-Max RS and Yokohama Advan Neova AD09, both of which are extremely competent summer/UHP tires from premium manufacturers. In the course of this head-to-head comparison between the General and the Yokohama, you’ll see us refer a few times to SimpleScore. If you’re not familiar, SimpleScore is the rating system that the SimpleTire team developed to give you a quick, easy overview of a tire’s strengths and weaknesses. We look at the manufacturer’s info, the tire’s specs, and customer reviews, then take those data points and distill them to a 1-10 numerical value for the categories of traction, handling, and longevity, as well as an overall average SimpleScore. For the General G-Max RS and Yokohama Advan Neova AD09, the SimpleScore numbers look like this:

General G-Max RS

• Traction: 8.7
• Handling: 8.5
• Longevity: 8.0
• Overall average SimpleScore: 8.4

Yokohama Advan Neova AD09

• Traction: 8.7
• Handling: 8.7
• Longevity: 7.3
• Overall average SimpleScore: 8.2

As you can see, both the General and the Yokohama bring a lot to the game, with SimpleScores that stack up well against each other in all the pertinent categories. As handy as SimpleScore is, it’s also the 30,000 foot view that doesn’t give you a detailed picture of what a tire’s features and performance are like. Let’s go in for a closer look at this product comparison review.

General G-Max RS tires

When the engineering team at General Tires designed the G-Max RS, their performance targets were centered around the weight, center of gravity, power, torque, and braking performance of today’s sporty sedans, coupes, and crossovers. The G-Max RS goes from the ground up, with an advanced tread compound that delivers dependable traction on wet or dry pavement, excellent wear properties, and short braking distances. The tread pattern and contact patch of the G-Max RS are part of General’s StabiliTred Technology package, a system designed to put a bigger, flatter footprint on the pavement for improved weight dispersal, traction, braking, and long, even wear.

A continuous center rib gives the G-Max RS solid stability for straightaways on the highway, along with light, immediate steering response and driver feedback. General’s SmartGrip Technology package is a system of wide, deep circumferential grooves that help to divert standing water from the tire’s contact patch to resist hydroplaning on wet days. Traction on wet pavement is great too with wide-angled notches in the tire’s intermediate ribs, along with circumferential grooves and open shoulder slots, all of which provide extra biting edges for traction on wet pavement.

Internal construction details of the General G-Max RS include a single-ply polyester casing with high turn-up at the sidewall for extra stiffness, along with two high-tensile steel belts and two-ply polyamide reinforcement ply for extra stability at high speeds. Like many other tires in the General product lineup, the tread of the G-Max RS has General’s SmartMonitor feature, letting drivers easily keep tabs on their tread depth. The words “Replacement Tire Monitor” are molded into the tire’s center rib; as the tire’s tread depth thins out to the legal minimum of 2/32”, the words “Replace Tire” will be revealed, letting the driver know that the tire has worn down to its wear bars. SimpleTire’s price on the General G-Max RS starts at $122.99 per tire.

Yokohama Advan Neova AD09 tires

Yokohama has a lengthy pedigree in the motorsports world, and the Advan Neova AD09 can be thought of as a track tire that’s also street-legal – that’s how attuned to performance this tire is. The Advan Neova AD09 delivers super-sticky and precise handling with a silica-enhanced tread compound that’s molded into an asymmetric pattern with a continuous center rib and large, reinforced shoulders and outboard tread blocks.

High-speed straight-line stability and cornering are all very capable with the Advan Neova AD09, giving you the confidence to push your sporty sedan or coupe to the limit, and we give this tire a SimpleScore of 8.7 for handling. Wet and dry traction are dependable and consistent with deep lateral grooves and an innovative, curved full-depth circumferential groove for a SimpleScore of 8.7. A rigid sidewall design and durable internal construction all figured into our decision to give this tire a SimpleScore of 7.3 for longevity.

It’s important to remember that the Yokohama Advan Neova AD09 is a summer/UHP tire – its tread formulation is soft and pliable for glue-like adhesion to the road but will stiffen up and lose traction on colder days. Like most summer/UHP tires, the Yokohama Advan Neova AD09 should not be used when temperatures are consistently below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. SimpleTire’s price on the Yokohama Advan Neova AD09 starts at $167 per tire.

General G-Max RS vs Yokohama Advan Neova AD09 tires on traction

How do the Yokohama and the General stack up against each other when it comes to traction? The SimpleScore rankings are dead even: both the G-Max RS and Advan Neova AD09 have a very respectable 8.7 in this category. Both tires benefit from advanced tread compounds that help them hang in like a slot car during hard maneuvers on wet or dry roads. Both tires also have state-of-the-art tread designs that resist hydroplaning on rainy days and deliver great stability in sunny weather, with a continuous center rib, and a well-designed network of grooves. That all adds up to a package that’s surefooted on wet or dry roads, with decisive braking ability and confident road manners. Our decision:

ADVANTAGE: Tie

General G-Max RS vs Yokohama Advan Neova AD09 tires on handling

With SimpleScores of 8.7 for the Yokohama and 8.5 for the General in the handling category, this one’s also quite close but not quite tied. Handling is a function of the traction a tire can deliver, but the Yokohama comes out a little ahead in this category. As any vehicle enters a turn or starts to round a corner, its weight and inertia will try to keep it moving in a straight line. That inertia puts stresses on the tread, shoulder, and sidewall, leading to deformation of the tread and “tread squirm,” sometimes with the tire’s inboard side leaving the pavement altogether. That’s why rigidity is so important to a tire’s handling and road manners (at least within the limits of ride quality), and the reinforced shoulder blocks of the Advan Neova AD09 are stiff enough to resist deformation and deliver cornering ability and road manners that are crisp and precise. Our decision:

ADVANTAGE: Yokohama Advan Neova AD09

General G-Max RS vs Yokohama Advan Neova AD09 tires on longevity

When we’re talking about longevity and wear properties for summer or UHP tires, it’s all pretty relative and subjective. After all, these are seasonal tires that won’t be seeing year-round use (unless you live in a very warm part of the country) and are hardly ever covered by the factory with a limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty. The General comes out on top here, though, with a SimpleScore of 8.0 vs 7.3 for the Yokohama. In cases like this, where there’s no warranty coverage to move the needle on SimpleScore, we defer to customer reviews and customers point to the General having better wear properties, so our decision is:

ADVANTAGE: General G-Max RS

When to use each

The question here is, what are your honest needs and expectations out of a set of tires, and how does it all tie into your vehicle and your driving style? If you need dependable performance year-round, then a set of summer or UHP tires isn’t for you. That softer, stickier tread formulation will stiffen up and lose its traction in colder weather, and tire manufacturers advise against using summer or UHP tires once temperatures are below 40-45 degrees F (that loss of grip is downright dangerous). If, on the other hand, you don’t mind dismounting your tires and exchanging them for all-season tires in the colder months, or if you find that all-season or touring tires can be a little sluggish and clumsy when it comes to handling, steering response and cornering, maybe you should consider the General G-Max RS or Yokohama Advan Neova AD09. As we said right out of the gate, for performance-oriented sports sedans, coupes, or sporty crossovers, summer or UHP tires can be the ticket to get the dead-level best out of your car’s performance potential.

Which one should you choose?

So…after looking at all the details and taking in the SimpleScore numbers, the General G-Max RS and Yokohama Advan Neova AD09 compare pretty favorably with each other. They’re both tires that offer superb performance and are packed with advanced features and innovations, premium-quality design and materials and are available in a wide range of sizes for various fitments. As close as they are, though, the Yokohama comes out a bit ahead in every category except longevity. So let’s take a quick look at the prices while we’re at it: the General starts at $122.99 per tire vs $167 per tire for the Yokohama. That’s not exactly chump change, as you’d pay over $200 more for a full set with the Yokohama. Here’s how we’d break it down, then: if you can afford the Yokohama Advan Neova AD09, it would make a great set of performance tires for you. If you want to save some money on your purchase, the General G-Max RS would be an equally solid and capable choice. The SimpleTire team is confident you won’t regret either decision and won’t be making a mistake either way.

Still not sure which tire to buy? Fortunately, SimpleTire is here to help as our helpful agents are more than happy to assist you in selecting the right tire for your ride and budget.