As an all-season performance tire designed for sporty handling, the Falken Ziex ZE329 has an aggressive non-directional symmetrical tread pattern. It’s the predecessor to the newer ZE950 A/S from Falken. The two tires from the same series trade blows in different performance areas, but the newer version convincingly beats it when it comes to managing tread wear.
That one weakness aside, the Falken Ziex ZE329 is a solid choice for a performance all-season tire considering its price. It offers impressive sporty handling, mileage, and comfort levels. In this review, we’ll take a look at its feature set, and see how it performs in real-world scenarios like dry, wet, and snowy pavement. We’ll also cover how the ride feels on a highway, and whether or not you should buy it.
So, without further ado, let’s get right into it.
Falken Ziex ZE329 — Features
Everything about the Falken Ziex ZE329 shows how superior it is within the all-season performance tire category, especially for its time and price. The tire’s tread compound is deliberately softer and pliable to enhance its road grip in dry and wet situations. While softer rubber gets worn easily on summer roads, hybrid tires like the Ziex ZE329 have many advantages. They’re grippy and responsive in the summer, while the pliable tread compound helps with snow traction on light snow.
The tread-shedding issue has been addressed quite effectively in the Falken Ziex ZE329’s successor — the ZE950, but it’s not a deal-breaking issue for the ZE329 in the grand scheme of things.
The Falken Ziex ZE329 is also equipped with five wide circumferential grooves, which is one more than the industry standard of 4 grooves. This gives the tire a clear edge in hydroplaning resistance for wet conditions. Moreover, there’s a whole bunch of lateral grooves on the tread pattern which means more biting edges and maximum road contact. All of these factors combined will maximize the amount of traction you get on snowy, wet, or dry surfaces.
Dry Road Performance
On dry roads, the Falken Ziex ZE329 feels exactly like exactly what you’d expect from a performance tire. It’s grippy, super responsive, and corners like a champ. However, the traction levels might decline as the tread wears down with time and loses its depth. Until then, you’ll have an exhilirating time behind the steering wheel with these tires installed under a fast car.
Wet Performance
Performance tires are supposed to be decent in wet conditions, and the Falken Ziex ZE329 is no exception. Sure, it’s not as sticky as some other hybrid tires in its category, but it’s certainly not bad. You get moderate to high traction that’s more than enough for safe driving, no matter how bad the rainy weather gets.
With that said, braking performance on wet roads could have been a bit better. We felt that the braking distances were slightly longer than the competition, but as long you maintain safe speeds and be a little extra careful in slippery conditions, you won’t have any trouble with ZE329.
Snow Performance
Being an all-season performance tire, the Falken Ziex ZE329 is surely usable in the winter, but we’d only recommend this tire for light snow. It’s soft and pliable enough to handle thin layers of snow on the road, that too at a steady pace. However, roads with piles of snow or icy pavements won’t be too kind to the ZE329 as it misses out on safe levels of traction and stopping distances in those conditions.
Ride Quality
The Falken Ziex ZE329 is a performance tire, which means it’s not designed to offer a luxurious experience to your passenger. Most of the cars this tire goes on don’t even have backseats, so you could imagine how little regard this tire category naturally has for passengers.
Keeping that in mind, you’ll find it easy to forgive the road noise you get with the Falken Ziex ZE329 on rougher tarmac patches. However, you won’t have trouble with tread growl or cabin vibrations while cruising across the city at slow to moderate speeds.
Conclusion
Since the Falken Ziex ZE329 has been around for quite a few years, you should be able to find the tire at slashed prices in different stores — especially online stores. If you find a good deal, the ZE329 could be a pretty high value-for-money purchase for the sporty performance it offers. The ZE950 isn’t a bad call either, but you can still get away with spending a lot less on the Falken Ziex ZE329 to fulfill your everyday driving needs.