My rig had Kelly Safari MSR's on it when I purchased it. It was winter in Jackson, WY. I asked to have them replaced, as I was not happy with their performance on packed snow, especially when trying to stop. The dealer told me they are designed for this weather and to try them a little longer. Meanwhile, the dealer installed 6 new Kelly Safari MSR on his dually, after all the raving he heard about them when he was looking into my inquiry. Drove his truck to Montana for the weekend, came back and pulled every tire off his truck and gave me $600.00 to replace my Kelly Safari MSR too.
Those tires scared the hell out of him!
I got some Mastercraft studded tires from Big-O and never had another problem!
This brings up a very important issue. Most people have very little baseline to comment on how well different tires work. Most of the time when people compare tire X to tire Y it is when they have replaced an old set. The new set of tires will almost always feel better, even if they aren't as good, because a new decent tire will almost always outperform a old great tire, simply because as a tire wears and gets old its compounding changes, it wears unevenly, and it looses its ability to channel water and give traction as its edges round off.
To make it even worse, it is next to impossible to compare tires from one vehicle to another, as the vehicle dynamics are so different. That tire that feels great on a 4000 pound 4 runner may feel like garbage on a 5500 pound 80 or 100.
Then there is the last factor, driver perception. Most drivers are less than perceptive as to what a particular tire may be doing. As you get into guys that race or run a lot of track time, you see a lot more description of how a tire feels, i.e., it has good initial turn in, it is progressive, good feeback, goes away when it gets hot, won't come back after they let go. Most less experienced drivers lack the reference to articulate the differences. A tire that has high traction and lets go suddenly may be described as a driver that has never exceeded the traction limits of the tire as "having incredible traction" while an experienced track driver would say "lots of traction but scary at the limit and once it lets go, you can't pick it back up."
The only true way to get an accurate comparison of tires is when Tire Rack or Consumers reports does a comparision test. The Tire Rack tests are especially good as they perform a blind test with identical vehicles and the drivers not knowing what tires they are on. The problem is they don't perform these tests on A/T tires.
I am going to add one additional issue with tires and that concerns foul weather performance. Rain traction is vastly affected by pavement type. Here in CA we have about 50 different pavement combos, which vary highly in their wet coefficient of friction. Compare that to Oregon which has very consistant pavement. For snow and ice performace, traction will vary wildlely as temperature changes. Ice is the slickest right at freezing temps, getting stickier as the temperature goes down (this is because at freezing there is still a very thin layer of water that forms when the tire drives over which creates a nice lubercated surface). Snow traction also varies depending on if it is fresh, packed, and what lays under it.
The bottom line, individual reviews vary greatly in how accurate they may be. If many reviews indicate the same problem with a tire, they are probably correct, but don't overweigh any individual review and consider it's source.
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