Studs — worth the noise if two thirds of my winter driving is bare pavement? Winter Tyres

Made this trade in both directions. Studs win decisively on glare ice and on hard-packed ice at low speed, and that advantage narrows a lot once the surface is snow rather than ice. On cold dry pavement studs are worse — shorter contact with the rubber, a little more noise, a little longer stopping. With your split, the honest question is whether the icy third contains anything that scares you. If it includes a hill with a stop at the bottom, studs. If it is flat, studless.

The noise complaint depends heavily on the stud pattern and count. Modern lightweight studs in a staggered pattern are far quieter than the old designs you remember, and some manufacturers publish stud counts by size. Still audible, but it is a hum rather than the drone. If your last studded experience was more than about a decade ago, your reference point is out of date.

Studless option worth knowing about: the top studless ice tyres use a compound with micro-porous structure that grips ice by wicking the surface water film, and they have closed a lot of the gap. The catch is they wear faster in warm weather than a general winter tyre, so if your highway third is above freezing on many days you will burn through them. Studded tyres have the same warm-weather wear problem plus the noise.

Contrary view from someone with the same road split: I ran studs for six winters and stopped, not because of grip but because of what they do to the road surface and to my patience on the highway. What replaced them was a good studless tyre plus adjusting my departure time so the icy section is driven after the sand truck rather than before it. That is not available to everyone but it was available to me and it solved more than the tyre did.

Terse: studs for glare ice, studless for everything else, and nobody is fast on either. If you cannot decide, you probably do not need studs.