Continental Purecontact LS: Review & Rating
The Pure Contact LS is Continental Tire’s all season grand touring tire for sedans, wagons, coupes, and small SUVs. The tire is designed around the idea of excellent vehicle response, comfort, and traction in all road conditions. Along with being an excellent summer performer, these tires perform exceptionally well in winters, rain, and icy conditions while providing maximum grip. User reviews suggest this tire improves car handling, ride quality, and braking grip over other similar tires. Owners claim reduction in brake distance by more than 10%. Known to last somewhere around 50,000 miles even in rougher road conditions, the tires come in 29 different sizes starting from 16” all the way up to 20” to suite a wide range of modern cars.
CONSTRUCTION
The internal construction of the tire is made of a single ply polyester casing for an overall lighter weight construction and less unladen weight on the car’s suspension. The high apex provides responsive handling when braking, accelerating, and turning with the ride comfort of a GT quality tire. Dual steel belts are reinforced by two ployamide overlays to maximize durability and high speed driving stability.
Temperature activated functional polymers in the Pure Contact LS’s tread compound increases the overall compound bonding providing improved traction, tire wear and fuel efficiency. The asymmetric pattern of the tread features stable treadblocks in the shoulder for lateral grip and high speed cornering. The wide central rib provides solid centered feel and confident straight line tracking.
Continental’s Comfort Ride technology provides an underlay beneath the tread that is designed to isolate the tread from the casing and reduce cabin vibrations. The company’s Silane coating to the tire compound enhances grip on wet and icy conditions. The sweeping tread grooves combined with deep circumferential water channels help cancel hydroplaning.
The Pure Contact’s siped shoulders and intermediate tread blocks help create the grabbing edges required for grip in snow and icy road conditions and the traction grooves capture snow in the tread blocks to provide snow to snow traction.
SPECIFICATIONS
The Continental Pure Contact LS is available in 29 different sizes to fit a wider range of vehicles. 195/55-R16 being the smallest tire size, the Pure Contact LS is available in various sizes up to 245/45-R20 with weighing in at 16 lbs for the lightest and 28 lbs for the heaviest tire in the line up. With its ingenious tread design, this tire is able to maintain a 50% reduction in road noise as compared to its predecessor. Consumer friendly visual marks located on the tire tread alerts the driver when the tire is not performing optimally on dry, wet or snowy weather conditions. In addition to service marks, the alignment verification system warn the driver to check alignment when it is required.
| TIRE SIZE | MAX LOAD | MAX INFLATION PSI | TREAD DEPTH | TIRE WEIGHT | RIM WIDTH RANGE | TREAD WIDTH | OVERALL DIA. | REVS PER MILE |
| 195/55R16 | 1,201 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 18 lbs. | 5.5-7″ | 6.4″ | 24.4″ | 850 |
| 205/60R16 | 1,389 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 20 lbs. | 5.5-7.5″ | 6.6″ | 25.7″ | 809 |
| 205/50R17 | 1,433 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 20 lbs. | 5.5-7.5″ | 6.7″ | 25.1″ | 829 |
| 215/50R17 | 1,521 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 21 lbs. | 6-7.5″ | 7″ | 25.5″ | 816 |
| 235/50R17 | 1,565 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 23 lbs. | 6.5-8.5″ | 7.7″ | 26.3″ | 791 |
| 245/45R17 | 1,709 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 26 lbs. | 7.5-9″ | 8.4″ | 25.7″ | 809 |
| 245/50R17 | 1,709 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 27 lbs. | 7-8.5″ | 8.2″ | 26.6″ | 780 |
| 245/40R18 | 1,609 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 24 lbs. | 8-9.5″ | 8.3″ | 25.7″ | 808 |
| 245/50R18 | 1,764 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 26 lbs. | 7-8.5″ | 8.2″ | 27.6″ | 751 |
| 235/40R19 | 1,565 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 23 lbs. | 8-9.5″ | 8″ | 26.4″ | 787 |
| 245/45R20 | 1,709 lbs. | 51 psi | 10/32″ | 26 lbs. | 7.5-9″ | 8.1″ | 28.7″ | 724 |
REVIEWS
Most longterm users report findings similar to what the company advertises for them. The tires are very comfortable, grippy, and quiet on the road. These match perfect with heavier cars such as Audi, Mercedes, Lexus, etc. Because of the thicker sidewall for longer service times, these may ride a bit harsh sometimes, but usually ride soft and smoother. You will also find an improvement in your braking time thanks to the sticky tread compound.
WARRANTY
These tires come with an excellent 6 year or 70,000 mile tread life warranty. This clearly shows the quality standards followed by the company to ensure a longer service life for the Pure Contact LS. Continental also provides a tread ware uniformity guarantee of 1 year / first 2/32” of wear. You get 6 years of workmanship and materials warranty, and a 60 day or first 2/32” trial warranty.
CONCLUSION
We consider the Continental Pure Contact LS as one of the best investments for your car. These premium GT tires are very easy to live with and will not let you down in any kind of weather. With a longer service life and quieter comfortable ride, these will enhance the ride quality and handling capabilities of your car. Backed by Continental’s great warranties, these are among our top picks for car tires in the current market.
Before reviewing, buyers should be aware that the PureContact and PureContact LS, (which was released in 2019), are TWO DIFFERENT TIRES. If you have no experience with the LS, your comments are not useful or relevant.
Agreed, as of the time of this writing, the oldest possible Continental PureContact LS tires are 1.5 years old. The official release date was June 1, 2018.
https://www.continentaltire.com/news/continental-tire-launches-purecontact-ls-and-truecontact-tour
Reviews about tires 3-4.5 years old are not about this tire.
Has anyone noticed a decrease in mpg’s? I have 2018 Toyota Camry hybrid that I put around 45k/yr on and am on my third set of tires which are the Continental PureContact Ls this time around, and I’ve noticed that my mpg has dropped by an average of between 5-8 mpg.
I purchased the Continental Pure Contact tires 4 1/2 years ago and have put 55,000 miles on them so far, and have not reached the wear bars yet. I expect these tires will be good for another 10,000 miles at which time I will buy them again. I really like these tires.
Had these tires for about three years of which I accumulated 47,000 miles. The treads are down to 1/16” and it’s useless to continue riding on these tires as they now pose a risk to rain and possibly structural failure. I was told that these are 70k mile tires and they certainly did not live up to expectations. I did the warranty calculations and I would not be saving much if I decided just to purchase new tires without using my warranty, since I would be paying shipping costs without any rebates as I would receive on new purchases. I decided to purchase the extreme contact DWS tires as they most likely have better handling characteristics with a 50k warranty. I am betting that the Extreme Contacts durability will be no less than the Pure Contact tires.
Please keep us updated.