I've used (on an Accord) and can recommend Bridgestone Blizzak tires. From my coworker and research, Blizzak or Michelin X-Ice are the best studless winter tires you can buy.
Here's an old video from TireRack comparing all-season to studless winter tires. All season tires have gotten better since then, but so have studless winter tires.
Here's a video from them from 2018 on an ice rink, comparing all-season to studless winter tires.
Note two key things I've taken away from my research:
- Traction on ice is determined primarily from tread compound, not remaining tread depth. Tread design plays some part into this, but it's primarily a function of compound. So new, deep tread tires won't really help, only dedicated winter tire compounds.
- Traction on snow and slush is helped by tread compound, but is primarily a function of tread design, and more importantly, remaining tread depth. My Blizzak tires therefore came with two minimum treadwear depth wear bars. The first was the typical minimum tread depth of 2/32", which is recommended minimum by DOT and legal minimum in many states. The second was the Bridgestone recommended minimum depth for winter use, which I believe was at 6/32" (the tire starts with 11/32")
Note that
any tire will be greatly helped in the winter on snow by not running down to 2/32". So even if you don't get winter tires, if the set of tires you are running gets down to 6/32" or so, ti's probably time to change them (or take them off and wait for winter to be done before putting them on to finish running them down to 2/32").
For someone who drives for a living in an area with ice and snow, I'd highly recommend getting a second set of wheels with dedicated, high quality studless winter tires. Swap them on when winter hits, and take them off as soon as you don't any more snow or ice of significant amounts. The downside to winter tires is they are louder, may have decreased fuel economy, and are softer so the vehicle handles worse on clean, dry pavement than other tire types. They also will disintegrate if used in warm weather on dry pavement. But they cannot be beat for winter use except by studded tires or tire chains.
I've heard that Discount Tire/America's Tire charges roughly $150/year to swap summer to winter tires, and store the winter tires, if you buy the winter tires through them. And this is pulling your old tires off your wheels and putting the other set of tires on. If you buy a second set of wheels, and just have them swap the wheels, I suspect a swap would run you $40 or less. Maybe even free if you buy the wheels from them, since they offer 6000 mile rotations for free, so you could ask if they could just swap the tires in place of a normal rotation? But if you don't have the space or desire to buy a second set of wheels, $150 a year to swap them and have them store the set of unused tires is quite an excellent deal.
I had the space, so I just bought a pre-mounted, pre-balanced set of winter tires mounted on cheap steel wheels from TireRack and they shipped them to my door, ready to mount. If you go with the second set of wheels/tires option and do DIY swaps, you may need a TPMS tool to set TPMS. I had to with our Hondas, but I'm not sure how the Toyota Sienna's handle TPMS.
