Meztzeler Karoo 4 long term review, conclusion 

Thank you very much! I also am considering Karoo Street as my next to go tire, based mainly on the surface I am riding on. I was considering TKC 70, Trailmax mission and Pirelli Rally STR, but TKC has somewhat bad reputation in place where I live and Pirelli STR is on every bike nowadays. Trailmax mission is having good reputation with mileage and performance, bad with weight and not exactly stellar performance on wet surface. And since I want to review the new tires too, Metzeler Karoo street is very probable tire to put on. If only I had the money and time to compare them all 🙂

Thank you for your appreciation! I never used different rear and front tire. I tend to believe that tires are to be used in set though I know that a lot of people see it defferently. I wanted to try Dunlop trailmax mission, but found out that they are not that solid as they are presented. Plus the weight and price is something on cons side of things. I switched back to Continental trail attack because this year I ride almost exclusively onroad. My next tire will probably be Something from Bridgestone. I want to find yout why everybody around me hates them 😀

Hey man! Thanks for compliment! Soon after I put Karoo 4s on the bike, my son was born, so I had much less time to ride. I rode the Karoos for about 3500-3900 km. 10% of time I was riding serious offroad. The tire was showing flatening of the middle after 1000km, after 2000 km flat was being more visible, after 3000 km the center of the tire is getting very flat. But I sense no problem in handling, the performance doesn´t seem to degrade in any serious way. So far, it doesn´t make me doubt it even though I ride my KTM more agresively that regular adventure rider does his adventure bike. I still suppose, that 6000 km is top limit of rear tire. As I said in review, the rear center is degrading quickly, because it is very soft (thus giving a lot of grip). The front is almost untouched. And as I said in review, I consider these tires as offroad tire, that is capable to get you to offroad without problems. But it is not travel tire like MITAS, Haidenaou, Conti trail attack, etc. This is tire for offroad fun and good performance offroad, not tire for crossing continents. And there is no point in denying, that this tire is 50/50, thus it has only 50% of tire touching the surface thus it has less contact area, therefore it degrades quicker and has less grip. That is fact and no marketing can change physics. Anyway I was surprised how well they behaved under most circumstances. My next tire will be more onroady though, because I do not need such a offroady tire. I am riding offroad mainly because I have these tires, not because I have to. I am considering Karoo street, Conti Rocks, STRs, but not because KAROO 4 are bad, its because I am not using my bike in a way that the Karoo 4 was designed to - heavy offroad. I hope this is helpful!

First: I believe there is not a bad choice here. One thing I noticed when I put bike with Pirelli scorpion tires on next to my bike with Karoo 4 tires was, that Pirellis are more bloated or less round or how to say it. The Karoo 4 profile is more round, with steeper sides. You can see what I mean here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jULxQ8Giuno.html where they compary Pirelli rally STR vc Trailmax mission - you can see trailmax mission (like Karoo 4) is not so "flat" compared to pirellis, they are more round shaped, more like "V" shape than Pirellis "U" shape. As I was mentioning in first video, with new Karoo 4s on you will almost feel falling in when leaning the bike, because the tire has so steep angles on sides. The falling effect disappears after tire is scrubed a little, but the profile of Karoo 4 helps manouverability a lot. I have no comparison to TKC 80 or Karoo3 because noone here has those on.

Yes, this is not a long distance traveling tire. I see it as a performance oriented one. It gets you to the offroad destination without problems, excells offroad and then you safely go back. Therefore you pay for the good performance on/offroad with less durability. I imagine the tire is more suitable for riders who look for fun, performance offroad and don´t intent to cross a continent with them. More like motocross tire than enduro tire.

Hi. Yes, I am using 50/50 designation altough Metzeler does not. Let me be clear - the 90/10 or 50/50 or anything similar is mostly used by reviewers and magazines and on forums, manufacturers rarely designate tires like this (AFAIK). My reasons for this label are these: - KAROO 4 are replacing KAROO 3 which are commonly refered to as 50/50 or even 60/40 offroad tire. As a replacement, logic goes it has similar purpose thus using similar label is fiting. - If you serch a tire by brand on Metzeler website and you put any adventure bike in and let them recommend tiures for adventure bike, there are usualy three options: Tourance Next (2), which is clearly 90/10 tire, KAROO STREET, which is obviously 30/70 tire, and KAROO 4, which - by logic - is diferent than the other two, meaning even more offroady, logic dictates it is 50/50. - When you check the description of aforementioned tires on Metzeler websites, only KAROO 4 has a section called "offroad" when describing KAROO 4 and in that section there are talking about topics, which are important for offroad riding - self cleaning, block shape, traction offroad, knob layout etc. That tells you, that this tire is supposed to go offroad, thus 50/50 label is fiting. - V-max of the KAROO 4 is 150 km/h - compare to Tourance Next, Conti trail attack III, Pirelli Scorpion trail II..., which have some 200-230 Vmax. Clearly KAROO 4 is not onroad oriented, therefore it must be offroad tire. - When you look at the tire, you know it is offroad tire. When you observe any tire, you can usualy tell its "adventure tire ratio" (90/10, 50/50, ...) by simply looking at it. For my own purposes I use a "CloudJumper logic" when assuming usage of the tire. It is based on a simple presumption: how much of the tire has area, that makes contact with the ground? The less area there is, the more offroady tire it is. If you look at Metzeler Tourance NEXT (Conti trail Attack 3, Avon Trailrider, Pirelli Scorpion Trail...), you see only small, shallow depresions in the tire - that means huge contact area, that means it is on high "Adventure ratio" thus 90/10 tire - road one. When you look at Metzeler KAROO Street (Pirelli STR, Dunlop Trailmax Mission, Michelin Anakee Adventure...) You see larger dents and less contact area, leaving the impresion of 80/20-30/70 tires, because they are much less road oriented then aforementioned. And when you look at KAROO 4 (Michelin Anakee Wild, TKC 80, MITAS E09...) You see large knobs with huge gaps - there is literally 50% of the surface made of knobs and 50% of the surface are dents - therefore you can assume (rightfully) it is offroad tire and you call it 50/50 for simplyfication. To be honest, I use the ratios because it is rather understandable simplyfication. Nobody is making any exact measurements of these ratios and I would probably not believe them, if someone did them. The only thing I believe considering adventure tires is, that there are onroad tires (Tourance Next, Conti trail attack III and so on) which are superior onroad, offroad tires (check those 50/50 labeled) which are superior offroad, and hybrids between them which are not bad offroad or onroad, but are always worse than 50/50 labeled tires offroad and always worse than onroad tires. I am not saying you wont be able to ride offroad with them, but in extreme situations (watch my "stuck in mud karoo 4 review) those onroad adventure tires or even hybrid adventure tires would be stuck imediately, while with offroad adventure tires, I had a chance to go through. The mileage question - I will repeat what is in the videos. If you look at first part of my review, after 20 km of riding ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QaiYufbjuZg.html ), the center blocks of rear tire were starting to melt on leading edges very fast. That shows very soft compound. Soft compound makes less durble tire, but with more traction (general rule with exceptions, I am sure). There was even some video of KAROO 4 preview, I thing made by Chaparall motosports or Kyle Bradshaw, where they measured the compound stifness and it showed, that rear KAROO 4 in center is very soft, edges are harder and front is very hard. My riding showed this to be true as front tire is in tip top shape after some 2000 km but rear tire is melting quite fast. I do not have any precise numbers because I did not measure it. But on every few blocks in the offcenter knobs of KAROO 4 , there is imprinted elephant logo, probably 1 mm deep. On front, these logos are perfectly visible after 2000 km, on the rear, the logos are obscured by tearing (and remeber, the logos are on the harder, less used part of rear tire, side knobs). After 2000 km, it is clearly flatening in the center. As was a case with KAROO 3, which were melting quite fast too. Again, as logic dictates, this tire has only 50% of its surface made of blocks, therefore all the weight, power, braking and so on of the bike is made through 50% less of surface than compared to onroad tire. Logicaly, these tires are wearing down 50% faster (or are made of very hard compound to fight that, like Shinkos, which is not this case), especially when made of soft compound to improve road characteristics. So the mileage question is based on what I observe and I cannot give you precise numbers, because I did not do any measurement (I am not there in quality of the channel yet). But I can say, that the rear is soft and will go down rather quick. And I suppose, for obvious reasons, it will be melting faster with bigger, more powerful bikes and more agresive riding. Thx for asking and watching though! I am happy to talk more!