I urge anyone needing new tyres to fit a good brand of winter legal all season tyres (Unless they live somewhere swopping between winter and summer tyres s makes mores sense.)
They are nothing like the all season tyres of yesteryear. They are now highly developed, because the law in Germany (and possibly elswhere) requires tyres to be suitable for the current road conditions - even if it snows in July .I have driven in snow in July and August. . They are suitable for snow, or driving at 200kph+ in the summer.
They are a slight compromise. Not quite as good as the very best summer tyres in summer, or the best full winter tyres in snow. Winter and all seasons tyres are a compromise anyway. A tread thats good in snow is less suitable on dry roads. Some favour one over the other.
This assumes you actually have the best summer or winter tyres. My Goodyear vector 4 season tyres performed better in summer than the Pirelli cinturato summer tyres they replaced. And MUCH better in winter.
I can understand the difficulty for those who can chose to avoid the worst weather. Good quality summer tyres do not perform as well in cold weather, but probably still better than some budget quality tyres will have done all summer.
My cunning plan is to buy an extra set of wheels with all season tyres A big initial outlay , but by sharing tyre wear between two sets of tyres I probably wont need to buy any more tyres during my ownership. All seasons rather than winter as its not always easy to know the optimum time for swopping. And if necessary I can sell the spare set of wheels and recoup some of the costs.
I probably wont do it this winter as I still have my Yaris on all season tyres.