Is the Toyota Sienna a Good Minivan?
- The 2025 Toyota Sienna is a good minivan with ample passenger space, a standard hybrid powertrain and available all-wheel drive. Updates for 2025 have improved the Sienna on the tech front, but it still falls behind its competitors in that department.
How Does the Toyota Sienna Compare With Other Minivans?
- The remaining minivans on sale today are all pretty good, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. That means the Sienna compares very favorably — in some areas. If having the latest and greatest technology is a must for you, you should probably skip the Sienna; if saving money on gas matters more, the Sienna belongs at the top of your list.
This generation of the Toyota Sienna minivan has been around since the 2021 model year. For 2025, Toyota updated the Sienna’s safety and convenience technology, and it threw in some available family-friendly features. These include a built-in vacuum and a FridgeBox, which is a small insulated compartment that can act as a refrigerator or freezer.
Related: 2025 Toyota Sienna Up Close: New Features for Your Family
For this review, I drove a 2025 Toyota Sienna Woodland Edition, which sits alongside the Limited trim level in the Sienna lineup and below the range-topping Platinum. Its as-tested price was $54,490 (all prices include destination fee).
Minivans were once the vehicle of choice for families, but they’ve largely been supplanted by SUVs. Perhaps this “rugged,” updated 2025 Toyota Sienna Woodland Edition might convince shoppers to consider a minivan once again?
Related Video:
We cannot generate a video preview.
What Is the Toyota Sienna Woodland Edition?
Toyota introduced the Sienna’s Woodland Edition for the 2022 model year. At that time, some automakers began selling “outdoorsy” versions of their vehicles, aimed at buyers looking to get outside to escape pandemic doldrums. The Sienna minivan was no exception.
For 2025, the Woodland Edition starts at $51,875, which is slightly more than a Limited variant but nearly $6,000 less than the starting price of a loaded Platinum version.
With 6.9 inches of ground clearance — a bit more than the regular Sienna’s 6.3 inches — the Woodland Edition can go a little farther down unpaved roads, but the difference doesn’t seem to be meaningful. Standard all-wheel drive helps more; other Sienna trims come standard with front-wheel drive and make AWD available, but the Woodland Edition is AWD-only. Other Woodland Edition features include all-weather floor and cargo mats with a pine tree motif, an integrated trailer hitch, and roof rails with crossbars. New 18-inch, six-spoke dark-alloy wheels complete the look.
How Does the 2025 Toyota Sienna Woodland Edition Drive?
Most of the impressions from our 2024 Toyota Sienna review apply to this trim level, as well. The standard hybrid powertrain makes 245 horsepower, and it’s adequate for around-town and highway driving. It’s fuel efficiency, however, that’s the primary reason to choose a Sienna. Even with Kia’s Carnival minivan adding a hybrid variant for 2025, the Sienna retains the gas-mileage crown in the minivan segment. (Note that the 2025 Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid earns an EPA-estimated 82 mpg-equivalent combined during its 32-mile all-electric range, but it gets 30 mpg combined with the gas engine in play).
EPA-Estimated Gas Mileage of 2025 Minivans
- Toyota Sienna, FWD: 36 mpg combined
- Toyota Sienna, AWD: 35 mpg
- Kia Carnival Hybrid, FWD: 33 mpg
- Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, FWD: 30 mpg (when the battery is depleted)
- Chrysler Pacifica, FWD: 22 mpg
- Chrysler Voyager, FWD: 22 mpg
- Honda Odyssey, FWD: 22 mpg
- Kia Carnival, FWD: 21 mpg
- Chrysler Pacifica, AWD: 20 mpg
Part of the price you pay for the Sienna’s efficiency, however, is noise: When the 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine is running, it makes quite a racket.
Like the drivetrain’s horsepower rating, the Sienna’s steering and handling are just adequate. Ride comfort at least is quite good with the Woodland Edition’s slightly higher-riding suspension and 18-inch wheels.
Is the 2025 Toyota Sienna Woodland Edition’s Interior Family-Friendly?
The Sienna is comfortable and spacious inside, as one would expect from a minivan. The front seats are comfortable, and there’s ample storage space for both small and large items. The new, larger available 12.3-inch touchscreen infotainment system is a vast improvement over the previous system, but it has the same flaws we’ve seen throughout Toyota’s lineup: no home screen and lots of connectivity-based features. Even with the new, larger screen, the Sienna still ranks in the lower tier of touchscreen displays available in minivans. There’s no home screen, for example, and both the Kia Carnival and Chrysler Pacifica have better graphics and more intuitive controls. The Sienna’s screen is better than the dated one in the Honda Odyssey, at least.
What’s more, this minivan’s only USB data port is still USB-A, which feels silly when it could have been USB-C. Yes, the new infotainment system has standard wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, but I’ve had enough problems with wireless CarPlay connectivity across many vehicles to be in the habit of carrying a backup USB cable just in case — and I’m running out of the increasingly archaic USB-A ones. Also annoying: With the exception of Park, the gear selector lever’s positions don’t visually line up with the gear indicators, which feels cheap and flimsy. Every time I put the Sienna in Drive, I thought I’d broken it.
Visibility issues also popped up unexpectedly. Forward visibility is mostly good, but the available integrated dashcam mounted beside the rearview mirror eats some of your view out front; it took some getting used to. (It’s also a $375 option, which feels pricey for a dashcam but might give some owners peace of mind.) Side visibility is good, with no excessively large blind spots, but the rear window is surprisingly small and easily obstructed by head restraints, hampering rear visibility.
Headroom could be better in the second row, but there’s plenty of room for adults and children. With the available super-long-slide second-row seats moved rearward, there’s enough legroom to rival some executive rear-seat arrangements in luxury cars. Both my wife and I, however, found the sliding-door opening to the second row to be narrow, and that was amplified when those long-slide seats were moved farther back. It made loading our son into his rear-facing car seat annoying — we had to maneuver him around the door and back, then into his seat. Even so, Toyota’s available hands-free power-sliding doors are a great feature (especially if you have a particularly wiggly toddler in your arms), and the Sienna’s icon showing where your foot goes to open them makes them easy to work on the first try.
All of that said, what I think really makes the Woodland Edition shine as a family vehicle are, of all things, its all-weather floormats. They’re meant to support a more active, outdoorsy lifestyle, but as a parent and pet owner, those easily washable mats on the floors and cargo area are a perfect solution to the inevitable messes life throws my way.
I did not get to test the vacuum or FridgeBox, as they’re not available on the Woodland Edition. They’re available as an optional accessory on the Limited and standard on the loaded Platinum version, the latter of which starts nearly $6,000 higher than the Woodland Edition. You do get lots of other things for that extra money — nicer upholstery, for example — but if you’re considering a Sienna Platinum solely for the vacuum and FridgeBox, you can probably find two similar accessories for significantly less than $6,000.
More From Cars.com:
- Do You Need an All-Wheel-Drive Minivan?
- 2025 Toyota Sienna Gains New Vacuum, Fridge and Remote Rear-Seat Alert
- Is the 2024 Toyota Sienna a Good Minivan? 5 Pros, 2 Cons
- Learn More About the 2025 Toyota Sienna
- Find a 2025 Toyota Sienna Near You
Is the 2025 Toyota Sienna Woodland Edition Worth It?
As a staunch believer in minivan supremacy, I’m inclined to say yes. The Sienna is roomier and more efficient than most similarly priced SUVs, and the Woodland Edition almost looks kind of cool? Or at least as cool as a minivan can look. It’s really what’s inside that counts, though, and the Sienna is great at schlepping people. And with a price in the low-to-mid-$50,000 range, the Sienna Woodland Edition is priced in the neighborhood of higher trims of popular three-row SUVs like the Hyundai Palisade and Kia Telluride, but it offers better family-hauling utility — and isn’t that the point of a three-row vehicle?
Cars.com’s Editorial department is your source for automotive news and reviews. In line with Cars.com’s long-standing ethics policy, editors and reviewers don’t accept gifts or free trips from automakers. The Editorial department is independent of Cars.com’s advertising, sales and sponsored content departments.
.png)
