Acura updated the RDX for the 2022 model year with more distinct exterior styling, a quieter interior, more technology, and some differentiation in how it drives. But there's still one major bummer that might prove a deal breaker for some.
We'll cover the major takeaways on the 2022 Acura RDX. And we'll get to that big bummer. Now, overall styling changes for 2022 are fairly mild but there's one noticeable thing here, and it's these openings on the outsides of the front bumper. These are more vertical now. Before you had a boomerang-shaped dual level opening outside. There's also thinner framework for the grill here and a new design for the front fog lights. Less is going on in the back where the RDX can have circular or rectangular-shaped tail pipes. Now inside the RDX has plenty of upscale, handsome textures, things like raised stitching here with padding where your arms and your elbows fall. Certainly feels fitting with the compact luxury SUV class. We're not as thrilled about the layout of some of the buttons here. There's lots of physical of buttons. And I wanna say, good for Acura for having that because that's better than having touch sensitive controls or burying too many things into a sub menu on the display. But the use of real estate here is a bit strange. Check this out. There's things like prominent automatic mode buttons, not for the climate control, for the heated and ventilated seats in our test car. There's this giant piece here that's just the drive mode selector. Again, really, really large things. And then you get really tiny climate controls, a volume knob up here, that's an important control. It's just really, really tiny on the dashboard. So just a bizarre sense of placement there. Now, Acura says for 2022 that it did increase sound deadening and acoustic glass should be especially noticeable. Acura says in upper trim levels of the RDX. I can say we didn't experience too much road or wind noise in this test car, this ASPEC vehicle. So mission accomplished, it seems. The RDX uses a turbocharged four-cylinder which makes the SUV seem reasonably quick. We had no issues with accelerator lag or transmission delay and the standard 10 speed automatic kicks down at 50 miles an hour with no discernible amounts of too much lag if you need more power in either the comfort or normal modes. It's even more responsive in sport mode, down shifting multiple gears in quick crisp shifts with no discernible stair stepping along the way. All of that, we like to see. Our ASPEC test car has optional adaptive shock absorbers, which Acura retuned for 2022 to give more distinct character across the various drive modes. Indeed, the RDX feels notably softer in comfort mode and firmer in sport. There's clean, polished damping at both axles when you get over anything significant with good body control throughout. It's a nice tight feeling chassis, but it can feel a little bit busy at times. I wish there was a little better isolation to accompany the stiffness, two aspects that aren't always mutually exclusive. Steering is very low effort in comfort mode, much weightier in sport mode. Again, a lot of differentiation across the two ends of the spectrum. There's not a ton of feedback either way, but sport mode does feel a little more dialed in during clover leaves. So what's the big problem? It's Acura's true touch pad interface, something the brand seems stubbornly committed to here in the RDX. Notice Acura says touch pad not touchscreen, that's 'cause this isn't a touchscreen. This is a static display up here. You gotta work this touch pad down here to control it, means fishing your finger around here and making selections by pressing down. It's just not very intuitive versus a plain old touch screen up here. And that screen itself though, it does measure a wide 10.2 inch diagonal dimension is really wide screen in terms of its ratio. We measured about nine and a half inches wide a little over three and a half inches tall. And what that means is that for things like Apple CarPlay and the navigation system if managing the interface is hard enough, they don't show up on a very big area of the screen, the equivalent of a seven or eight inch diagonal display here for those units which is small in the scheme of things. Same thing for the backup camera. The other thing difficult to deal with is this transmission. It's a push button gear selector. We've always taken issue with those in accurate vehicles. It's not the most intuitive, would be simpler just to have a conventional lever style gear selector. And despite all that seeming technology, the RDX is still missing some basic tech features, things like low speed lane centering. And the RDX lane centering doesn't kick in until you're going about 45 miles an hour or so, which means that during the vast majority potentially of your commute, if you're in traffic, the lane centering ain't working. And that is a pretty standard feature among RDX competitors. It's a shame the RDX has such a deal breaker of a user interface because there's a lot to like otherwise. Hey, maybe you can get used to it or maybe Acura can finally abandon its effort to install this across so much of the lineup. We can always hope.
