Video: 2024 Honda Pilot Review: Family-Friendly, But a Techy Letdown

New Honda Pilot, new style, new interior, and lots of new stuff in here. Honestly, I have to say, one of the things that impressed me the most, this is kind of a strange thing, is the storage pockets all throughout this thing, but especially in the front doors. There's all kinds of interesting little nooks and crannies and places to stash stuff. Not just in the doors, but in the dash as well. There's lots of storage in this thing. There's so much storage and the door pockets or the door storage areas stood out to me as well. There's two of them, right? It's a dual. Yeah. with families you can never have enough places to put all the things, and what I really appreciate is that the second row doors have those same layouts, so tons and tons of space for all the goodies your kids bring with you. Yeah, it's just a versatile interior, it's comfortable. Lots of places to store stuff, lots of places to spill stuff too. (Jenni laughs) Absolutely, but you can't get away from that with families. So not only is the Honda Pilot extremely comfortable and has a lot of really cool, interesting storage options in the interior, but the seats themselves are kind of special, both in terms of the number of car seats you could fit and how the second row operates. Tell me about that. Okay, so number of car seats. This is a three seat second row. It's the only one in this comparison test, and it has latch anchors in each seating position so you're getting ultimate flexibility when it comes to car seat installation. Now, let's say you don't wanna use that middle seat, you can actually remove it. So you can go from a three seat second row to a two seat second row and hey, maybe your kids aren't touching each other and fighting all the time. What's even better is that Honda has taken this middle seat and they've created a storage space for it in a cargo well in the cargo space, so it's really practical. They really added flexibility to this vehicle and I think for families it's a standout feature. We liked a number of things about the Honda Pilot, but there were a couple things we didn't really care for. One of them that really didn't impress us is the onboard technology in terms of its multimedia system. It's got a fairly small screen in there. It's got digital gauges, but the gauges themselves feel kind of dim. Overall, it's a new system for the Honda Pilot, but it doesn't feel new. It feels like something that Honda's been doing for years and it's not really the best in the business. The small screen especially looks a little bit out of place. Yeah, I found it really frustrating when using Apple CarPlay that I couldn't even have my map take over the whole screen. It's a tiny screen and I don't even get the whole tiny screen. Are you kidding? So, yeah, it looks old, it feels dated. It's a disappointment truthfully. You're lucky you actually got to use Apple CarPlay, 'cause when I tried to connect my phone Bluetooth wirelessly to this thing, it wouldn't do it. I mean, it took several tries to get wireless Apple CarPlay working on my phone. And that always, you know, in this day and age, that really shouldn't be happening. I will say we do like the fact that there are a lot of buttons in here. It's not entirely touchscreen, but some of those buttons are again, a push button transmission shifter like we've seen in the Hyundai. We're not big fans of that, we really would prefer a lever. Let's get rid of the buttons of the transmissions, right? Co-sign. The Pilot's finishing position in this test serves as a reminder of just how competitive this segment of SUVs can be. Yeah, it did well in most tests and actually won a couple of them, but even that wasn't quite good enough to finish higher than fifth. (upbeat atmospheric music)