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Video: 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Review: Comfortable, Capable

06:28 min
By Cars.com Editors
November 9, 2023

About the video

The revised-for-2024 Subaru Crosstrek placed second out of sixth place in Cars.com’s Affordable SUV Challenge, and Cars.com News Editor and reviewer Jennifer Geiger spells out why the subcompact SUV rose to the top against its rivals.

Transcript

This is the 2024 Subaru Crosstrek. We tested it as part of a six vehicle affordable SUV challenge. Here's what we thought of it. (upbeat music) Let's talk about comfort. First, ride.
What stood out to you, Brian? Just, there's no better way to say it, how comfortable it is. This is probably of all the SUVs here the one I would take as my daily driver, just for how comfortable it was. Even in the short time in the vehicle. You'd lose some handling. It's a little bit rolly, but these aren't handling cars and it's worth it for how unbothered it is by real rough roads. <v Joe>Yeah, it really absorbs impacts well. It's all soaked up in the suspension. It doesn't make its way to the front seat. And the front seat is just, just like talk about like cushioning on your body. It's so nice. It's such a relief after getting in some of these other cars, you just sit down and you're like, ah, that's nice. Cushy ride and cushy front seats. And I don't know what it is about these seats, but you and I were talking about this earlier. They're hands down the best. All day comfortable, supportive, but also, you know, supple. Very nice. Yeah, it just fills in all the gaps and you know, kind of hugs you. It's a very homey feeling. <v Jennifer>Yeah, absolutely. <v Joe>I mean, I've owned a couple of Subarus and Impreza and we have a Forester right now. Maybe that's some of it, but really it's just it's a very comfortable, and that makes the car just feel natural. Like you're immediately acclimated to it because of just how nice it is. Yeah, absolutely. One thing that we're really torn on is this new gigantic infotainment screen, which has a lot going on. There's a lot of pros and a lot of cons, Joe? Yeah, so I think overall it's an improvement over what there used to be because the displays and controls are simplified. The old Crosstrek had that pod on top of the dashboard and it had additional steering wheel controls. Those are gone. That information is now put elsewhere it's much more streamlined. But this new screen doesn't come without bringing its own issues. Yeah, we all had trouble connecting to it with our devices for the wireless Apple CarPlay and Wireless Android Auto. Even when we weren't surrounded by everyone else's phone and it was trying to figure out what was going on it was difficult sometimes. And there's a lot that's still buried in the menus, which is just a frustrating way to access things. Especially for things like climate controls. Right. <v Brian>You do get heated seat controls outside of the touchscreen, which is great. You don't have to do like three button pushes just to turn on your heated seat. And you do have physical temperature controls to the side of the screen, but a lot of the climate controls are still in there. It can be frustrating to use that. There's a lot of glare issues too. We both experienced that. I think we all experienced that. <v Jennifer>Absolutely. With polarized sunglasses part of the screen was blurred, yeah. And when you're driving, you know, you wanna be able to see and access and do those functions very quickly. And in this car it was too complicated. <v Joe>Yeah, it's just the downside of putting those controls in the screen. And like, lets just pull it out. Let's just go back to physical controls for this. You can have physical controls and big screens. Let's just package it, make it work. Because specifically with that polarized sunglasses issue, you know, it might be different depending on the lenses and shape all that, but for all three of us it was an issue and pretty notable. Yeah, another big win for this was in visibility, great sight lines front and back. It really stood out, especially against something like the Trax. Yeah. <v Brian>Yeah, there's thin A pillars. Again, you get a nice little window between the A pillar and the side mirror for extra visibility for things like people crossing at stop signs. There's great visibility out the back. My one issue with it is that there's a lot of things in your sight line if you're a taller driver, the eyesight unit is kind of bulky. <v Jennifer>Yeah. <v Brian>It can take away, but overall you still have just great sight lines, front, rear, to the side, class leading. Again, adding to the instant comfort level and being able to acclimate to driving this car so easily. It's just very, very easy to drive. Absolutely. So second place means it wasn't first so we did you know, it did lose on a couple of things. Cargo room and you know, we didn't love the powertrain. Talk about that a little bit, Joe. It was slow. It's one of those things where you have to be very mindful about the traffic gap that you're trying to jump into. <v Jennifer>Yeah, and another CVT as well. Yes. Which, you know, is not the most responsive. Not the most reactive. Not the most natural feeling. But also among the most noisy. <v Jennifer>Very noisy. Which is a fun side effect of that choice. So the HRV is slower. But this one, I think they're both sort of in the same class of just be aware of your surroundings and plan ahead a little bit when you're driving. <v Joe>The noise really stood out during our highway sections of the expert loop and of the mileage drive where you're trying to maintain speed and just a little touch of the accelerator and the engine goes, whoa. Yeah. And you wouldn't really notice that I think in other cars, but because it's so noisy, it really stands out. Absolutely. Yeah, and then the other thing that it did poorly in is cargo room. And you know, this is a small vehicle class. But others do have more space in back. <v Joe>And that is so funny because this used to be the big option. <v Jennifer>Right, right. <v Joe>Right? And now you've got all these other cars that are just more proper SUV shapes, right? This is still very much a raised hatchback. I think the Trax is like that too. But now you've got a lot of these cars that are just box shaped SUVs that give you more cargo. Yeah, this feels like something where if you wanted to fit a lot of people, you're probably looking at exterior storage options for longer trips. If you'd like to read more and see how it did in a comparison test against other affordable SUVs, visit us at cars.com. (upbeat music)

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