Video: 2024 Volkswagen Atlas Review: 98% Awesome, 2% Deal Breaker

(upbeat music) The Volkswagen Atlas got a big redesign for the 2024 model year with new styling inside and out and a new four-cylinder turbocharged engine. And while they've kept a lot of the things that we've really liked about the Atlas over the years, they've gone to an entirely touch sensitive interior with a new multimedia system. And that just ain't working for us. So I think the thing that we liked most about the new Atlas was the fact that the interior is absolutely cavernous. There is so much room in here in the first, second, or third row. I mean, I fit in the third row without a problem. I can get in and out of it without a problem. You could put the second row seats far forward enough that the ingress and egress space is just huge. The whole thing is just huge. It's huge, but let's talk a little bit more about the third row. So there are only two seats back there and that is actually a good thing, right? Instead of trying to shove three seats, one incredibly, usually tiny middle seat back there, they're letting people spread out a little bit. It's also making things like car seats fit a lot better back there too. So a little less on the seating side, but actually a lot more room when it comes to comfort. How does it do on the car seat test? Great question. On car seats, it gets all A's. So across the board, car seats fit well in the second row and they fit really well in the third row. We look at not only infant seats, we look at a convertible seat, which is forward and rear facing as well as a booster seat. We put them in different positions around the car and basically this aced it. It's also got the most cargo room behind the second row of seats as well. So if you're not using those rear third row seats, it's got a ton of space for stuff. I mean, Atlas is big. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not small. No, no, no. So Aaron, the Atlas won in both handling and powertrain, I know I certainly enjoyed zipping through the mountains around California in this thing. What about you? What stood out? This is basically the most fun-to-drive vehicle here, I think. We all pretty much agreed on that. It's got a more powerful turbocharged engine than it did last year. It's making 269 horsepower, 273 pounds-feet of torque from a turbo four. I mean that's, those are significant numbers, but it's zippy. It's exciting. It's actually really just a great vehicle to drive. The handling is a little on the sprightly side in terms of the steering itself. Steering feel is really quite numb, but it's also got a number of different drive modes. And if you play with these drive modes, it actually does amp up how this thing feels. And one of the things we can set is the actual steering effort. So you can move that up a little bit to make it feel a little bit more sporty. But the thing feels like a much smaller vehicle than it actually is. And that really came through I think, for a lot of our judges, just in terms of how much we enjoyed driving it. And it's so important to actually enjoy what you're driving, especially when you have to do some of the drudgery runs that come with family life, right? You're taking the kids to school or you're going to whatever practice they go to. Having a little bit of fun, looking forward to getting into this car. I think any shopper will really have a great time behind the wheel. I'll take your word for it. As much as we like a lot about the Atlas, there were basically two areas that I think kept it from the top spot. One of them was the noise. Oh my God, it was so noisy. The road noise was so loud. So as a professional automotive journalist, the way that I handled that was to basically just turn up the radio, make it really loud. That was my approach. I'm glad you figured out how to turn up the radio because the rest of us really had a problem actually doing that. The new multimedia system in this thing, and it's not just the multimedia, it's almost all of the controls, climate control, everything is now touchscreen. It's now touch sensitive in that large central screen. And it's terrible. It is so un-intuitive in trying to figure out how to actually use the thing. I mean, if you live with it, you probably will eventually learn how to use it. But just jumping in and going, it's extremely difficult and un-intuitive, it took us 10 minutes to try and figure out, look seasoned automotive journalist, just to display what's playing on the radio at that moment. And we had to go to an external source to do it because it just was not obvious or apparent. There's only one feature that we really like about the multimedia system and the climate control. There's specific buttons you could push that are like, warm your hands or warm your feet or clear the windshield. And that's actually kind of a neat feature. But it is the only neat feature in this new multimedia system. The rest of it I think is just hot garbage. And it really is a problem when you're driving and trying to use it too. Yeah, it's such a problem. It can be distracting, right? If you want to do a simple task, often you're gonna have to go into that control screen. There are a few buttons that will help you shortcut for volume on the radio, for instance. But overall, it's too much of a distraction and it, for me it was, you know, I graded it really harshly. Yeah, I think honestly, the interior noise and the new multimedia systems and control systems are really what kept the Atlas from winning that top spot. You got it. So you probably noticed Aaron and I have some strong, strong feelings about the Atlas. In fact, all of our judges did. But taken as a whole, this car finished in a very solid second place. So it's clear that there are some really great qualities about it, even though there's a couple we really don't like. Now, if you're going to purchase the Atlas, if you're thinking about it, you're gonna need to plan to spend some quality time on the dealer lot figuring out that infotainment system before you put it into drive. (upbeat music fades out)