Video: 2025 Subaru Forester: New Looks, Same Challenges

We weren't able to test the new hybrid model in our comparison, but one of the things that stood out was its visibility. It had a near perfect score in our outward visibility assessment. Yeah, it's always been a strength of Subaru and it's excellent in the Forester, you get these really thin A pillars in front of you. The side mirrors are mounted on the doors. There's a little view window behind the A pillar, so you can see between the two. It also just makes the cabin feel nice and open, like you feel safe. It's almost like the viewing car on a train. It's just really great to see out of and it makes for a good driving experience. Yeah, that's a function of the forester since, I think time began is that, it's always felt more upright, more boxy. It doesn't have the swooper car-like styling that a lot of its competitors do. But again, that's something it's buyers love and that's something that does pay dividends in being able to see out of the thing. Another area did well was in front seat comfort especially. It wasn't a winner, but it was competitive in that category. Yeah, I mean, even for a bigger guy like me, it was a very comfortable area and part of that is the visibility. Part of that is just the shape of the seats. You had a lot more room up front. There's a lot of width to it. I thought the back seats were fine too. Once you figured out how the rear seat recline worked, they kind of hid the controls for rear seat recline and when we first got in it, the thing was all the way reclined and I couldn't believe that anybody would wanna sit like that. But no, it actually does work just fine, but there's plenty of leg room, there's plenty of head room because of that tall ceiling. It's just a really comfortable place for four or even five people. Yeah, it's less about the seat cushioning than I think the space and the head room, the visibility, but really enjoyed those front seats. They weren't overstuffed even without, I would say probably the nicer upholstery of some of the other competitors here. It was a good, comfortable interior. Even though we didn't test the hybrid, this did the best of the gas only powertrains here in our fuel economy test. It was rated at 31.2 miles per gallon, so it really did well for what powertrain it had in it. One thing it didn't do well though was in the screen tech that came in ours. This has the 11.6 inch vertically oriented touchscreen. We've seen it in other Subarus, haven't been a fan of it there. Really weren't a fan of it here either. No, I mean, it's a combination of the fact that it's just not terribly easy to use. It incorporates the climate controls into touch sensitive buttons as part of this screen, so they're not easy to find. The fonts themselves look old, the arrangement looks old, the resolution looks old, and for this being a brand new vehicle in terms of its redesign and refresh, that's becoming unforgivable quite frankly. As you mentioned, it's also just hard to use. There's multiple layers to get to some basic functions that in other vehicles are just physical controls, and on top of that, it's also fairly vulnerable to sunlight. There's a lot of glare. That is one of the downsides I guess, of being able to see out is that the sunlight can come in, but the screen just doesn't react well and you lose about the right half of it in sunnier conditions. And on top of all that, the vertical orientation of the screen really affects how things like the backup camera are displayed. Apple CarPlay, for example, it's more of a square than a full portrait style display when you're using CarPlay, but it's just not the full screen and it's frustrating. Yeah, everybody else has really gone to horizontal screens, a landscape portrait, which really does work a lot better for these kinds of things. While the Forester had the lowest as tested price of the SUVs in our test at just under $38,000, it was also missing a lot of features that were present in our other competitors. And that hurt it in our scoring. Its other scores were mixed too with it having a shared win in our car seat check assessment, but also the smallest cargo space, and not a lot of in-cabin storage. But if outward visibility is what you're most looking for in your next compact SUV, the Forester is the one for you. To see how the Forester and the six other SUVs in our compact SUV comparison test did, be sure to go visit cars.com/news.