Video: What’s the Best 3-Row SUV of 2024?

So what's the best option? Well, these days it's increasingly looking like one of the seven vehicles we have here today, a three-row SUV, which has replaced the minivan as the most popular family vehicle in America. This is a huge segment and we couldn't get them all together, but we did gather the most popular versions. In fact, we have the Honda Pilot, the Hyundai Palisade, the Kia Telluride, the Nissan Pathfinder, the Subaru Ascent, the Toyota Grand Highlander and the Volkswagen Atlas. And we got the nice versions. They are loaded with amenities, tech and family-friendly features. And we brought them here to my house in Palm Springs, California, where we drove them around town up into the mountains, even through some brutal Southern California traffic. We measured cargo capacity, we tested them on a fuel economy loop, and we even fitted child car seats in them to see how they fit. And it was all in the name of trying to figure out which is the winner for the 2024 Cars.com Three-Row SUV Challenge. It's not his house. (bright music) With standard all-wheel drive and the lowest as-tested price in our test, the Subaru Ascent really does have some appealing qualities, but its smaller overall footprint really did put it at a disadvantage in a number of our scoring categories. This thing is just too small. It's too small inside in the first row, the second row and the third row, especially the third row. The first row is okay for in terms of comfort, but the second row, the legroom is really tight, the foot room is really tight. And that third row is really only suitable for kids. Yeah, you know, I only sat in the third row to test it to see how it was, and it was, for my frame, it was borderline unusable. Interestingly enough, it was the front row that gave me the most problems. Obviously I spent the most time there, but I had real problems with the shoulder room, you know, a little bit of legroom. I felt like I was sitting more on the seat than in it. And it was kind of a firm seat as well. You know, and when I did have my stuff in the front, like water bottle and keys and phone, I didn't really have much place to put it. It just kind of seemed there were, getting stuffed in little nooks and crannies. I will say though, the visibility is pretty good. I mean, you're sitting up fairly high, the belt line is rather low. You can see all around you rather easily, but at the end of the day it's just too small. I agree. You know, and it is to the point with visibility, Subaru's usually really good with that, with visibility. It does feel though, in operation, observably like a class size down. It's just is too small. Subaru makes a lot of noise about its safety systems. It has some of the best in the world supposedly. But things like the EyeSight system that you have in the Ascent here, I find myself, I turned it off whenever I get in because it's always beeping at you. It's beeping at you for the lane departure warning. Or if he thinks you're not paying attention or if you got a car in front of you and cruise control and it moves out of the way, it moves back into the way, it's always beeping at you. And I find I turn it off, which is not something you wanna do for a safety system, but you kind of have to in order to maintain your sanity. Yeah, no, I, in so both in the Ascent immediately, the first thing I did and in my own personal Crosstrek that I have, which I turn off the lane-keep assist immediately and it punishes you in the way that it puts a small yellow light on the dash to let you know that you've turned it off. And there's no way around that. I totally agree with all, with your sentiment. It's kind of finicky. Camera gets blocked, it yells at you, it freaks out. One thing that I wasn't the biggest fan of was the attention monitor that's mounted on the dash. Like the idea. Don't really like the execution. You can, I must say you can toggle it off and I did, just like the other systems, but I noticed when I would be taking sometimes a right or left and I would be looking in the direction that I was turning, it would yell at me sometimes for not keeping my eyes on the road, yet my eyes were on the road. So yeah. Not great. Yeah, lots of nanny systems in this thing and to have to turn them off every time. It's not what you wanna do. It's not really what you should have to. And especially since those systems are embedded in the screen. You'd think that by giving up interior space and comfort that the 2024 Subaru Ascent would make up for it in other areas like fuel efficiency and driving engagement, but you'd be wrong. The subie's 22.9 average mile per gallon on our real world fuel economy run was the lowest of the bunch. If Subaru wants to seriously compete in the three-row segment that is very hotly contested, it's time for rethink of the Ascent. The Nissan Pathfinder was last redesigned in 2022, but it's one of the older SUVs in this multi-car comparison test. With its redesign, it got boxier, it got an all new interior and it got a new automatic transmission. One thing we really liked about this Pathfinder was the fact that the interior is really quite posh. It's got a lot of luxury features in there. It's got some really great materials. It just feels like a really nice environment. It's not the top spot that we gave it to another SUV, but it is really quite good. There's lots of stitching in there, lots of leather. It's just a really nice place to be. It is. And I found the seats to be really comfortable, really well cushioned. It's just a little bit better than everything else. And I really liked the power adjustable steering wheel. It's a little thing, but you know, the little things add up in a competition like this. So, we talked about this luxurious interior, but we know not everything's perfect, right? And for me it was the multimedia system. It looks dated, the screen is small. I tried to use the native nav to get around as we were testing these cars. I spent five minutes. I couldn't actually get it to work for me. It was so frustrating. I had to go to Apple CarPlay, which is fine, but it's a newer car. It should be better than this. Yeah, you're lucky you actually got Apple CarPlay to work. When I plugged my phone into the thing, I, for some reason it connected. I could use other systems but I couldn't get Apple CarPlay to work on the thing even after resetting my phone. That, the screen is actually a little on the small side compared to some of the newer vehicles in this test. And the multimedia system itself contains a whole bunch of other features and icons and whatnot that quite frankly I have a hard time believing anybody is actually using it. Just kind of clutters things up, makes the whole thing look a little bit dated and difficult to use. Multimedia systems, they're important features in a lot of these big vehicles and the Nissan's is still not quite up to snuff. Yeah, you're right. It's a disappointment. So not only is this thing really quite nice inside and very comfortable, but according to some of your testing, it's also extremely useful, especially when you're talking about car seats. Oh my gosh, on car seats, the Pathfinder, it did fantastic. In fact it scored all A's, our top score of course, across the board, both in the second row and the third row. So, for parents it's a huge win. Nothing is worse than struggling with car seats. One other little bonus feature in the Pathfinder that I loved is the removable second row console. So it's easy to take out, you can throw it in the back and again, flexibility is key when it comes to families. A sixth place finish might not seem all that impressive in this group, but you have to look at the points themselves and the points difference between the first place and sixth place finish is not all that great. I mean if you care about things like a really nice interior or a car seat fitment, a Nissan Pathfinder might just be perfect for you. (bright music) The Honda Pilot was redesigned for 2023 and it's got a rugged boxier look, but it's still family-friendly. New Honda Pilot, new style, new interior, lots of new stuff in here. Honestly, I have to say, one of the things that impressed me the most 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 little interesting little nooks and crannies and places to stash stuff. Not just in the doors, but on 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 of space for all the goodies your kids bring with you. 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 an 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. Now, while the 2024 Kia Telluride does share a platform powertrain and general structure with the Hyundai Palisade, which is also part of this comparison test, the two differ significantly when it comes to both presentation and feature packaging. And this creates two distinct groups of buyers. Generally speaking, the Telluride puts more of an emphasis on the adventurous, outdoorsy side of the SUV ownership experience whereas the Hyundai Palisade is absolutely more focused on luxury, features, and comfort. You mentioned the Hyundai Palisade as we're talking about the Telluride, but one area that this Telluride stood out from the Palisade is in the multimedia system. For myself, I know I really appreciate the wide screens, right? Both screens, both the digital cluster as well as the actual multimedia screen are well over 12 inches apiece. And of course call me crazy, I like an actual button. So there's a lot of duplication between what that multimedia system can do and physical buttons. As a driver, I really appreciate the ability to just hit a button and get to exactly what I'm looking for on that screen. What did you like about it? Redundancy of those buttons are I totally agree that's, I prefer that, especially when it comes to climate controls and the media interface. You know, for me one of the biggest things was just the style of the interface. You know, there's a lot of neon sign, kind of signage, looked like with the font and line form. Very interesting, very attractive I think and kind of subtle, you know, this is kind of a showcase as we're moving into 2024 and 2025 and beyond, how much more complex and everybody wants, all these automakers wanna cram in, you know, more features, more complexity with the UI, make it bigger, make it more confusing. This is how I would like the UIs to be going forward. Right. So just all the automakers out there, they need to take note that this is your benchmark. I agree. In typical me fashion, one of the little things that I notice in the interior pretty much inconsequential, but you know, for me not really is the headliner in the Telluride is a micro suede, very cushy padded thing. I mean compare this to anything other than the Palisade which has that, but any other, like the Ascent and the Pathfinder, they all have that traditional standard, rough fabric that isn't bad, but this definitely elevates it a little bit above. Combine this with some of the stitching inside, some of the interior design, some of the surfacing. It's just, it's, you know, especially as Kia and Hyundai are trying to position themselves as, I wouldn't say budget luxury automaker, but they're putting a lot more emphasis on bringing some of the traditional features we see with luxury automakers into a more egalitarian package. And I think it works in both this and the Hyundai if you found anything like that. Totally agree. And I actually noticed it too. So maybe we're just on the same wavelength. Sure. I really liked the, you know, the side view camera angles that appear when you, you know, engage the turn signal. It appears in the digital gauge cluster and it just allows you to see what's going on along the side of your car. That's fantastic if you're merging, right? It's also really great if you're looking for bikers or if you're trying to parallel park and who knows what's, you know, in the gutter that you're trying to park next to. So I think it adds, it enhances driver safety and I'm always a big fan of that. It's really all about the details with Hyundai and Kia and they really nailed it in this one. We talked about what we liked. Now we gotta talk about what we don't like, right? I'm gonna go first if you don't mind. Okay. No, please. as a certified child passenger safety technician, which means I know how to install car seats, I had a couple problems with car seat installation in the Telluride. In the third row, it was with the booster seat of all things. It's the easiest seat to do, but the seatbelt buckle fell behind the booster seat that makes it really hard for kids to grasp it. And booster seats are all about kids buckling in by themselves, so not great there. In the second row, the inner latch anchor sits kind of close to the seatbelt buckle and I struggled for probably about five minutes to install our convertible car seat. With a latch system, it's supposed to be easier. It's not supposed to be harder. This was harder. How about you? What stood out? Yeah, so I just want to, on a quick note on that. Yeah. it sounds like it's not enough just to have the functionality of something. There also has to be kind of, or like or just to have the feature, there has to be functionality, there has to be some ergonomic side to it 'cause it sounds like that was a real pain. Yes indeed. I mean that can, that really can sink it. It's not, yeah, for me it's way more subjective than it is objective. I mean this has the same naturally aspirated V6 and transmission as the Palisade. Like the transmission, no problem with that. I just did find this engine to be, for my own taste a little bit peaky, I would've liked a little bit more low-end torque. Kind of like the Atlas and the Ascent's turbo-charged four-cylinders. I like those a little bit better in terms of power delivery. You know, I would notice a little bit of the peakiness just driving around by myself. Mm. Yeah. about sharing, I mean. And loading up people and eggs and crap. So really it's, that's, I would've just changed this. And it's interesting because I know Kia has access to good turbocharged four-cylinders and I would've liked to see one in this. Maybe in the future? There we go. Nice. The Kia Telluride and the Hyundai Palisade, they share a lot of similarities, but the Telluride, it doesn't have the Hyundai's luxury features. It doesn't have the breadth of features and it's nearly as expensive. The Telluride's mid-pack finish, it's perfectly acceptable, but it is showing that in this class of three-row SUVs, it might not be keeping up. All new for the 2024 model year, the Grand Highlander is the latest three-row SUV in Toyota's sprawling SUV lineup, sitting above the regular standard Highlander and below the Sequoia. Also new with the Grand Highlander is a raft of interesting powertrain choices. Our limited tester here has a traditional hybrid drivetrain making it the only hybrid among the bunch of SUVs tested here and giving it a significant leg up when it comes to efficiency. Speaking of efficiency, this is the hybrid and we have to get into it because it really blew us away. So, you know, when I think about family life, it is a lot of running errands for the kids and with the kids, whether that's to school, to soccer, to, you know, the grocery store, what you name it. A hybrid makes that a lot easier on the old wallet and in our own fuel economy test run, the Grand Highlander blew everybody else out of the water. No big surprise there. It returned 35.1 miles per gallon in our test, which was more than 10 miles per gallon, you know, compared to the Pilot and the Atlas, which tied for a second place. So tell me a little bit about what you liked here? Yeah, no, this was, I think for me the biggest powertrain surprise of this whole test compared to the traditional kind of under stressed, naturally aspirated V6s found in, I would say the majority of the competition field here and next to the turbocharged four-cylinders in the Atlas and the Ascent, I had low hopes for or low expectations for this naturally aspirated hybridized four-cylinder. Especially when you take into account Toyota's other naturally aspirated four-cylinder offerings. They're not bad, they're just, they can be kind of course unrefined and sometimes a little bit underpowered in bigger SUVs like this. But blown away how they've isolated this quite well. They've made it feel just as powerful in my opinion, as the turbo-charged offerings. And yeah, it was, like you said, it was unbelievably efficient for what it is. Plenty of power. I can imagine it loaded up with kids and all those the hockey sticks and soccer balls and all the family runs to the airport. It was great. I mean, it really was blew me away. Now there's also one more benefit to the hybrid side of things, right? And that is EV mode. I know it was great in parking lots, but did anything strike you about that? Yeah, that, you know, it's funny, I like to think back when I was in high school and I used the, I wish I had an EV mode in my parents' car when I would sneak home so they wouldn't know I'm home late. But I will say it felt like it was making a tangible difference. So I found that it wasn't just efficient in fuel, which it is, but the usage of space and storage on the inside, very impressive. I remember the first thing I noticed when I got into this for my first drive was like, we're in the desert and I have this bright orange metal liter water, Hydroflask, has a double wall, all that. So it's kind of big and usually I have to throw it in the storage, cavernous storage bin on the other SUVs under the armrest, it rattles around, it rolls, it's makes a ruckus or put it in the doors, which it barely fits there. This one has this storage well right next to the shifter that it's almost as if it was designed for this. It just slots right in, no rattling keeps it in place. Awesome. Love that. Yeah, I was just generally super impressed. Usage for the small stuff, but for the bigger stuff it still also swallows pretty much everything because in our testing we found that this is best-in-test for storage behind the third row. And we know that with families, there is a lot of crap, right? I mean- Cribs or whatever you've got, all the hockey equipment, whatever sport you're playing. It's really important that that cargo area can handle all that because you wanna have maximum space up front. One of the things that I really liked is the front passenger isn't forgotten. There's a little storage shelf there, which normally I sort of don't pay a lot of attention to, but I thought this was really well done and it was deep enough to hold my phone and there was a charging port, so one less cable sort of, you know, snaking out of the center console area. Another thing I also enjoyed was the flexibility in the second row, between the captain's chairs, there's the center console, which you know, can hold cups, whatever stuff kids have. This is removable, right? So that's great. As you have this car, you're not just gonna have it for a few years, you're gonna have it for maybe 10 years or more. So what you need and the way you use this car is gonna change. And Toyota really dialed in the flexibility. So of course this is coming in third, so not everything is perfect with the Grand Highlander. For me, I had some issues with the seats. In the second row, I found the captain's chairs to be incredibly heavy to move. You know, you're trying to shift the seat forward to create a walkway to the third row seat. I had to put a lot of muscle into that. Now imagine, you know, a 10-year-old trying to do this while, you know, you as the parent are trying to load groceries into the back or something, right? So thinking about that, not only from my own perspective, but from a child's. And then the third row, you know, the buckles in the back, they're on floppy. They're floppy we call them, which sounds silly, but if you've got a kid in car seat in a booster seat back there and they're trying to buckle up independently, it's really hard for them to do. And I can guarantee you that no parent really wants to go back there to help any child in the third row buckle up. So, for that reason, it did not score very well and others in our car seat check. But what about you? What stood out as sort of not your fave? Yeah, I got a couple things, but I do wanna say it's also sounds like that could be a combination issue if the parent does have to go back there, move the heavy seats, kid, that's not fun is it? (Jenni laughs) No. no, I would say for me it's kind of smaller stuff but I found the infotainment a little bare bones, wasn't the biggest fan. It's newish. It's being rolled out with, you know, newer Toyota models. It was just kind of hard to find where the embedded systems are and the features are, I dunno, I just wasn't the biggest fan of that. Now some of the trim on the inside, I noticed this kind of plastic-y and not the best. Yeah. because we got the Limited because of we wanted to have price parity with the other vehicles here. There is a Platinum trim above this, which would be more on par with equipment as these others. But hey, this makes sense for the price. And so it really wasn't too bad, it was just, you know, plastic-y. And to be honest, in traditional Toyota sense, they put more of an emphasis on, you know, robustness and longevity and value rather than they do style. So I will say this is probably one of the more boring interiors that I've driven on this test, especially compared to some real stylistic standouts like the Telluride and Pathfinder. Surprisingly, on that Pathfinder. But you know, and finally my most like lamest of nitpicks that I have is the drive mode buttons that are positioned, right? They're large. If you remember them and they're right before, right positioned ahead of the center console armrest. And I found myself occasionally hitting those buttons. Changing the drive mode doesn't sound like a big problem but consider this is all about efficiency and smoothness. If you accidentally hit this into Sport mode, it's going to affect how the powertrain reacts, especially in the highway might downshift or you know, I wish they could reposition that to maybe, maybe be a knob or something like in the other cars. Yeah, and a little bit further away from just that. Yeah, exactly. And it's a little things like that that can sink a car. Yeah, exactly. is comfortable, it's spacious and it's fuel efficient and that's a bit of a rarity for three-row SUVs. Now the hybrid side of things, it doesn't negatively affect the driving experience either, which is fantastic. In fact, it's a bit of the best of both worlds for families on the go. The Volkswagen Atlas got a big redesign for the 2024 model year with new styling inside and out and a new four-cylinder turbo-charged 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 like 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 the, 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 side? 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 in 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 turbo-charged 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 it 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 enjoy 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. (Jenni laughs) 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 unintuitive 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 unintuitive. It took us 10 minutes to try and figure out, look seasoned automotive journalists, just to display 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. The Hyundai Palisade last got a big refresh for the 2023 model year, but the Calligraphy Night Edition we have here really just continues one of the most impressive things we find about the Palisade, its high level of premium features in a family-oriented vehicle. One of the most impressive things I think about the Palisade is its interior, it's classy, I think. It's, I wouldn't call it necessarily a luxury interior, but it has luxury elements. Like you look at the dash trim, it's got this tuxedo pin striping, which reminds me of a Mercedes Maybach, but not quite as nice I think. Yeah, I think that works because that's a much more expensive vehicle and you know, you did touch on the fact that it looks nice and I'll say looking is the key word here. I think it kind of falls apart when you get close. You touch the material, you kind of futz around with it. But yeah, its overall presentation does look nice. I will say you did like the cloth, correct? I do. I'm not the biggest fan. I preferred it's sister Telluride interior with the leather, although I do appreciate that this is a little bit less corny interior, a little bit less cheesy than the Telluride. You see, I like the fabric thing 'cause every other vehicle here has either vinyl or leather, but fabric you never see in a higher-end vehicle anymore. But if it's done well, I think it really does look nice and we have to admit, this is one of the most comfortable interiors here. Oh, certainly. the front seat comfort is excellent. Second row comfort is really quite good as well. And it's not too bad to get to back in that third row and once you're there, three-mode seat warmers. I couldn't believe how toasty my butt was back there when I was testing this thing out. And it's, yeah, like I said, not too bad to get back there, and yeah. You said it's got that the third is actually heated. One of the things that's impressed us most is the amount of luxury features in this vehicle. It's got heated first, second, and third row seats. It's got power folding second and third row seats as well. Massaging front seats. They even have an extension for the seat bottom on the front as well. That's stuff you don't normally find in these kinds of vehicles. But it looks good and it feels good to me. One of the other things we really like about the Palisade is the amount of technology that's in this thing, but it's usable technology. Like the displays, it's got tons of great big digital displays, but it doesn't put everything in the touch screen. It has a lot of actual hard buttons as well, which is something we really like in a vehicle. You know, the one part of the hard buttons and I agree, I do really usually like hard buttons for the seat controls and the climate controls. But I will say I was not the biggest fan of the buttons for the shifter. I was or gear selector. I much rather prefer the Telluride, which remember is the, mostly the same vehicle as this underneath the wrapper. I definitely prefer the standard automatic gear shifter in the Telluride rather than the buttons. It's just easier to use. It's, yeah, it's easier to use, it's more intuitive. You don't have to try and hunt to figure out which button you wanna push when you're trying to either pull out into traffic or back out onto the street. Yeah, you know, under, I think an underappreciated control with buttons would be the second row and trying to toggle that to get into the third row and stow it. Found it very intuitive, very easy. And even from the third row I was able to figure out, you know, kind of where it was without having to ask outside help. Yeah. outside of buttons, I really like the digital driver display. It's configurable. When you go into different drive modes, it should you know, it either spices it up or calms it down, but you're not locked into that, which I also liked. You can configure it as you want and you know, if it does get a little confusing or kind of cluttered, I did like the head-up display, which has all the pertinent information. Yeah. It's all nicely packaged. It's nicely packaged and it's easy to use. Yeah, I mean it's big and it's clear. It, the touchscreen is right here. It's up high. It's so simple to push and do what you need it to do. But, it's not confusing. It's not you trying to figure out how to use anything in this vehicle. It's simple, it's intuitive, it looks good, it's well done. Yeah, I agree. the Palisade won our test and there's a lot of things we really do like about it, there are two areas that at least you and I don't think are so great with the new Hyundai Palisade. One of them, for you anyway, is the engine. Ah, yeah, the engine. I must say I really do like the transmission that's hooked up to this. No problem. Smooth shifting all that. You know, the fact is I don't really like this naturally aspirated V6 and it's not the configuration because most of the vehicles here have a naturally aspirated V6. I just found this one kind of old. It's, I believe the same in the Telluride, a little peaky. And you know, this is gonna be used to haul family, friends, luggage, all that kind of good stuff. I think it doesn't have enough low torque that I usually like in large SUVs like this. So I really did prefer at least the engines, the turbo-charged four-cylinders of the Atlas and the Ascent. Yeah. For me, the thing that I'm really still kind of confounded that this thing doesn't have is wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. I mean this thing is several years into its existence and they still haven't figured out a way to put wireless Apple CarPlay in the large multimedia system. I don't know how hard this could possibly be at this point if they've had plenty of time to figure this out. We're expecting it's probably gonna come with the next generation version, but it's still not here. It's not on the Telluride either. And that's just I think a glaring omission for me. And I think it's quite surprising since this is one of the most feature-rich vehicles in the whole lineup here. Yeah. had only a handful of outright wins, it proved highly competitive in a wide range of categories. And it even won our value scoring thanks to its impressive roster of premium features for the money. Now speaking of money, this is the most expensive vehicle in the test at an as-tested price of $55,600. But that's not much more than the Atlas and it's within a few grand of the other vehicles. So, if premium features are a must have in your next family vehicle, you've gotta check out the 2024 Hyundai Palisade. Congratulations to the Hyundai Palisade. Now we collect a lot of data doing a test like this, so if you'd like to see how the full results are scored, head on over to Cars.com/news for all the spreadsheet love your data-driven heart could desire. (bright music)