Has Subaru finally nailed the perfect SUV? After a few minor mechanical tweaks and some styling changes, the 2022 Subaru Forester adds some kit that was missing the first time around. Is it any good? Paul Maric gives you a detailed review so you can see for yourself.
G’day i’m paul so the last time we drove the subaru forester um i didn’t really like it all that much it was the hybrid model but they’ve just updated it and this is the non-hybrid model which i think i’m going to like a whole lot better this is the top specification non-hybrid subaru forester and today we’re going to do a detailed review of it this one here is
Priced at just under 45 000 but if that’s a bit too much the whole range kicks off at a little over 35 grand this competes with things like the toyota rav4 the hyundai tucson the kia sportage you have a lot of competitors to pick from there if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review you can use the time codes up on the screen there or if you’re on
Youtube just scroll down and use the chapters below and if you haven’t done so already subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon that way you’re going to find out every single time we drive updated cars now let’s talk about the exterior so you’ve got nine external colors to pick from and here’s something fun they’re all free of charge so you can pick whichever
Color you want and they’re not going to sting you any extra for it so i mentioned that this is the update it really is just a bit of a minor facelift but generally with subaru when they do facelifts they tend to kind of pull and prod at it and you can see there the headlight cluster in this bottom section looks very different to the previous forrester but it does
Mean that you get this sort of standard black grille here with the piano black elements down the bottom and then an intake there for cooling big subaru logo just there and i like this finish down the bottom it’s kind of a 3d textured finish which splits it apart from this top section it gives it a bit of a rugged sort of adventure of vibe which is what you want
From your subaru over here at the headlights you’ve got full led headlights with an led daytime running light fog lamps down the bottom there a little bit of a chrome garnish come around to the side here you’ve got your 18 inch alloy wheels so it’s got that diamond cut finish on the outside and then the piano black finish on the inside the 18 inch alloy wheels are
Pretty modest here on the top spec given that some of the cars in this segment are now going 19 and even 20 inches so it does mean you get a bit more profile there on the rubber they’ve done some work to the ride uh also the engine mounts as well so i’ll be keen to see how that actually transforms this car out on the road the last one that we drove was a hybrid and
I wasn’t really all that impressed with it let’s hope that this one is slightly better cladding there because off-road you’ve got 220 millimeters of ground clearance which is fairly big for this segment a lot of the time they’re under 200 mils so you could in theory do a bit of light off-roading but if you are doing anything more serious you’re going to want some
Meatier tyres than these sort of highway terrain tyres up the top here you’ve got this sort of satin finish on the wing mirror there with the indicator built in chrome elements around the doors you’ve got roof rails a sunroof tucked into there privacy glass and then come around to the back now around the back here it’s not led tail lights look at this you’ve got
Incandescent globes in there um i think we’re at the point now where we can well and truly be using led across the entire car incandescent globes require replacing more often and i think it’s just better to just get rid of them and go led all together forested down the bottom there and then you’ve got subaru and all-wheel drive a bit strange given the whole range
Of all-wheel drive but it’s there to remind you just in case you forget you’ve got a shark fin aerial there and then a little spoiler built into the rear what do you reckon about the design do you think they’ve given it a modest enough update or do you think something a little extra was required let me know what you think down there we’re inside the forester let’s
Start off with the key so you have lock unlock it’s the subaru button boot and then on the back it is blank a little bit of garnish on the side it’s a proximity sensing key so you leave that in your pocket once you’re inside you got a push button start now what about your design um look i think that given this as an update it would have been a really good opportunity
To introduce the big screen out of the outback i think that looks really cool in the center there instead they’ve stuck with this eight inch screen now across the range so i think i could have gone to a little bit more effort there um the other thing that kind of concerns me longer term as well if you look at the new kia sportage the new hyundai tucson look at those
Big wrap-around screens here we’ve just got the eight-inch screen the screen up the top and then a small screen ahead of the driver so they’ve kind of kept with that old-school traditional look as opposed to going to something new which i guess is fine it suits their buyers but just something to keep in mind outside of that though i really like the materials they’ve
Used around the cabin so everything around here is soft or rubbery and it means that if you are going for longer distance drives you can rest your legs and knees on these surfaces and they just give you a bit more comfort while you’re out on the road so big bonus on that side in terms of your touch points really nice and soft there in the center and soft on the
Door as well how soft are they well we’ve got our durometer we’ve tested the main surfaces in this cabin if you want to see how this car compares to others that we’ve tested before look at the link in the description what about build quality feels really good very nice and solid and finally the door test yeah it sounds really nice and solid as well okay let’s talk
About the infotainment system so eight inch color touch screen you have shortcut buttons down the bottom as well it is joined by another screen up the top there and one ahead of the driver but i’ll run you through those two separately built into the infotainment system is native navigation so it’s a tomtom system it is a little bit laggy you can see there as i’m
Sort of moving around it takes a little bit of time to catch up to what i’m doing and then on the radio front you have am fm and dab plus digital radio this particular spec has an eight speaker harman kardon sound system pretty decent sound system so if you are into your sound you will need to go for the top specification that gets that sound system you do also
Have smartphone mirroring built in both apple carplay and android auto they’re both wired i’ll show you what apple carplay looks like there it is so a tiny bit laggy as it sort of moves through those screens but it does take up the full screen there and it looks pretty good you also have voice recognition that works both with the native infotainment system and
Also when your phone is paired and this is what android auto looks like click there so full screen integration again but same story with apple carplay it’s just a tiny bit laggy as you try and go up and down there but look it really isn’t the end of the world now the screen up the top there it serves a couple of purposes so using this button here on the steering
Wheel you can actually go through all of the different menus to see a fuel economy trip computer you can do a clock there’s some off-road settings and also safety settings up there as well but when you are driving it’ll act as a reverse camera in addition to the side view camera so pushing the side view brings that up and i’ll run through a bit more detail on
That when we talk about our parking section and just above that is actually a set of cameras that can look at your face recognize who you are and then apply your car settings or alternatively it can also act as a driver attention warning as well so pretty intelligent setup and the screen is easy enough to see from the driver’s side finally there is a screen here
Ahead of the driver which is just for your basic trip computer information now let’s talk safety uh there’s actually a pretty comprehensive safety suite here and it’s all driven by the subaru eyesight system so it’s a set of cameras up the top there uh that means you get autonomous emergency braking in the forward direction you also get it in reverse you have lane
Departure warning and a lane keeping assistant in addition to that you have radar cruise control blind spot monitoring using that little thing there on the mirror rear cross traffic alert and all of the airbags inside the cabin that you’d expect on the parking front it’s a little bit curious you have a whole stack of cameras here but not really a 360 camera and
You get rear parking sensors but not front parking sensors so i’ll show you what it looks like you press this button once and it brings up this view up the top so you can see at the front there and also the side view which is good for parking one more push of that brings up a wide view version of the front camera and then when you put it into reverse you get this
Camera here so quality is pretty decent and you’re able to clearly see what’s going on behind the car there with those lines included as well moving on to practicality and we’ll start with your connectivity options so you’ve got two usb a ports down here 2.1 amps so decent amount for charging an auxiliary outlet a 12 volt and then in here you have a 12 volt outlet
As well we’re going to put your phone well phone can live down the front here although it’s a bit of a squeeze not designed for big phones or you can pop your phone in the cup holder there or in that little section but kind of a bit wonky in there coffee cup now it’s interesting because you put that in but it catches on the sides there and it’s a little bit tricky
To grab while you’re driving so i use the key to prop it up a little bit so keep that in mind if you like little coffee cups uh water bottle fits into there easily you’ve got teeth on the side that hold it in and then bottle storage inside the door for the little bottle let’s try a big bottle we’ll see how that goes oh it’s so heavy yeah sort of fits in there i
Don’t know if that’s just going to fall out so i would tread cautiously with that in terms of your other storage you’ve got this little slot back here the center console has a coin tray and then it’s pretty decent sized as well and then we have a glove box reasonably sized there manual takes up most of that though and there’s a little button there to set your
Tyre pressures if you change them and finally you have a sunglasses holder up the top and finally comfort you have dual zone automatic climate control and look at this you finally have heated seats for some reason when the forester first launched in australia it didn’t have heated seats even on the top spec model so i’m glad they’ve figured out how to integrate
That which is good news the seats are very comfortable they just hug you in so nicely they’re quite soft as well so really good place to be seated for a long distance drive both the driver and front passenger offer eight-way power adjustment so it’s forwards backwards backrest forwards backwards and then you can lift the base of the seat as well plus memory on the
Driver’s side and the searing so it offers both tilt and reach adjustment and on our reach test all of this is easy to grab onto while you’re driving now before i show you how much room we have back here have a look at this i like the fact that the door has pretty much a 90 degree opening means getting kids inside and baby seats and all that stuff is made much
Easier once you are inside though there is heaps of room here so my seat’s pretty far back but i’ve got loads of knee room toe room’s excellent and head room is reasonable it kind of cuts into it a little bit there and that’s partly due to this uh roof that comes back you can see that sort of eats into your head space a little bit but it’s not too bad other creature
Comforts you’ve got back here you’ve got map pockets with two tiers of map pockets air vents two sets of 2.1 amp usb a chargers in the center here you’ve got an armrest with two cupholders bottle fits in there nicely you’ve got rubber teeth as well bottle storage inside the door too i don’t love the fact you have to assemble your own seat belt here for the center
I just wish it would be built in like most other cars on the market but anyway you’ve got iso fix points on the two outboard seats with three top tether points now what about your cargo space given how big the forester is i’m expecting good things under here in terms of usability so you have a little under 500 liters available just here in this configuration but
The good news is under the cargo floor you get a full-size spare tyre plus this storage as well so really good setup there it is kind of rare in this segment to get a full-size spare normally it’s a space saver and if you are doing a lot of country driving a full-size spare really is mandatory so hyundai and care i think are the only two others off the top my head
That do that over on the side you’ve got hooks you’ve got a 12 volt outlet more hooks over here but have a look at this one they’ve stuck one into the boot so you can actually hang stuff off here if you need to or if the boots closed you can attach things to there as well so i haven’t seen that before and i think that’s a pretty cool setup let’s see what it’s like
With our bags in here so i forgot the suitcase at least so here is a standard carry-on sized bag that you would normally take onto the plane so it shows you that you do have a fair bit of usable space there now this cargo blinds interesting as well so instead of just being a standard setup it actually has a little lip on the front of it here so you can actually
Hide everything that’s in the way there if you do need to drop the second row you’ve got these handy switches here and that expands the space to a little under 1800 liters i’ve just hit the road in the forester now if you did watch our old forrester review if you haven’t seen it you can click up here it was of the hybrid and the hybrid just wasn’t very good at all
This on the other hand is very different so this uses a naturally aspirated 2.5 liter four-cylinder petrol engine makes 136 kilowatts of power and 239 newton meters of torque now it doesn’t sound like much but it is actually pretty good behind the wheel if you give it a kick it’s got a cvt it picks up and moves pretty quickly the actual car itself is fairly light
And it means that when you are sort of getting stuck into the throttle it doesn’t feel all that sort of lackluster or boring you do also have the ability to go to the sport mode which they call si drive and that just makes the cvt far perkier and it means that when you do get stuck into it it’s ready to pick up and go with a whole lot more urgency i know that
Some of you really don’t like cvts but in the world of cvts this one’s actually pretty good and it communicates well with this engine it just feels like it has a lot of punch across the rev band and of course it’s a permanent all-wheel drive and that’s standard uh pretty much across all subarus except the uh brz and the upcoming new brz as well the rest of them
Are permanent all-wheel drive and it’s all the better for it because a lot of the other cars in this segment are an on-demand all-wheel drive system and those just don’t really work that well because they wait for the front axle to slip before they send torque to the rear whereas here with the subaru if i give this a punch out of this intersection there’s just no
Slip at all it just hooks up straight away and gives us the the traction that we need and i think that’s exactly what you want for surety behind the wheel to make you feel like you’re completely in charge of the vehicle let’s talk fuel economy so official subaru figure is 7.4 liters per 100ks we are currently sitting on 8.1 so not too bad close enough there to the
Official average okay so this is blinding me i’m going to shut that for a second pop this into sport mode we’ll see what it’s like through a couple of corners here not a fair bit of body roll it is just body roll and you do notice there it’s not like the old uh forrester xt you remember the turbocharged one that was doing tuning to and all that sort of stuff it
Doesn’t feel like that it sort of feels very much more family-like but it’s not the end of the world because the all-wheel drive system you really do have enough traction to just keep the foot in through the corner it’s not enough power to really sort of get you into trouble so from that point of view it’s one of those cars that you can drive drive fast slowly if
You get what i mean so um yeah now on your other drive modes you have x mode down here so you have two modes to choose from here so you can go over to snow and dirt or to snow and mud and that will basically just vary what the stability control is doing and the amount of intervention it gives you before it actually lets the wheels slip a little bit so it’s good
To see that they do actually have that it goes back to their roots of this being kind of an off-road focused car you still do have that sort of 220 mil of ground clearance you can do some very light off-roading but i wouldn’t expect to climb mount everest or something in this now subaru doesn’t have an official zero to 100 time but we’ve put it up against us stop
Watching this is how it went let’s talk about the ride so they did make some changes to the ride here with the 2022 version and the ride was always actually pretty good and i think they’ve just made it better now as well there’s enough meat on those tyres to just soften out the ride it is probably softer than some of the competitors in this segment but that’s not
Such a bad thing it’s built for comfort and then when you do load it with passengers it really just soaks in all the bumps beautifully especially for highway driving and country driving it just feels nice and at home on the freeway uh it can be a little bit noisy though when you are at highway speeds especially on course chip roads so keep that in mind wonder if
A lot of that has to do with this roof and it being glass they tend to let in a bit more noise than you would normally expect with a car that’s sort of fully insulated in the roof as well and visibility so the commanding driving position here is something that i really like about the forester i can see clearly down the front of the car there and it just feels nice
And airy inside the cabin i don’t feel too claustrophobic i’ve got the blind spot monitor built into that wing mirror and then in addition to that i can hit that view button to bring up the camera whenever i need to while i’m driving so you really do have some great visibility around the car out the back it’s also excellent the window is huge so it’s easy to see
Exactly where you’re going turning circle is 10.8 meters it’s actually really tight when you go full lock it kind of turns on a dime it’s really impressive the way it spins around the steering’s nice and light as well it means parking and low speed maneuvers uh a piece of cake so the subaru forester it may not be as technologically advanced as some of the other
Competitors in this segment with their big screens and all that sort of stuff but it makes up for it in almost every other way there is heaps of room inside i love the fact that it is a proper permanent all-wheel drive and the engine it may not be the punchiest thing in the world and it may not have forced induction but it suits the characteristics of the car and
More importantly the gearbox as well so if you are looking for an suv that is a little different from the standard competitive set on the market you really should be checking this out i think that subaru will eventually bring in the big screen that you see in the outback but in the interim i think this is a great place to be let me know in the comments section
Below have you bought one what’s it been like long term i always love hearing from you guys on your feedback on these cars so let me know what you think if you did enjoy this video please make sure you share it with your mates and if you haven’t done so already subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon but until next time take it easy
Transcribed from video
2022 Subaru Forester SUV review (inc. 0-100) By CarExpert