New 2023 Lexus RX Full Review: Redesigned and Better than Before

this is the new 2023 Lexus RX 350 and it's the latest version of the Lexus RX the RX is one of the most popular luxury SUVs on the planet and now there's a new one fully redesigned with some big upgrades over the old model and today I'm going to review it and show you all the quirks and features of the new Lexus RX before I get started be sure to check out cars and bins which is my Enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era with free listings you can list your cool car for free and auction it on cars and bids and we've had some great sales recently including this Tesla Roadster which sold for just under a hundred and forty thousand dollars this fantastic Ford Bronco lifted modified sold for just over seventy thousand dollars and this wonderful Aston Martin DB9 vellante which brought just over forty five thousand dollars if you're looking to buy or sell a cool Enthusiast car from the modern era cars and bids is the place to do it with daily auctions great selection and free listings check it out at carsandbids.com all right I'm gonna start the quirks and features the new RX with getting in where you'll instantly notice one difference compared to the old model the new model's door handle is electronic what I mean by this is you go to grab the handle but instead of pulling on it there's a little button on the inside you press that and the door pops open electronically which is interesting now same deal on the inside where you don't have a traditional door handle to get out instead you have this which looks like a door handle but rather it's a button you push on it and the door pops open electronically and then you open it the rest of the way now just in case you're anxious about this and worried you might get stuck inside your new RX if the electronic popper fails there is a Fail-Safe you can also pull on this door handle button the opposite direction and then it acts as a mechanical handle sort of as a backup so you can get out even if the electronic isn't working but anyway next up climb inside the new RX and the first thing you notice especially if you're familiar with the old model is it's very different in here a little bit more relaxed cleaner a little bit simpler and more modern than the outgoing RX model definitely a totally redesigned interior in here and probably the most obvious change comes to the center screen which is massive you can see this huge Center infotainment screen here dominating the cabin and taking virtually all of your in-car functions into the screen now this new infotainment system replaces the remote Touch system that was in most of the old RX models that system was terrible used a little mouse and controller to select things it wasn't a touch screen until the very end of production it was just a disastrous system that didn't work this replaces it and it's much better this new infotainment is fantastic and I think a lot of people are going to like it the main things I like about it number one very responsive to the touch so you tap on it there's no lag there's no delay it just does what you want like you'd expect from a smartphone it also is very intuitive you don't have stuff buried in menus hard to find everything's pretty easy to figure out where it is and it's all relatively simple and easy now what like that said there are a couple of drawbacks of this infotainment system one is the fact that you can't do two things at once and a lot of cars you can have your navigation system on half the screen and your music on the other half but not here and that means if you want to change the song you're listening to but the navigation system is directing you somewhere you got to go off the map go to the music change the song then go back to the map and it's kind of disappointing you have to do that especially with such a large screen the other drawback of this infotainment system is that the 360 degree camera in this car is disastrous you press the view button here to get a 360 view around the car and this is all you get this sort of egg-shaped view that takes up a small portion of the screen and you cannot direct where it goes you can't move it left right up down like in most other cars you can only pause it as it's moving around the car at its own pace a disastrous 360 camera system not sure why they even bother but that's what you have now one thing I like about this infotainment system the climate controls are integrated into the screen which I usually complain about but here they are always fixed in place regardless of what screen or menu you're on the climate controls will always be where you expect them this is nice it allows Lexus to save some money instead of making little buttons for every climate function and it allows you to always know where all your climate functions are since they never move you also with the climate controls have this cool little wheel to change the climate temperature and it displays the temperature inside the wheel on a screen little red and blue background which looks kind of cool and a little bit quirky and by the way speaking of quirky for the climate controls one interesting item here is your car probably has automatic climate control for the air temperature well this has automatic climate control for the heated steering wheel and the heated and cooled seats you can put those items in Auto and then the car itself will decide hey it's cold turn on the heated steering wheel so you don't have to lower yourself to pushing a button since your car does that automatically for you now that is quirky but the rest of this car is not particularly quirky Lexus isn't really known for doing anything totally out of the box or weird and so there aren't that many quirks in this interior but I did find a few including the gear selector which is rather odd the way this works is you move this gear selector part over and down if you want to go into drive or over and up if you want to go into reverse or just over to the left if you want to go into neutral now you can also select a manual mode if you're in drive and pull the gear selector down and then you can manually shift using the pedals on the steering wheel if you want to go into park this little p button in the gear selector area will do that now Lexus and Toyota have been using this gear selector in various Hybrid models for a while now but this car isn't hybrid powered and it's Incorporated here kind of unusual but that's what it has next up on The Quirk front I love this Centaur console lid you can press a button open it up and then the driver has access but the cool thing is you close it and the passenger can do the very same thing press a button and now they have access it's openable from both sides equally which is kind of a cool magic trick inside the new RX both passengers have easy access to the center console and next up also in this Center vicinity you have an off-road mode here this little button shows a car with a tree and some rocks and that puts your Lexus RX in off-road mode and when you press that icon and the gauge cluster comes on showing the same thing the tree and the rocks for all the times you're gonna off-road your Rx which is pretty much never you may be wondering what is the off-road mode do I don't know but I assume nothing next up also quirky in this center console you have cup holders here of course but the front cup holder can be adjusted you press this little push button in the bottom of the cup holder Rises up to accommodate different size cups so you can choose exactly whether you want a taller cup or maybe a smaller cup or a mug and you can adjust the cup holder size to correspond and next up another interesting quirk in here is that the rear view mirror is also a camera you can see it's a mirror right now but if I flip this switch it becomes a camera showing what's behind you more and more cars are offering this so it's not that quick or interesting but one usual piece here is that the camera is mounted inside the car you can see it here mounted on the inside of the tailgate which is unusual virtually every other car I've seen with this rear view camera as a mirror thing they mount it outside but the benefit here is that on a rainy day like this your camera won't get obscured with water because it's inside the car so you can easily see behind you even if it's wet outside pretty cool idea and next up another interesting item in the new RX is over on the steering wheel you can see there are areas of controls like you have in most cars but here there are two sets of Arrow buttons that have no labeling at all no icons so how do you know what they do the answer is they do various things depending on what you're adjusting and it all shows up in the heads up display so check this out I'm going to address the adaptive cruise control system and the heads-up display actually shows me what each little arrow button does as it relates to the Adaptive crew system as I press the arrows the car responds just like it says it would in the heads up display which is cool but I go to a different menu and now you can see it's showing me that the arrows have completely different functions that do different stuff and this is all projected directly in front of me in the heads up display corresponding to what I'm actually changing and it's the same deal over on the left side the arrows have one function as you can see but then I press a menu button on the steering wheel and now they have an entirely different function and different operation now this is cool for a couple reasons number one because it allows Lexus to have fewer overall buttons in here the interior is not as cluttered because the same buttons can do different things and it's also cool because it's projected directly in front of you rather than on the gauge cluster where you take your eyes off the road you can see exactly what you're pressing and what it will do as you're looking at the road which makes it safer and that's a cool touch and by the way since we're talking about the steering wheel let's discuss the driver Assist Technology which you activate on the steering wheel and this car it's pretty good which is to say that it will speed up Slow Down based on traffic in front of you and it goes around curves on the freeway it's all pretty excellent it does a good stop doing it also the steering wheel is capacitive touch meaning you don't have to jiggle the wheel to let it know you're paying attention you can just rest your hand there and the car will drive which is nice the drawback of this system is the lane changing function technically it offers it put on your turn signal and it will change lanes but I found this system to be so conservative that it is essentially non-functional non-usable you put on your signal and it won't change lanes if there's a car like parked three miles away it's a disaster and it's not really usable as a result you'll have to change your own Lanes but otherwise the driver assist attack works well but anyway next we move on to the back seat in the new Lexus RX and I have to say it's reasonably roomy back here Headroom could use a little bit more another inch or two but legroom knee room hip room it's all pretty good back here especially for a midsize SUV in the rxsi it's a decent space for rear passengers aside from that not really much to talk about in the back seat this is after all a new Lexus RX not too many crazy new details but you do have the same electronic door poppers back back here that you had up front press the button and you can climb out other than that nothing too surprising back here you have a climate control feature although really you can just change the temperature you can't change the fan speed the car will decide that for you you also have a couple USBC ports back here for charging which is nice and one tiny little drawback of the cup holder is integrated into the center armrest meaning you can't have a cup holder if you have a middle passenger so you have to choose between whether you want three people back here or whether you want cup holders not really a big deal though a lot of cars do that no real problem and next up we move around to the back of the new RX there are a few items to talk about for one this light bar that goes across the entire back end the light bars are becoming more and more common in the car industry and they have now made their way to Lexus and the new RX more interestingly though is the badging back here old RX and other Lexus models had the Lexus L emblem in back but that's gone they've replaced it with the Lexus script back here instead no emblem employment just Alexis I guess maybe to increase their brand awareness or Identity or just to move in a more modern New Direction but it is interesting but anyway next up we move on to the cargo area in the new Lexus RX and I have to say nothing particularly interesting or unusual back here again Lexus RX there's not that many Surprises with this vehicle it's the fifth generation of the RX and they figured out how to refine it to give us what we want without making any daring changes so this is the cargo area pretty standard stuff one interesting item worth noting you can put down the back seats from the cargo area you press these little buttons over on the side and you can see the seats automatically fold down which is nice to see now they're not power operated meaning you can't fold them back up from the cargo area you have to do that manually but it's still nice to see seats that can fold down in the back of a mid-sized luxury SUV that's not a feature you always get but the new RX has it and next up we move under the hood in the new RX which is actually one of the most interesting Parts about this car because there are four different engine options in the new RX that's not something you often see in a mid-sized luxury crossover that's pitched to non-car enthusiasts four different engine options but there really is something for everyone with the new RX so let's go through them this is the RX 350 non-hybrid and that's the base model and I suspect it's going to be the majority of sales the most affordable best value model it has a turbocharged four-cylinder about 275 horsepower pretty good now next up you have the RX 350h which is essentially a hybrid version of this exact vehicle using the same powertrain but hybrid it's about 250 horsepower and it comes standard with all-wheel drive now from there you can upgrade to the RX 450h plus and the plus means that it's a plug-in hybrid model Lexis hasn't announced full details about this for the US market but in other markets this car has around 300 horsepower and a fully electric range of about 40 miles before the gasoline powertrain kicks in and can take you further so that is a plug-in hybrid version it's not available yet but it's coming soon and then at the very top of the new Lexus RX range there is a performance version surprisingly it's called the RX 500h and it's a hybrid four cylinder which doesn't sound very performance-y but it has 367 horsepower and about 410 pound-feet of torque which is pretty healthy numbers for a Lexus RX it's pretty quick Lexus IS 0-60 in under six seconds 5.8 5.9 0 to 60 for a Lexus RX so a little bit of a sporty version of this car offered as well in addition to the standard model and the fuel efficient versions and finally the last thing I want to discuss with the new RX is the design the style the way it looks this is particularly important because I always felt that the old RX was really ugly just not an attractive car too many creases and cuts and gouges that massive Grille it just felt radically over styled to me and I never liked it never grew on me but this new one is a lot better frankly it looks a lot cleaner more modern simpler they've gotten rid of a lot of the over styled stuff it's just a nicer looking more modern more attractive design for the new RX going away from the ugly weirdness of before and back to a sort of more conventional and nice looking design now one especially interesting change for the new RX is that the Grille has actually gotten smaller compared to the outgoing model Lexus has gotten a lot of criticism for its increasingly massive grills but they've made this one a little smaller which suggests maybe they're going to go back to sort of more mainstream designs and not as ridiculously oversized grills now one interesting number with the new RX is that the overall length is 2.4 inches shorter than the outgoing model but the wheelbase is 2.4 inches longer than the outgoing model that means there's two and a half more inches between the wheels which means more passenger space more room for occupants the reason I bring this up now is is that the old model was essentially wasting space with its weird front end it was all style and it looked stupid now they've eliminated a lot of that and put more space into the passenger room where I expect people will actually care about it more all right driving the new Lexus RX now two quick things before I get started number one this is the pre-production cars people always watch videos I do in the rain and they say you got the car all wet this car will be crushed it's a pre-production model it will not be released to the world the other thing worth mentioning I already did a review of the new Lexus RX but really it was just like a walk around to kind of show what was going on now I'm able to drive it and so that's different and hence the second video so let's talk about the Driving Experience of this car as you might expect it's well exactly as you might expect it drives like a Lexus RX in fact I always think it's funny when the automakers let us have a preview of the car and not drive it yet when it's something like this it's not like the Driving Experience is going to be groundbreaking or earth-shattering and indeed that is not the situation here uh it drives just as you would expect a Lexus RX to drive we've had this car now for however many generations they've all been fairly similar and this one is no real difference so what does that mean functionally well uh it handles okay predictably and nicely but not like fast speedily excitingly in any way it just handles as you'd expect which is to say fine steering handling is all very predictable there's a lot of body roll on Corners if you go too hard through a corner there's a lot of understeer if you go too hard through a corner you know this is the F Sport version which is supposed to be like sporty and exciting but at the end of the day it's not all that sporty and exciting it's a Lexus RX it's intended to appeal to a mass-market audience not car Enthusiast now I am curious how the RX 500h will be and if that will be sportier and more exciting more engaging but this certainly isn't with that said one upgrade over the outgoing RX that I'm impressed with is the ride quality I always felt the outgoing RX was fine but not necessarily quite as luxury car are as I felt it should be there was more you felt more body it just it was a little bit rougher than I always thought it should be this new one is a lot nicer it's got a lot more comfortable ride than before it feels very comfortable more insulated from the road over bumps and just generally less sound that sort of thing um so I think it's a little bit more calm and comfortable in here but I wouldn't say it's sportier or anything like that other than those things that are worth mentioning there's not much to this new Lexus RX in terms of Driving Experience to really differentiate it from the previous model or other kind of mid-sized luxury SUVs this particular version is not what I would call fast 270 horsepower whatever it is it's not a large number and the engine feels pretty taxed when you really want to go for it but it's the base model and there are other versions with more power if that's what you're looking for however I suspect most people will end up with this and they won't get that much performance out of it it's just not a performance vehicle and it's it's not a performance vehicle it's not intended to be and it is not delivered as well but you do get all the Buy boxes check that people wanted a mid-size luxury crossover you set up reasonably High you have a comfortable ride quality a comfortable interior roomy in here the visibility is not ideal in the Lexus RX because the way the rear end kind of slopes down but that's just the way it is and you do have large mirrors and of course a lot of cameras and sensors and beepers to kind of make up for that stuff but generally speaking this vehicle drives like you would expect a Lexus RX to drive it's not particularly engaging interesting entertaining but it's very nice very luxurious and it's the default choice for a lot of people so as a result they have to make it this way to be very appealing to a wide group of people and it is and it's good and so that's the new 2023 Lexus RX this is one of America's most beloved luxury SUVs and now there's a new one it's not exactly the most exciting or thrilling car in the world but you will soon be seeing them everywhere and now it's time to give the new RX a Doug's score and the Doug score is here 54 out of 100 which places the RX here against rival luxury SUVs it doesn't look like it performed very well but that's because the Doug score is biased toward performance vehicles in reality the rx's daily score is right on par with many rivals but because it isn't very exciting it drops down in the weekend categories truthfully the new RX is an excellent crossover just not a particularly desirable one if you're a car Enthusiast looking for something fun [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 801,243

Keywords: rx, new rx, lexus rx, lexus rx review, rx review, new lexus rx review, 2023 lexus rx review, 2023 lexus rx 350, rx 350, rx 450h, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: 1-EWJqbvZ9w

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 27 2022