2021 Honda CR-V review: Roomiest SUV in the segment?

CarExpert

The 2021 Honda CR-V has a new look and some extra features as Honda tries to cement its position in the mid-sized SUV segment. Paul Maric reviews the facelifted Honda CR-V to see what has changed and discovers that it's actually an incredibly roomy SUV.  Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  Read the full review: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-reviews/2021-honda-cr-v-vti-l-awd-review/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=review&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=single-car-review  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior: 00:58 Interior: 03:07 Infotainment: 04:22 Safety Tech: 06:38 Practicality: 07:42 On the road: 11:15 Verdict: 15:57  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #honda #review #crv

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. That's the Honda CR-V. It's just had a facelift, a nip and tuck,

00:04 all these funny names we give to cars that have had very slight cosmetic changes.

00:09 So the CR-V, if I'm honest, I sometimes forget about it. It's not always top of mind. So,

00:14 today we wanted to get behind the wheel of this refreshed version,

00:17 just to see whether it still stacks up against its competitors.

00:20 This here is the VTi-L. It's a couple of rungs down from the top of the CR-V ladder,

00:26 and it's priced at just over $40,000. It competes with things like the Mazda CX-5,

00:31 Toyota RAV4, Hyundai Tucson, you name it, there is a competitor in the midsize segment for it.

00:37 Today we're going to do a detailed review of the refreshed Honda CR-V. If you do want to

00:42 skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes up on the screen there,

00:46 or if you're on YouTube, just scroll down and use the chapters below. And if you haven't done so

00:50 already, make sure you hit subscribe and press the bell icon so you can find out every single time we

00:54 drive a cosmetically refreshed car. Let's talk exterior. You've got seven colours to choose from,

01:01 and because they're so generous, they're all free of charge. You can pick whichever one you want.

01:05 So, what has changed here with CR-V? So, you've had changes to this bumper section. You can see

01:10 those sides are slightly different. There's changes to the wheels and also the grille.

01:14 So, it kind of stays very much the same, but is slightly refined, and I think the design here

01:20 has actually stood the test of time. It doesn't actually look that old. It feels nice and fresh.

01:24 Look at that big, proud Honda badge just there. You have some safety equipment radar sensor just

01:30 here, front parking sensors hidden down the bottom, and I think they've really made a nice

01:34 use of the chrome highlights and then these sort of brushed plastic elements and then a narrow

01:39 number plate set up there. So, it is a good-looking car. What about over here at the

01:43 headlights? You have LED daytime running lights. Unfortunately, this gets halogens, so not the

01:48 best light if you're doing country driving or doing a lot of driving at night. If you do want

01:52 to have a look at a comparison we did between halogen, LED and laser headlights, you can click

01:57 up here. So, this is a basic setup. You've got to go up another rung on the ladder to get the

02:00 full LED setup, and I think that looks slightly better and worth the investment if you are doing

02:05 a lot of night driving. Jump around to the side here. We've got 18-inch alloy wheels, quite like

02:10 this design. So, you've got that reflective element on the outside and then a slightly darker element

02:14 inside. Nice and chubby profile tire there, so it should mean that the ride's pretty good.

02:19 And they haven't gone overboard like they have in the Mazda CX-30 with wheel arch protectors.

02:23 It's just modest here. Kind of gives you the idea that this is an all-wheel drive car and you can do

02:28 some off-roading, even though you probably can't. Jump over here. You've got indicators built into

02:32 that wing mirror. Now, the wing mirror on the other side actually has a camera built into it.

02:36 I'll show you why later on. A little bit more chrome down the bottom there, and come around

02:40 to the rear. This is where you'll find LED taillights. Quite a nice design that sort of

02:45 stretches all the way down from the top and around the side, kind of like the Volvo XC range.

02:50 All-wheel drive badge on the rear to signify that this is indeed all-wheel drive, plus

02:54 VTEC Honda stuff, and then CR-V badge on the side. Again, a really nice proportion at the rear. It

03:01 doesn't look overly gargantuan and it just, I don't know, just looks nice, especially with that

03:05 chrome strip just there. So, we're inside the CR-V. Let's start with what the key looks like.

03:10 Here it is here. You have lock, unlock and then a boot release. If you spin that around, you have

03:16 the Honda symbol on the back. Now, this is a proximity sensing key, so you just keep that in

03:20 your pocket, grab the door handle and then you have a push button start over here, but it also

03:24 has the ability to auto lock on walkaways. So, pretty smart little key and nice and compact as

03:30 well. Now, what about the styling? So, Honda hasn't really changed a great deal inside the

03:34 cabin, but to be honest, I don't think they need to. I think this still looks really nice.

03:38 They've got this faux stitching along the top there. All the materials are fairly soft as well

03:43 and this screen is nicely presented. Everything is just nice and easy and when we get to the

03:47 storage, you'll understand the lengths they've gone to to actually give you places to store

03:52 things. Now, what about the touch points? This sits nice and high, really soft as well,

03:56 likewise on the door. So, all of your touch points are really good. How soft are the touch points?

04:01 Well, we've got our durometer here. We've tested the main surfaces of this car. If you want to see

04:05 how it compares to other cars that we've tested, scroll down and have a look at the link in the

04:09 description. Now, what about build quality? It's actually really solid. This is what I like about

04:15 Hondas. They feel like they're going to last the test of time and this interior absolutely fits

04:20 that bill as well. Everything is super solid. Moving on to infotainment, it's a seven-inch

04:25 display. Now, let us know in the comments section below, do you guys prefer having detailed

04:29 infotainment reviews or do you just want like a high-level overview? Let me know because we are

04:33 keen to get your feedback today. It'll just be a brief overview of this infotainment system and

04:38 the features that it has. So, seven-inch display, it's a touchscreen and then you also have

04:42 shortcut buttons on the side. In terms of audio, you have AM and FM. There's no DAB+ digital radio

04:49 and then you can connect your phone over Bluetooth or this comes with both Apple CarPlay and Android

04:54 Auto but keep in mind, both technologies require a cable. I'll show you what they look like. So,

04:58 this is Apple CarPlay, full screen integration, nice and sharp and very quick as well. It's like

05:05 really high resolution, so I like the look of that and this is what Android Auto looks like.

05:09 Now, the full screen integration, we'll jump into Maps. That's nice. Oh no, hello, there we go.

05:18 That's nice and responsive once it wakes up. There's also a voice recognition system that

05:22 you access on the steering wheel. This works both in the native system and it also works when you

05:27 are paired to your smartphone mirroring. I'll show you what the native navigation looks like as well.

05:32 Here it is here. So, a little bit laggy, it could do with a bit more processing power but you're

05:37 really covered for all bases here. You can either plug your phone up or just use the in-house system.

05:42 Now, ahead of the driver is a single display in the centre and on either side you have a gauge for

05:46 the engine temperature and also the fuel. I love the way that's buried behind a slatted display,

05:51 so it looks kind of 3D. Now, in terms of the display ahead of the driver, you have a number

05:55 of functions there. So, yes, it acts as a digital speedo. You get your speedometer but you can also

05:59 transition between different menus, fuel economy, cruise controls, navigation and then a whole stack

06:05 of other ones there, including this one which I quite like. It is the all-wheel drive status and

06:09 we'll go into a little bit more detail on that once we hit the road. In addition to all of that,

06:13 you have an eight-speaker sound system and connectivity-wise, you've got Bluetooth but

06:17 you also have USB connectivity. One port is for your smartphone mirroring, the other port is for

06:22 charging but the good thing is both of these, yes, they will charge but because Japan, they have

06:27 actually labelled the charging current, so one's one amp, one is one and a half amp. So, useless

06:32 information but I think it's cool that they've put that there and then inside this cubby you have a

06:37 12-volt outlet as well. Let's move on to safety features. So, you have autonomous emergency

06:42 braking, you have radar cruise control with a self-steering function, you have a lane departure

06:47 warning and a lane departure assistant. Now, this self-steering function actually works okay. It's

06:51 not amazing but it keeps the car in the lane on freeways and it's fairly dependable. You can switch

06:57 that off plus the lane keeping assistant very easily if you need to and then a blind spot

07:01 monitoring setup but only on the passenger side and the way that it works is through the screen.

07:06 I'll show you what this looks like once we go for a drive but you can activate it at any time and

07:10 it shows you exactly what's happening out the left-hand side of the car. And finally, you have

07:13 a reverse view camera, front and rear parking sensors. Let's have a look at that camera and

07:18 see exactly what it looks like. Yeah, look, the quality is pretty poor actually. It's quite hard

07:24 to see what's going on there especially at night time but you can select different views. So,

07:29 you can have a wide-angle view, you can also have a narrow focus view. This is especially useful if

07:33 you're towing. It has a 1500 kilogram brake towing capacity but that's where your tow bar is going to

07:38 be. But yeah, look, the quality of that could be a little bit better. Let's move on to storage and

07:43 this is what I love about the CR-V. Honda is super clever when it comes to storage. So, phone,

07:48 it can live pretty much anywhere. Bottle, you've got storage down here with teeth and then in the

07:55 door you've got storage for a bottle plus another bottle plus odds and ends plus this little slot

08:00 for storing bits and pieces. But have a look at this. So, center console sits nice and high but

08:05 then you crack it open. Look how deep this is. That completely disappears and if you get sick

08:10 of this thing, that can slide backwards or you can get rid of it entirely and then you have this

08:16 huge storage area down the bottom. This moves too. That's then coupled with a decent-sized

08:22 glove box. We can just fit odds and ends including bottle if you need to. Now, this is a

08:28 sunglass holder but it also doubles as a mirror so if you've got any noisy kids, you're able to

08:33 keep an eye on them and figure out who started the fight using that. Moving on to comfort,

08:38 you have dual-zone automatic climate control with heated seats for the first row and in terms of the

08:43 seats themselves, leather. They've got nice bolstering and the cool thing is up the front

08:47 here there's a nice little pad for your knee as well to keep you comfy while you're driving.

08:50 Only the driver's seat is electrically adjustable with memory on the side. The steering wheel sits

08:55 nicely in the hand and then all of this is very easy to reach especially while you're on the move.

09:00 Okay, second row. Look at this. There is heaps of room back here. I have acres of knee room.

09:07 This chair is pretty much all the way back as well so it's really impressive to see how much

09:12 space is available. Lots of toe room there and headroom is pretty reasonable too. On top of that,

09:18 you have rear air vents plus, have a look at this, two 2.5-amp charging ports so it means that you

09:23 can plug in stuff like iPads and it's going to charge fairly quickly through those two ports.

09:27 Mat pockets here. You've got a centre armrest with two cup holders. They fit those bottles

09:33 in very easily and then you have storage for bottles in the door plus odds and ends.

09:37 Now, the interesting thing here is you've got ISOFIX on the two outboard seats but you have

09:41 top tether for each of the three seats but the only downside is the second seat in the middle

09:47 here is one of these DIY jobbies where you've got to assemble the seat belt yourself and then

09:52 plug it in and do all that stuff. It's a little bit annoying. Let's talk cargo space. Now, first

09:58 up, power tailgate. You've got a button there to open and then one more to lock. Now, the good

10:02 news with this boot is look how low that load floor is. It means you're not having to reef

10:08 things over a high floor. Everything just comes in and you just drop it inside. In terms of space,

10:13 you have a little over 500 litres as it stands right now. Under here, we have a full-size spare

10:19 tyre. If you don't have the full-size spare in there, this is actually a dual-tiered floor but

10:23 you'll notice when you do have the full-size spare you can't actually access that second tier

10:28 which is fine. Then you've got storage off to the side plus a couple of lights there as well

10:33 and also tie-downs off to the side and then up the front. Let's see how it goes with fitting

10:38 our bags in. So, suitcase easy and then laptop bag easily in there as well. And I'll show you

10:44 what it looks like when you drop the second row as well to reveal maximum space. You use these

10:50 little handles on the side. Those seats then disappear elegantly out of the way. You can

10:55 also then get rid of this cargo blind if you need to. Just like that. Now, this could in theory live

11:04 under the floor but the problem is that spare tyre is in the way so you don't really have

11:10 anywhere to put this but that reveals a space of just over 1,000 litres. Okay, so we've just hit

11:16 the road in the Honda CR-V. Now, it's an interesting engine because it's a little smaller than a lot of

11:21 the engines in this segment. It's a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine.

11:27 It makes 140 kilowatts of power and 240 newton metres of torque and it may not sound like much

11:33 but keep in mind this doesn't actually weigh that much. This isn't some two-ton SUV. It's actually

11:38 significantly lighter. That means that it is quite responsive and it does well with the amount of

11:42 power that it has. It's mated to a continuously variable transmission so that means there aren't

11:47 a set amount of gears. As you put the throttle in, you can see the gears rise and the turbocharger

11:52 kicks in. It's actually quite responsive and it doesn't ever feel like it's lacking punch. Yes,

11:57 as you put more people in the car, it will feel a little bit slower but for the most part,

12:01 it's actually quite an adequate engine for this size of car. So that gearbox is mated to an

12:06 all-wheel drive system. It's on demand but you do have a display here that actually shows you

12:11 what's happening and where the torque's going. So you can see now it's all predominantly front-wheel

12:15 drive but if I get stuck into it, it gives us a little bit of torque at the front and a little

12:20 bit of torque at the rear. So look, this isn't for off-roading because it has a ground clearance of

12:24 just over 200 millimetres but this is going to be useful if you're doing a drive to the snow

12:29 or perhaps a drive to a campsite or something like that where a front-wheel drive is going

12:32 to struggle a little bit. A system like this will just help you with those basic situations.

12:36 Let's talk about fuel economy. So 7.4 litres per 100 kilometres is the official claim. We'll just

12:43 have a quick look here. Okay, so 8.5 litres per 100, which is pretty reasonable when you consider

12:49 we've been doing a mix of city driving and highway driving. So one of the benefits of a

12:52 smaller engine is that when it's not working hard, you're not using as much fuel and I think that's

12:57 pretty reasonable fuel economy before you get into things like hybrid. Obviously, something like a

13:02 RAV4 hybrid consumes a whole lot less but it has some fairly complex hybrid running gear. This is

13:07 just a standard turbocharged petrol engine and I think it sits right in where it needs to be in

13:11 terms of that fuel economy figure. So there isn't an official 0-100 time but we thought we'd stick

13:16 it up against the stopwatch just to see how quick it is. So you don't have any drive modes per se

13:32 but you do have an economy button, brings up a little leaf there and then you have a green bar

13:37 on top of the tachometer. So the harder you press the throttle, the less green it goes.

13:42 Now, talking about handling really quickly, electrically assisted steering rack. So they've

13:47 dialled in feel through this so it doesn't actually feel overly numb or too light. You're

13:51 actually getting quite a bit of feedback through that wheel and then in terms of the handling,

13:55 look, it's no sports car but it holds its own, especially with this on-demand four-wheel drive

14:00 system. It sticks to the road nicely, it has a little bit of body roll but the throttle is

14:04 responsive enough and then you can dive down through these gears into an S mode and an L

14:09 mode. So keep in mind because it is a CVT, you don't actually have stepped gears like you would

14:13 in a traditional gearbox. So in terms of the turning circle, unlike a lot of all-wheel drive

14:18 vehicles that have massive turning circles, this measures in at 11 metres which is actually pretty

14:23 reasonable. You'll be able to do tight U-turns without having to resort to a three-point turn.

14:28 Let's talk about the ride. Earlier I mentioned the higher profile tyres should mean that this

14:31 rides well and they have absolutely nailed this. So they don't do local ride and handling

14:36 tuning like some of the Koreans do but in terms of the ride here, it's fantastic. It's nice and

14:40 smooth, there isn't a great deal of noise coming in from those tyres, it just hits bumps nicely,

14:46 it's nice and soft and insulated, really feels like you're just cruising along and I think

14:50 that's what Hondas have always been known for, especially vehicles like the Odyssey.

14:54 They're never sports cars but they just felt nice and smooth but they were still nice and

14:58 capable when you needed them to be. Now what about road noise? We're out on a course chip

15:04 section of country road here, travelling at 100km/h. It's reasonable, there is a little

15:08 bit coming into the cabin but it's not droney or overly intrusive so you're going to find it

15:13 fairly quiet if you do have kids trying to sleep in the second row. Let's talk visibility. So these

15:17 wing mirrors are massive so you really see a lot down the side of the car there. There's no blind

15:22 spot monitoring on this mirror but on this one when you put the indicator on, you get a takeover

15:27 of the screen here that shows you everything. You can also put that on demand with just a click of

15:31 this stalk, I think that is a really cool option. Yes a blind spot monitor would be helpful but

15:35 this gives you a really good indication of where cars are in your blind spot and also what is in

15:40 your blind spot that sometimes your blind spot monitor either picks up wrongly or doesn't pick

15:44 up at all so yeah this is a good addition. And then looking out the front I can easily see the

15:49 front edges of the car as the bonnet slopes down and visibility out the rear is good as well.

15:53 And remember as well you've got front and rear parking sensors which means parking is fairly

15:56 straightforward. Okay so Honda CR-V, you can kind of see why they haven't really changed this all

16:02 that much. It's still a really impressive SUV. Yeah the engine could do with just a touch more

16:08 punch to keep up with the rest of the segment but outside of that it's got all the creature

16:11 comforts, there is heaps of room inside, you can get it as a seven seat if you want and it's just

16:16 really pleasant to drive. It really doesn't put a foot wrong. So let me know in the comments

16:20 section below have you bought a CR-V? What's it like long term? And if you didn't buy this what

16:25 did you buy instead after test driving it? Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments

16:29 section below. If you did enjoy this video make sure you share it, hit the like button and also

16:33 don't forget to subscribe and press the bell icon so you can find out every single time

16:37 we drive something new. But until next time, take it easy.

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