Gallery
Pros
Cons
Growing up, the Toyota 4Runner — to me, anyway — was a vehicle cool dads drove.
When one buys a Toyota 4Runner, it signals to the world that you have too many kids to get away with a Toyota Tacoma and too many bills to pull off a Lexus GX. (OK, maybe that’s still the stuff happening in my head.) Like every stereotypical good dad, it was big and rugged, but in a decidedly practical, dependable way.
The redesigned 2025 Toyota 4Runner may have lost a couple of cylinders, but the dad energy is alive and well — especially in the Limited grade tested here that’s practically made to strong-arm itself over the pesky parking lot curbs of Costco and also show up to the airport about five hours too early.
Styling 9 / 10
Macho without being overkill and premium without feeling pretentious or shouty, the new Toyota 4Runner is a certifiably cool-looking SUV. This Limited trim comes with a shiny grille, 20-inch alloy wheels, and silver bumper garnishes, and it got its fair share of bystander glances, including exactly one actual dad who took time out of his day to knock on the window and tell me how much he liked it.
The inside is similarly chunky, blocky, rugged, and usable. It’s a pragmatically styled space that’ll likely age well, and this Limited trim can be had with tan leather upholstery that gives it a somewhat luxurious vibe.
Safety 6.5 / 10
As of this writing, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) had yet to crash test the 2025 4Runner. Toyota Safety Sense 3.0 is standard across all trims and includes adaptive cruise control with lane tracing (read: hands-on, semi-automated highway cruising), road sign recognition, a pre-collision system, and automatic high-beam control, as well as blind-spot monitoring with rear cross-traffic alert and a camera washer.
The last two are likely the niftiest quality-of-life enhancements for those who aren’t into the assisted-driving stuff. Assisted highway cruising works well enough, but Toyota’s system is not class-leading when it comes to how natural automated inputs feel.
Features: 8.5/10
Out of all the 4Runner Limited’s toys and gadgets, my favourite may just be the powered running boards that made me feel like royalty stepping out of a horse-drawn carriage every time I exited this SUV. A 4Runner specialty is the standard power rear tailgate window that lets in a breeze few other vehicles can. Other notable standard toys include LED fog lights, active grille shutters, acoustic glass for the front doors, a leather-wrapped steering wheel, vents for the rear passengers, and a tow package.
An eight-inch touchscreen is standard, but the big 14-inch display comes in the TRD Off-Road Premium and Limited trims. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are both standard regardless of screen size.
User-Friendliness 8.5 / 10
That upgraded display is huge, pretty easy to use, and supported by physical buttons, knobs, and switches that are clear and straightforward. If I had one control-related complaint, it’d be the actual movement of the knobs, which consistently feel pretty light and cheap given this vehicle’s price point.
Practicality 8.5 / 10
The 4Runner seats either five or seven, depending on trim; within the non-hybrid options, the base and this Limited seat seven, while the TRDs seat five. The middle row is relatively spacious, although they aren’t heated, not even optionally. The third row is more like two jumpseats for children or small adults — you basically sit on the floor. Keep those folded down and there’s 1,269 L of cargo space, but a high liftover height is one of the practical costs you pay to live with an SUV like this.
Comfort 9 / 10
Body-on-frame SUVs aren’t really expected to ride as comfortably as something car-based like, say, Toyota’s own Grand Highlander, but this Limited is the 4Runner trim that likely gets the closest. The adaptive suspension is still kind of jiggly in normal or sport modes, but put it in comfort and it’s compliant enough to serve as something I’d be happy to live with every day. Seats are unfussily comfy, too, heated up front, and the 4Runner Limited is reasonably quiet on the highway.
Power 8 / 10
In non-hybrid form, the 4Runner is powered by a turbocharged 2.4L four-cylinder making 278 hp and 317 lb-ft of torque. Forward thrust is surprisingly decent when you need it to be, especially considering this is a heavy vehicle. Sport and sport+ driving modes even add a (likely synthetic) engine noise that sort of makes it sound like a V8. Maximum towing capacity is 2,722 kg (6,000 lb) across the board.
Driving Feel: 8.5/10
Competently straddling a truck-ish bigness with accessible car-like agility, the 4Runner doesn’t feel like a complete boat to drive, but it also doesn’t actively try to be anything it isn’t. The steering is light and pleasantly kind of slow, the brakes are intuitive to use, and it doesn’t protest when you take corners kind of quickly. Most importantly, however, it succeeds at feeling that much more burly than something like a Grand Highlander or Honda Pilot, fulfilling its main promise to those looking for a family SUV that’s just a notch tougher than most.
Fuel Economy 7 / 10
Without the hybrid system, the 2025 4Runner gets 12.0 L/100 km in the city, 9.9 on the highway, and 11.1 combined, according to Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). I have a pet theory that turbocharged four-cylinders like this are highly optimized to get great efficiency figures on regulatory test cycles but nowhere else because tell me why, after driving it around like a normal person for a week, I averaged 13.9 L/100 km.
Value: 7.5 / 10
The 2025 Toyota 4Runner starts at $56,130, including a non-negotiable $1,930 destination charge. This Limited, the swankiest non-hybrid model available, commands a $13,684 premium for an as-tested price of $69,814 before taxes. On size, price, and vibes, the 4Runner doesn’t really have many direct rivals. The four-door Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco are also boxy, off-roadable SUVs but cost quite a bit less while also being quite a lot less refined. The Land Rover Defender, meanwhile, skews in the opposite direction.
Honda’s new Passport TrailSport attempts to play in the 4Runner’s arena, but is ultimately a unibody vehicle. I hesitate to call a $70,000 Toyota SUV good value, but you know you’ve got a market cornered when you Google “4Runner vs” and almost all the autocomplete entries are just other Toyotas.
The Verdict
On the subject of other Toyotas, out of the company’s three vehicles that share this platform-powertrain combination — the 4Runner, Land Cruiser, and Tacoma — the 4Runner is my favourite. It’s the least taxing to drive on the street, it looks great, and it’ll definitely be able to tow a reasonably sized boat the three times a year you do so.
Measured against more average three-row SUVs like the Grand Highlander or Hyundai Palisade, the 2025 Toyota 4Runner Limited is notably more cumbersome and truck-like, but for the aforementioned 4Runner Dads, that’s a feature, not a bug. If you want a tough Toyota that has the payload chops to back up its looks while remaining reasonably easy to live with every day, this is it.
