2021 Kia Sorento Review_ Another outstanding Kia _ CarGurus.

Okay, so let's say you want a Kia. Let's say specifically you want a three-row vehicle. Now with the Telluride existing, it's an amazing car. It's hard to pass that up as Kia's go-to three-row. However, the Sorento should not be overlooked, especially with this new 2021 model. Now the 2020 Sorento was good, but let's face it, once the Telluride came along, it basically put it in its shadow. This new one is way, way nicer. And this X-line trim has so much to offer, including things like a sturdier roof rack, which is really never something you think you would hear on a Sorento. Now, if you guys are new to CarGurus, we'd love to have you follow the channel, subscribe, comment, hit the bell, all that good stuff. But let's go ahead and jump in and see what this new Sorento is all about. Okay, so obviously Kia has been the king of come-ups lately, and they couldn't let the Sorento go unchanged, which they haven't. They've really put a lot of effort into making this new Sorento a lot more rugged and just a lot more appealing to the masses in terms of it being that traditional SUV look, that boxy styling, which is very, very cool. Now, right in front, you have the signature Kia tiger nose grille, except here it is blacked out. It looks really, really nice. One of my favorite things is this Aruba green. It really helps bring out the lines and all the bodywork on this new Sorento. Now, this does have full LED lights. You have an LED daytime running light here at the bottom, which looks really nice. It perfectly flanks the sides of that tiger nose grille and really accentuates the overall aggression of the front end. Obviously, your lights, once again, full LED, low beams, high beams, everything. So at night, it just gives you a nice crisp view of the road. Now, this trim in specific is the X-line trim. So the X-line trim, you're going to know because it's going to say X-line right here. You get this black cladding right here. You're going to get a little bit higher of a lift. And fun fact, on every all-wheel drive Sorento now, you get a one-inch lift as standard with all-wheel drive. I'm guessing Kia assumes if you're getting all-wheel drive, you need that extra ground clearance as well. But also with the X-line, you get these sturdier roof racks. And I mean, this thing like literally shakes the whole car. It's pretty crazy how sturdy that they are. And I think in this trim specifically, this would be very comparable to something like a Subaru Forester, a Subaru Outback even, and just like a more adventure-minded vehicle. So it's cool to see Kia going in that direction. Now, as you move to the back, you have this really cool shark fin detail here in the bodywork. It's really nice. It adds that level of like sharpness and precision here in the back. So I quite like that. I love this little line here as well, which kind of accentuates that. And then as you move to the rear, this is hands-down my favorite part. It looks very concept car-like to me. I love these just rectangular squared-off taillights. It looks great. You have your SX Turbo GDI badge right here, Sorento down here, your Kia badge, all-wheel drive. It's just a good-looking vehicle. OK, so under the hood of the new Sorento, lots of numbers. So here we go. You have a 2.5-liter naturally aspirated four-cylinder that you can get. You have the turbocharged four-cylinder, 2.5 liters as well, that you can get. And the cool part is if you get the turbocharged four-cylinder over the naturally aspirated four-cylinder, you only sacrifice one MPG while getting 90 more horsepower and about 70% more torque. You also have a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid, which will come later. But the hybrid is pretty cool just because who doesn't want to be able to haul around six people while getting about 37 miles per gallon. It's pretty impressive what Kia has done with this new Sorento, at least in terms of engine options. And fun fact, this Turbo GDI feels a lot more powerful than the numbers suggest. We'll talk about that more when we go for a drive. But let's go ahead and check out the rest of the car. Hands down, the highlight of this vehicle is the interior of this new Sorento. Now, this X-line trim is very nice. Now, every Sorento is pretty spacious. I'm about six feet in height. I've got tons of room above my massive hair. And everything in here looks great. Now, this interior color is called Rust. So everything in here feels very rustic, if you will. And you've got these perforated and quilted seats right here. They feel and look amazing. You're going to have this wood here, which is completely fake, which makes it even more impressive that this is some of the nicest wood I've ever seen, real or fake. So I do like that. You even have a big slab of it on the door and right under your instrument cluster. Now, speaking of instrument cluster, you have a 12.3 inch instrument cluster right here, all digital. And then you are going to have a 10.2 inch touchscreen. So you have almost two feet of screen real estate right in front of you. It is amazing. And it's even better because the graphics, the interface, all of it is very high resolution. And even on the digital instrument cluster, whenever you go through your different modes, the transitions look flawless. It is very impressive. And I love how on the touchscreen, everything has this sort of like neon vibe to it. It really brings this youthfulness to the car. And of course, you have cool features like passenger talk. You have sounds of nature, which you can relax in your rustic interior while you're about to go to work. And you can put it into quiet mode where it basically quiets the back speakers and only plays the music through the front. That way you don't bother any sleeping infants in the back. Now, aside from all of that, you have these touch sensitive areas here. Downside is that it's all gloss black. So you're going to expect lots of fingerprints here. And as a matter of fact, there's lots of gloss black throughout the entire interior. Now, as you move down, you have this Telluride inspired area, though you're not going to have your grab handle. You still have that sort of bridge here, and that's going to hold your cold and heated seats right up here. If I lift this up, I have a wireless charging pad, three USB port shifter here for your eight speed wet dual clutch. And with that, you get these really solid paddle shifters. The fact that this even has paddle shifters in general is impressive. So the fact that they are just super solid is even more impressive. Now, you have your standard suite of cruise control, adaptive cruise. It has steering assist, which works very well. And over to the left side, all your standard media commands. Now, right here in the middle, you're going to have all of your different drive modes. You have smart, sport, comfort, eco and snow. And with every all wheel drive trim, you get your locking center differential, which is great. If you plan to put like, let's say knob your tires on here, anything like that, take it through snow, mud. This can be capable of doing all of that. Now, in terms of storage areas, deep amount of storage space here. I can fit like half my arm in there. Nice little cubby here. You don't have any ports in here, but you also have little cubbies here, deep cup holders. Everything's laid out pretty neatly, but I think one of my favorite design elements has to go to these air vents. They just look really cool. And then you have these cute little vents underneath your normal vents. And you have that for every single one. Everything's just a very cohesive design. So if you're very OCD about your design language, this is really going to be satisfying to you guys. One of my favorite features about the Sorento, let's say you have something in your hands. Let's also say you don't have very good balance. Now, a lot of vehicles have the kick feature under the tailgate, but once again, if you don't have good balance or for whatever reason, you can't kick your foot, it's not a good option. So this one, all I have to do is walk up to the corner of the vehicle. As long as the keys on me, I just stand here, wait for my three beeps. It'll beep a second time to confirm. And then it opens up. And then at that point, you have about 12.6 cubic feet behind the third row. However, once you fold down all two rows, it gives you a maximum of about 75.5 cubic feet. So more space than the outgoing Sorento. And to top it all off, you even have a little bit of extra space located underneath here. So if I lift this up, you guys can see, look at that. I can probably fit what's in there underneath there. And then you have your jack assembly equipment there as well. So it's pretty nice. And of course the fold down the third row, you just pull this, headrest is going to fold down. You fold that down, same thing over here on the right side. And you can fold down the second row automatically by using the buttons to the right. And then at that point you have tethers and basically anything back here to hold down any items, because you can see there's just a lot of space for things to fly forward if you hit the brakes really hard or something like that. So getting nets is highly recommended if you're going to put a lot of stuff back here. Okay. So sitting in the second row now for reference, once again, I'm six feet tall. This is me behind myself, literally almost four inches of knee room. Foot room is great. Headroom is great, especially with this pano just gives me a little bit of extra space. Once again, with my big hair. Now, lots of cool features. I have this armrest right here, the same amazing quality leather that you get into the front. The recline on here is insane. I can literally just take a nap back here. And on top of that, my seat can still scoot forwards a little bit and backwards even more if I wanted it to. So that is very nice. Now you have other conveniences, like a little pouch here to put like my cell phone, for example, I can also utilize the USB here on the side of the seat. So that way I can keep my cell phone in my hand while it's charging. So that's pretty neat. Also another space here, as well as an actual mat pocket within that, which is pretty neat. Same thing on both sides. Same cool air vents here in the back. I love that design detail. USB, a 12 volt. Now you can also get the bench seat. You can option for the captain's chairs, but here on the X line trim captain chairs are going to be standard. All right. So moving this back to where I was sat. So roughly about here, maybe back a little bit further. So let's just say here. Feels like that's the same, but anyways probably like an inch, inch and a half behind myself. I do have a little bit of feet room. So that is nice to say my feet can actually slide underneath. But other than that, it's a very small area. I could fit back here comfortably for probably 30 minutes after that. I'd probably be throwing a fit and wanting to get out of the third row. So for adults, more of a punishment for children, they should be fine. You have windows back here, so you don't feel as claustrophobic. Once again, that pano is a lifesaver. It lets in so much light throughout the entire vehicle. And over here to the left, I have a USB, a little bit of storage space, a cup holder, and you have the same thing on both sides. So two USBs. All right. So pretty much sums up the third row. I'm getting a little claustrophobic already. So let's go ahead and see how this thing drives. Okay. So setting off in the new Sorrento. Now, first of all, once you go into reverse, you're going to have your backup camera, 360 camera. I can click on here and basically go through all kinds of different views. I can see my side wheels if I'm getting too close to a curb. So pretty neat stuff. Now I'm going to go ahead and start off and let's just do comfort mode. The gauge cluster does this cool little thing and we are off. There is a nice sense of refinement in this car. This doesn't have double pane windows. I can tell you, right. However, it's still pretty quiet. Now we are going like 10 miles an hour. So wait till we get a little bit faster to really judge that. But taking off from a stop, you really feel that torque. So this torque comes in fully at 1700 RPM and you feel it right at the bottom of the pedal, which is great because when you're driving, doing your everyday things, that's what you use. You use torque to get moving and this has plenty of it. Okay. So now I'm going to pop it into sport mode here and we're just going to go all the way down. Here we go. Okay. So there's a point where you get behind a car, the wheel of a car, and you think to yourself, okay, this is quick, but then there's a point when you can say, okay, this is legitimately fast. It's like saying you're nine and a half years old and then finally being able to say you're 10. I can confidently say this is a fast SUV. It's pretty darn quick. And once you get up and moving, you don't realize just how quickly this thing racks up speed. And that's the most surprising part about the driving dynamic. Like once again, from a stop, geez Louise, it is crazy. Like for the average person, this is going to be fast. Hands down. They're going to be shocked with how much power this thing has. And it does a great job of really keeping you in the meat of the power band. Now that's in sport mode. Comfort is still just as good. And then eco just does its thing in terms of helping you save fuel. But once you're in comfort, if I go halfway, I mean, you guys, this is so good. This powertrain is great. And once again, you're only losing one MPG to the non turbocharged four cylinder. So it's hard to argue with not getting this engine choice. But other than that, visibility is fantastic. Giant mirrors, you have all of your blind spot monitoring visibility out of the back is great. Side mirrors are great. Side windows are great. It rides well. And I think Kia did a great job. It's even great because when I blink, I still have my cameras here in my gauge cluster that will show up on my left and my right sides. Okay, so let's talk about pricing. Now, this vehicle starts out at around $29,000. And this is kind of an oddball because it slots in a very different space. This comes standard with three rows now, whereas before you could get a two row option or a three row option. So now you only get this as a three row, which is interesting because it's not as big as a Telluride though. It's a little bit bigger than something like a Subaru Outback. So for example, Subaru Outback, a little bit cheaper, doesn't come with as many standard features, and you don't have three rows as an option on an Outback. Opposite end of the spectrum, you have things like the Ford Explorer, the Honda Pilot, which are bigger than this vehicle, but they're also more expensive. They start at around $32,000. So depending on what you're looking for, this could be the perfect Goldilocks vehicle for you. And once again, this fully loaded compared to an Explorer, Honda Pilot, anything in that realm, even a Toyota Highlander fully loaded, this is going to be cheaper. You're going to get arguably a much nicer interior than those vehicles. And it rides good, has a lot of punch to it. I do think this is a great value depending on what you're looking for. Well, guys, it's pretty much going to wrap up the review on this new Sorento. This thing is pretty incredible. Now let's talk about downfalls. There are two main ones that come to mind. The interior has a little bit too much gloss black, at least on this trim level. And the dual clutch transmission can be a little jerky at times. But other than that, I'm really having a hard time finding other things to complain about. Other than the fact that it's a Kia, which that's really a hard argument to use, especially seeing how far Kia has come from being the disposable car brand to the brand that is making some of the most impressive vehicles on the road. And for the price point, this one is around $44,000. It's crazy to imagine that they've shoved all of that into this. And it takes the things I love about the Telluride and really makes it a little bit better with the digital displays, with the slightly cooler interior layout. I think this thing is incredible. But we want to know what you guys think. Comment below. Would you get this Sorento over the competition? And if you want to know more, visit us at CarGurus.com. Be sure to subscribe, hit the bell so you guys never miss an upload. And we'll see you guys in the next video.