2022 GMC Sierra 1500 AT4X Vs. 2022 GMC Sierra 1500 Limited Denali _ The Sierra's 2022 Problem.

This is the 2022 GMC Sierra 1500. It's got a fresh face, a remodeled interior, and all new technology. This is the Sierra 1500 Limited. It's a new carryover model that's on sale with the new new Sierra 1500. That means when you go shopping for a 2022 Sierra, you'll see listings for this older version and the refresh both with the same model year. The same thing is going on with the 2022 Chevy Silverado. None of this should be happening, but COVID and supply shortages are happening. So I'm going to test both Sierra 1500 trucks so you can tell the difference. They're both from 2022. I'll make it real easy to remember. When you see snow, it's the older version. When you don't, it's the refresh and they're both brand new. If the world wasn't weird enough, we now have two versions of the same popular pickup truck from the rear or the side. You won't know if a Sierra is the older limited model, but up front, it's obvious. On the refresh, the whole front end is different. It's kind of smiling at you like a Cheshire cat. Everything is wider. The headlights are now pushed further over. That's what it looks like visually. They're all slimmer. They're thinner. It's all restyled from every other angle. Yeah, it looks exactly the same as the Sierra 1500 Limited, but this one is the AT4X. That means it's the slightly more luxurious trim of the regular AT4 and you can tell visually from the outside with these very knobby all-terrain tires, the 18-inch black wheels, and these red tow hooks, and you got to get this truck in cayenne red tint coat. I have gotten so many compliments while driving it. The Sierra was new for 2019, and even against the refresh, this looks great. It's bold. It looks enticing, especially as the Denali. All this chrome. That's really what you're getting. It's a street truck at heart, not only on the grill, but around the grill, around the fog lights, around the bumper, around the tow hooks, the mirror caps, those integrated exhaust tips in the rear bumper. Now, these 22s are actually the accessory wheels. They're about $3,000. They're pretty hot. They're dealer installed. I've never seen one with this before, but it's awesome. GMC has so many versions you can try, but these tires, these are definitely not what you want for 4x4ing, even in snow. Thank goodness there's nothing on the ground right now, because this truck wouldn't get anywhere without it. There's other versions that'll take you off-road. This is the hot street truck. On the newer Sierra 1500, there's still the same three cabs and three bed sizes, but now there's eight trims. This is the crew cab short box. This one has the 6.2 liter V8, and there's three more engines. There's a lot of total configurations. There's six trims, three cab styles, three bed lengths. This one is the crew cab short box. There's also four different engines. You can see all those above. This is the best one, the 6.2 liter V8. Now, some of them pair with an 8-speed automatic, others with a 10-speed. This is the 10. Now, in terms of payload and towing, there's a big range of that, too. This vehicle is about 9,100 pounds, almost 2,300 pounds of payload, but you can get up to 13,000 pounds, even if you choose the diesel. It's pretty good. The reason to buy a Sierra versus a Silverado is what GMC has exclusive. This is a carbon fiber bed that GM says is lighter, it's stronger. It's nice because you also have a built-in liner. You don't need a spray-in or a drop-in. It's all there from the factory, and it's very durable. Now, the reason this tailgate is down and I'm not showing you anything is because it's 10 degrees, and this multifunction tailgate, it moves six different ways. It's not really functioning that well. It's a little something to think about if you're ordering this, but when it's warmer, I have demoed it. Check it out in the Sierra 1500 AT4 review. You can see the whole thing. It is really cool. The other GMC exclusive features are these adaptive electromagnetic shocks. You'll see that when I'm driving. I'll explain that more later. This newer Sierra still has the same multipro function tailgate, does all sorts of cool tricks, but it doesn't have the carbon probe bed because you can't get that on the AT4 or the AT4X. But what you get here, well, you get a 2-inch lift, and what you get on the X are these gold Multimatic spool valve dampers. Sounds really cool. You can read more about them online. It's very fun to try, and it has so much more on-road control, more suspension travel. It's basically a better shock for on and off the road than the standard AT4. Gotta say, they look pretty cool through these fenders. The interior. This is why the Sierra Limited was supposed to go out of production. It's looking really dated after just three model years because Ram went all out on materials, style, and quality back for 2019. Ford isn't too far behind. Trucks can't act like trucks inside. They have to be luxury cars. And right now, this lousy cabin is the best GMC can give. I'm not being harsh. I'm being real. This is the $72,000 Denali with the reserve package, with the Carbon Pro package, and the plastics are just dead awful everywhere. The leather feels like vinyl. The screen is tiny. It's just ancient in here. GM interiors have never been the company's strong suit. The wood is real, but the center stack looks like a knockoff of a vintage jukebox. And what exactly goes in this upper glove box? I mean, it's cut really weird, it's shallow, and it's angled down, so. The seats are uncomfortable and flat. There's no massage, no panoramic moonroof, and rear passengers get nothing but a couple power outlets and some hidden storage in the seats. This is the Denali, and it's barren. There's also no semi-automated driving assist. That's on the refresh. And what is here is optional, like forward emergency braking. Here's the good parts. The 360-degree cameras that offer 15 different angles, including the wheels. And there's a bed cam. Very handy. And two more you can install on the trailer. That's pretty awesome, in addition to just having towing mirrors. The trailer app, well, that does all sorts of things. You can read tire pressure and even alerts you to a jackknife. Helps you with the checklist, too, so you make sure everything is nice and secure. Overall, the interface is fast, it's logical, it's easy to use. There's onboard apps that work really just like a smartphone would. You can download new ones, see them install, onboard Wi-Fi, 4G LTE, all these different apps here. They're limited for now, but the fact that they're even there, they're not there in most cars. There's also user profiles that you can move and store in the cloud between any GM vehicle, so it can save your settings. And if you're, say, in another GMC Sierra, like the one I'll be in shortly, I could do that. And there's wireless Apple CarPlay and wireless Android Auto. But once you see the other 2022 Sierra, you won't look back at this one, ever. Look at this. GMC did a gut job on this whole interior and threw out everything. Finally, this is a truly great interior. It's taken my entire life to get a moment like this, but here I am. Before you sit down, it's obvious there's real attention to design. The theme of horizontal stack lines emphasizes width, and yet it comes across as sleek and car-like. For example, you get these nice, thinner air vents that are carved out of the dash. That's the impression I get. They're not plopped there, and neither is this central touchscreen. It's not sticking out. It's not ugly. It's nice and flush, and it's angled toward the driver. So is the center stack, which introduces all-new climate controls with knurled knobs that look like they're styled after jet exhaust. There's way more detail. The thick, indented start-stop button. The shifter, which is industrial art. The white piping all over the dash and the seats, which also have double-white stitching and textured leather inserts that also match the doors and the armrest. There's burgundy cross-stitching on the door armrest, more soft leatherette all over the dash. The seats have five massage programs and adjustable side bolsters and shoulder lumbar. The seats in the Sierra Limited feel like they came from Staples or some other cheap store. It's more than just nice. It's a getaway, and the technology is first-class. This is a 13.4-inch touchscreen, not a tiny little square. The interface is entirely re-skinned. All the graphics have these thin strokes. They're kind of abstract-looking, but from a distance, you can see exactly what they are. I like it. Now, this isn't just based on the Android operating system. It's Google's full infotainment behind a GMC graphic skin. So that means Google Maps right here. This is better-looking than what you get by Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Looking at here, Maps. For example, this is all you get in the screen when you see Apple CarPlay. And the maps don't look as good as this. Check this out. Way more full-featured. So even if you don't plug in your phone, you get all the power of Google and all the good stuff you like to use on your laptop or your tablet. It's all right here, updating in real time. And that also means that you get Google Keyboard. So you can make all these kind of cool gliding motions here. And if you don't want to do that, you can use the Google Voice. CarGurus headquarters. All right. I'm setting your destination to CarGurus in Boston. GM was already ahead of the game with its in-car apps and all the privacy settings that it lets you adjust. So that hasn't changed. But now that Google's here, I'm a little sketched by how Google retains information, how they sell it. But you can change it. You can turn certain settings on and off. Plus, you can also lock the screen. For example, when I go in here, I can make a pattern or a pin, and it'll lock the whole infotainment screen. So there are some enhanced security features. The Sierra feels just as strong on the road, as long as you keep it in a straight line. That nice sound is GM's best V8 engine. It's the 6.2. You get 420 horsepower and 460 pound-feet of torque. And when you order Denali, it's either this engine or that turbodiesel V6. Both of them are really good. I tried that turbodiesel on the Sierra 1500 AT4 last summer. Check out that video. That engine really surprised me with how smooth it is. And this engine is also very smooth. Obviously, it's a nice big V8. It's got that nice rumble to it. You can get a performance exhaust as an option if you want. And it's pretty smart. GM has done cylinder deactivation for a long time. This one can operate in over a dozen different modes. So it's not just going into a regular V4. It's really complex and it works. They shut off individual valves. It makes an old engine design like this work for the modern world because you don't always need all that engine displacement, right? It's a giant engine. Right now, I'm still getting about 14 mpg because it's a big truck. It's cold. It's like 10 degrees outside. So any fuel savings for now? Not going to happen. There's a sport mode on the Sierra and you can activate it, but I don't think it does anything. That's fine. It's a giant truck. But there is an off-road mode, which does affect the automatic four-wheel drive. By automatic, I mean it will switch between two high and four high for you based on if it's sensing slippage. Or you can just keep it in four-wheel drive high. Also got a locking rear diff. But right now, these tires are all season. They're really street tires. They're 22 inches. I wouldn't put this thing through two inches of snow right now and expect it to get out properly. Not at all. So if you're going to have this vehicle and make it look good, and you want to drive it in the winter, put some winter tires or downgrade. I don't usually like saying that when I talk about 22 inch wheels because I love the way they look. But when it's wintertime, you need a truck that is capable. And this one rides really nice, but in terms of traction, if you're in a cold weather state, you better have a different option on your tires there. So often I'll wonder what's the difference between a Sierra and a Silverado? The answer is not much, but the dampers are the big change. This one uses adaptive electromagnetic shocks that's on Cadillac, other premium GM vehicles, right? Even the Corvette. You can't get that on the Silverado. This one has it and they do ride really well, especially with these big wheels and tires. This don't feel much, and it really just instantly changes the viscosity of that fluid without any moving valves. This is a GM innovation for a long time. I always exclaim it every single time I'm talking about it because they work. They really work. They're so good Ferrari uses them. All right, so you know it's good. So even with all that smart cylinder and valve management, the EPA rates this Denali with the V8 and the 4x4 at 14 city, 19 highway and 16 combined. But if you get the two-wheel drive diesel Denali, you're getting 23 city and 30 highway. Both of these engines make the same amount of torque. Just like the smooth ride, it is very quiet in the Denali, whether you are at 30 miles an hour or at 70 or more miles an hour on the highway. It's really composed and that quietness is what makes you more relaxed, especially on those longer drives. You are not tired from driving a truck like this. I would like more comfortable seats because these aren't that great. So that's probably why I'd stop to get a rest first rather than the ride or the or the way the truck feels. But quietness definitely helps. GMC offers a performance brake option with larger rotors. And I really think they should be standard because as I slow down, this vehicle is just too heavy for the small brakes that are on here. For safety reasons, it really should have larger ones. The steering, well, that's what makes the Sierra feel more like a old-school truck. And by that, I mean, there's not much feel to it. You have to kind of drive a little slower. And ordinarily, this would be a dumb thing to say, but the way the Ram 1500 and the Ford F-150 drive, well, they're a lot more like cars. They feel more in tune with the road. There's more feel. There's less wobble. This one, I don't want to go that much faster. And this would be fine if this was 5, 10 years ago, but the truck market has moved on. The chassis tuning is better. The powertrains are better. This one's a little behind. So I really want to drive that new 2022 Sierra. And when I'm in that one, which you'll see in a bit, you'll know why. This is the same 6.2 liter V8, 420 horsepower, 460 pound-feet of torque. The same engine you'll find in the new Cadillac Escalade. It sounds good. It pulls hard. There's really no difference between this Sierra and the other Sierra. Now, they both have 10-speed automatic transmissions, but for this new one, they've dropped the 8-speed on some of the other engines. There's four in total. So you get a lot of different choices with the Sierra 1500, from diesel to a four-cylinder to two different V8s. This AT4X comes exclusively with the 6.2 liter. If you get the regular AT4, you can also get a 3-liter turbodiesel 6. So watch that review. I drove the previous generation, the limited version. Not really the previous gen, but the pre-facelift version. You want to see that video in depth. That diesel was very good. But overall, any one that you choose, pretty good powertrains, healthy numbers. A big difference with this newer Sierra is the fact there's paddle shifters here. So all I have to do is put the transmission shifter down there into L, and then I can really easily control it. Before, there was a column shifter here, and you have to have little buttons like you're just operating a trailer. Now, this is not a sports car, but paddle shifters, to me, having them right here, it's a lot more intuitive. I can hear this 10-speed clunk sometimes when I'm slowing down to a stop. It doesn't jerk me around at all, but not quite as smooth as, say, the Ram's 8-speed. But overall, it responds well. There's no Sport mode on the AT4X because this is the off-road trim. You'll find that in the limited Denali, the other vehicle, but not this one. There's a Terrain mode, which lets you do one-pedal driving off-road. That's pretty cool. And I'm not going to do it here because we're sticking to the road, but if you want to see more details on how the Sierra 1500 works off-road in this AT4X trim, watch my standalone review because I'll show you the front and the rear lockers. Now, you can't get that in any other Sierra trim. The regular AT4 only has a rear-locking diff. Compared to the limited, well, you can't really compare them totally on the ride because this is the AT4X, and that is the Denali. The Denali is all about street. It's got 22-inch tires. They're not meant for off-roading. They're very much an on-road, all-season tire. And what I'm driving right now are very knobby Goodyear Wranglers. Such an aggressive tread pattern, and I can hear them humming at all speeds. It doesn't totally get into your brain, doesn't make me crazy, but I always know they're there. That is the trade-off when you buy an AT4X. You're going to have to live with that sound and extra noise, especially wind noise as well, coming through the cabin. It's still a very serene and isolated feel inside this truck. It totally is so comfortable. But if you're not going to use this particular truck off-road or on a trail, I don't recommend getting it. I would step into that Denali because it's so much more comfortable and quiet for on-road driving. What I will say is that with these Multimatic dampers, the ride feels nice and plush. I'm not punished on the road by any means, and it's not sloppy either. So GM has always done a very good job with chassis control, with suspension setups, whether it's a pickup truck or it's the Corvette. The engineers there really know what they're doing. And when you take a turn, and I'll demonstrate that right now, even on a vehicle like this, it's not leaning that much. Really, trucks of old, especially the old four-wheel drive Toyotas and anything from the past 20 years that are older, they don't handle like this. So you get into a modern vehicle like this, you're not compromised on the road when you come off the trail. But even though it doesn't feel compromised when I'm on the pavement, this steering rack is still pretty slow, requires a lot of turns, especially at parking lot speeds. You know, there's no four-wheel steering. There's no variable rack on here. So that's something I'd like to see pickup truck manufacturers do. GMC, a long time ago, had the Quadrasteer, if you remember that, in the 2000s. It made the vehicle so much easier to maneuver. I think eventually they'll come back with that, but for now, it does feel a bit cumbersome when you have a truck this large. So keep that in mind. This is the short bed, but it is long overall. The towing numbers don't change much with this refresh unless you get the smaller engines, such as the Turbo 4. That one is way up than before. You can find out more details online about that. We describe that in our review, CarGurus.com. But for this one, on the AT4X with this V8 crew cab four-wheel drive, it's 8,900 pounds of towing, 1,420 in the bed. You can get up to 13,000 pounds in a Sierra, depending on how it's equipped. The diesel one especially pulls really hard, really high numbers there. Fuel economy, well, it's not very good, as you'd expect. With this 6.2 liter, it's a 14 MPG city rating, 18 highway. So yeah, $5 plus per gallon gasoline will eat into your monthly budget if you have this truck. However, you can get up to 30 MPG with the diesel. That's also pretty impressive. So it's a pretty big range of engines and fuel economy choices. You can just do whatever you want with. Maybe the truck is just new, but I find that the brakes are really perfect and more confidence inspiring than that other Sierra Limited. The 2022 Sierra 1500 Limited starts at $32,895 for the base model. And like any full-size truck, it goes way up from there. The new 2022 GMC Sierra 1500 starts at $35,400 for the Pro. That's more money than the Sierra 1500 Limited, but look at everything else you get inside. This truck is finally up to snuff with Ford and almost as good as Ram. That's saying a lot. Now, prices go up a whole lot, but that's what all the big American trucks do. My Sierra AT4X is $78,840, fully loaded with Destination. The Denali Ultimate costs more than $80,000. For a little more money, you get a lot more truck with this refreshed Sierra 1500. From the technology to the interior design to actual luxury, this is a GMC truck that I will recommend for the first time ever. It's that good. And when you compare it to the Sierra 1500 Limited, that truck feels old. It feels outclassed, even though mechanically, they're both the same vehicle. This is not all new, but it's pretty much there. So what do you think? Watch more comparison tests, more reviews, more previews, subscribe to CarGurus. We'll see you next time.