2024 Kia Sportage review (inc. 0-100 & braking test)

G'day, I'm Paul of the Kia Sportage. It's been one of my favourites in the medium SUV segment for a little while now, so I thought, you know, we haven't driven it for a while, so let's get one back in and have a little crack. So this is called the SX Plus diesel all-wheel drive. It's one down from the top spec. This is priced at just over $47,000. If that's too expensive though, the entire range kicks off at a little bit under $33,000. This competes with things like the Toyota RAV4, the Mazda CX-5, Hyundai Tucson. There are lots and lots of competitors in this segment. Today we're going to do a detailed review of this car, so if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes that are up on the screen, or if you are on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below, and if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon so you can find out every single time we review a car that we haven't visited in a while. So let's talk exterior. You've got several colours to choose from. Your optional colours are pretty modest, $520. I think this has aged well. So when we first reviewed this, I thought, you know, it looks pretty good to me. Styling is subjective, but I wonder how it's going to age. It's been a couple of years now and I think it's aging really nicely, and I think Kias in general, they've just really nailed the design and they just look cool. So a new Kia logo there, a little bit of piano black here for this grille section, and then bottom section there has the radar. Over here, you've got a set of full LED headlights with LED daytime running lights. Come around to the side of the car with me. Down here, you've got a set of 19-inch alloy wheels. You've got a piano black finish on the inside there and then a machined finish up the top. 180mm of ground clearance or thereabouts, so it's not exactly a rock hopper, but being an all-wheel drive, this is going to give you that extra confidence out on the road and then has the sort of ability to do some very, very light off-roading. A bit of wheel arch cladding there as well, so people know you're driving an all-wheel drive. Piano black on the wing mirror there, indicator built into there as well, and then as we move down the side there, you can see that black finish continues down the bottom there, and then this sort of brushed aluminium look as well, which I think looks pretty good. Privacy glass, you've got yourself a set of roof rails here as well, and then come around to the back with me. Now around the back here, you've got LED taillights, well partial LED taillights, so easy to spot in traffic when you're following the car. Kia logo here, Sportage there, you'll notice there are no badges on the back here, so I think that's a deliberate move by a lot of manufacturers these days to, I guess just not really highlight too much what you're driving, so that's good news. Black down the bottom here, and then shark fin aerial up the top there, brake light built into here, and then a wiper tucked in neatly under there. So let me know what you reckon in the comments section below. Do you think the styling still looks good today? Do you think it has aged well? I'm keen for your feedback, let me know what you think. Okay, so we are inside the Sportage, I think the Americans call it a Sportage, it's interesting. So this is what the key looks like, it's a proximity sensor key, you've got Kia just there, lock button up the top, unlock, remote start, boot, and then blank on the back. Once you're inside, you have a push button start just here. So basically if you don't go for the top spec version, you don't get the full digital display here ahead of the driver. So this is actually the first time I've seen what it looks like without that big display, and it doesn't actually look that bad, which is good, and you're going to hear a lot of that beeping, because Kias and Hyundais constantly tell you the battery is discharging, so it's going to get a little bit annoying, but it is what it is. There is a lot of piano black here, sort of around this tunnel section here, but outside of that, I think this is pretty sort of nicely presented. They do try and break up a lot of the blacks with some of this sort of material in between, which is pretty good. In terms of your touch points, not too, quite firm there, and soft on the door. How soft are they? Well, we've got our gyrometer, we've tested the main surfaces in this cabin. If you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before, look at the link in the description below. Now, what about your build quality? Let's have a look. That's not too bad. Feels good. That's what the door sounds like. Let's talk about the infotainment offerings. So you've got a 12.3-inch colour touchscreen here in the centre for the infotainment system. Ahead of the driver, it's a smaller 4-ish-inch display with a couple of digital readouts on either side of it. So pretty basic, but still looks nice and modern. In terms of the operation of this, it is all a touchscreen, so you do have to lean in a fair bit to change some of these settings, but I think it's something you'd probably get used to eventually. They have inbuilt satellite navigation, AM, FM, digital radio, and that's all plumbed through an 8-speaker Harman Kardon branded sound system, so nice and fancy. A couple of other cool features in here. You can record a voice memo, so if you get any wild business ideas out on the road, you can note them down without forgetting them. You have a manual built into the actual infotainment system as well, which is good. Then, in addition to that, on the smartphone mirroring front, you have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Both of those are wired, unfortunately, so no wireless. This is what Apple CarPlay looks like, so big full screen integration, nice and quick and sharp as well, so very impressed with that. And this is what Android Auto looks like. So it's a split screen, and I remember someone in one of the videos we did once mentioning there is a way to change that. If you do know how to change that, let me know in the comments section below. I can't see any easy way to do it. I just think it looks a bit silly only having the split screen Android Auto on half the screen anyway. This is kind of just redundant over here, so yeah, a little bit frustrating. Head of the driver though, that small display just gives you trip computer information along with some details on where it's sending torque as well, but outside of that, it's all sort of pretty straightforward. Now, what about your safety tech? You have autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian, cyclist and junction assist. On the mirror front, you have an auto dimming rear vision mirror. You have a blind spot monitor built into the wing mirror. You have radar cruise control with a lane departure warning and a lane keeping assistant, which we will test a little bit later on. You have front and rear parking sensors, rear cross traffic alert, and then a reverse view camera. I'll show you what that looks like. There it is there. The quality of that's actually not too bad. I can clearly see what it says there on the suitcase, and then you have a couple of different views to go with as well. So yeah, not a bad setup. And this is what the horn sounds like. Moving on to practicality, and we'll start off with your connectivity. So down here, you've got a USB-A port, a USB-C port, a 12-volt outlet, no wireless phone charging, but there is plenty of room there to store your phone. Now, what about our coffee cup test? So you've got plenty of storage space here in the middle, but you can actually create like a holder for your drinks just by pushing these buttons. There you go. That gives you a nice little slot there for the coffee with teeth that pop out as well. Fit a normal bottle in there too without any dramas. A bottle fits inside the door. Try a big bottle inside the door as well. No big bottles inside the door, I'm afraid. Additional storage, you've got this slot here, which is quite nice here in the center console, and you have a glove box as well, which is pretty reasonably sized too. Now, what about your comfort? So it's quite an interesting system. You've got dual-zone automatic climate control down the front here with seat heating as well for the front row, but this is like a dual-purpose screen. So right now, it's set to climate, but give that button one push, then changes this screen here to be about your infotainment system. So I think that is a pretty cool setup. Seats are great. They're nice and comfy, perforated there in the center with nice bolster as well. So electric adjustment, you can go forwards and backwards. Your backrest can go forwards and backwards. You can lift the front of the seat, the back of the seat, and you have lumbar adjustment as well. Passenger seat is manually adjustable. Steering offers both tilts and reach adjustment. And on our reach test, like I said before, it is a little bit tricky to get to the outer edges of this screen while you're driving. So back seats, look at this, lots of knee room there. Toe room is excellent, headroom is really good as well. So it's a great place to be seated. There's a couple of interesting creature comforts here. So you've got hooks here for bags, you have map pockets, USB-C ports in the back of the seats, air vents, a little bit of storage down there. Nice and fixed points on the two outboard seats and three top tether points. Center armrest here with two cup holders and you can fit your bottle inside the door as well, which is good. And now our window test, does it go all the way down? So it's manual up and down and boom, goes all the way down. Very impressive. Now let's talk cargo space. So you've got a powered tailgate, pop that open. So you have just under 550 litres of space here. It is worth calling out, they actually do like a short wheelbase and a long wheelbase version of this car and Australia gets a long wheelbase version. So that's why you have a bit more room inside the cabin and more sort of space to play with. Under the cargo floor as well, which I think is pretty cool, you get a full-size spare. That means that you don't need to stress too much if you do get a puncture, you've got a full-size spare ready to go, which is good news. Hooks off to the side, you've got a 12-volt outlet over here. Show you what it looks like with our bags in there. So laptop bag and that is the suitcase. So yeah, plenty of room in there. Now you can expand the space if you want to by dropping the second row out of the way and that expands the space to a little over 1800 litres. Okay, we've just hit the road in the Sportage. So what is powering this? So under the bonnet here is a 2.0-litre turbocharged diesel. You can get a 1.6-litre petrol turbocharged petrol in the Sportage range, but I'm a really big fan of this because it gives you the punch in the back that you need, especially if you do have a full vehicle, it really just complements that whole package really nicely. So it produces 137 kilowatts of power, just over 400 newton metres of torque and it's all mated to an eight-speed torque converter automatic, which is exactly where you want to be when it comes to gearboxes in the Hyundai and Kia range. Now, how does all that feel? Well, if you give it a sort of punch, it actually just really just pushes you in the back nicely. And I think that when you look at a vehicle in this segment, a lot of them just feel a little underpowered and underdone. And if you are driving on the freeway, overtaking, that kind of thing, you really want a vehicle that just gives you that little bit of oomph when you need it. So I think this really ticks all of those boxes. Now, the benefit of a diesel as well is that you're getting better fuel economy. Kia claims a combined average of just over six litres per 100 Ks. We're currently sitting on 8.1, which is actually not too bad. And that's pretty much a mix of highway, city and also some hotlaps here around the proving grounds. So quite impressed with that figure. And it shows you that this really doesn't use a great deal of fuel when you are just sort of motoring about doing your chores. Now let's talk about the ride. So the ride was tuned here in Australia. Kia still runs a program here that allows them to do ride and handling tuning locally. And the benefit of that is that it feels like it suits Australia's road conditions. And look, Australia's roads are similar to other roads in the world, but we do have some unique characteristics. We have mixes of gravel, you've got off-camber sections, mountainous sections. It really is just a huge variety of roads. It's not just the one type. And they tune for all of that. So it means that you're getting a nice and comfortable ride in and around the city. But when you're hitting things like tram tracks, potholes, cobblestones and that sort of thing, it still feels really nice and comfortable. And same story with the steering feel. That's something else that they've had a bit of input on tuning. It's sort of on the heavier side of comfortable, but still not over the top. So I'm sort of quite happy with how that feels. Okay, time for our sine wave test. Let's dial up the revs, get up to 130 k's an hour. So the sine wave test is just a really good gauge of how this feels when it comes to hitting a set of continuous undulations on a country road when you're overtaking or something like that. Do it at 130, which is the maximum speed in Australia. Yeah, nice. Feels good. Very nicely dialed. And I think it just shows you that the effort they go to with the local ride and handling tuning actually makes a difference. Now time for the bumpiest road in Australia. We do this one at 90 k's an hour. It's just an incredibly bad road. We've got a condensed sine wave here as well that just gives us an idea of what this is like under these conditions. Here it is. It doesn't feel too bad. It does sort of float over them a little bit. So I think that just shows you that the suspension doesn't have enough time to settle and it's really just skating along the tops of those corrugations. It's not the end of the world, but just one of those compromises they make to make the ride feel the way that it does right now. Now you're not going to be doing any off-road driving because it's not really an off-road vehicle, but you do have some off-road modes here. Snow, mud and sand. You just push this button here allows you to switch between them. Then your on-road modes are eco, normal, sport and smart. You've got a little bit of everything there and some paddle shifters here on the steering wheel as well. I also like this view here that tells you where the torque's being split because it is kind of an on-demand system. You can see it's just front-wheel drive there. I do more throttle and then it sends a bit more to the front and the rear, but let's pop it into sport mode. We'll go for a punt around our track and just see what it feels like with a bit more speed. That's a good thing about this diesel. It actually has a really nice amount of punch. There is a bit of body roll there, but it's really not the end of the world. Laying into the throttle here, it just gives you a nice bit of acceleration there with not too much of a fuss. It's actually quite impressive that they've managed to make this feel as sporty as it is right now. I think they've done a really good job with that. I'm curious to see what it's like under braking here over our tram tracks because I didn't notice before the pedal was... Yeah, see that's not very good. So when you are on the brakes and you hit a bump into a corner, the pedal goes a little bit numb while it tries to figure itself out. It's not a good feeling and it's something that probably just needs a little bit more calibration, but look, you're probably never going to be driving like this, but yeah, if you do, that's probably just something that needs just a little bit of work. In terms of road noise, look, it's not terrible. It's not amazing. It's sort of right in the middle there. We used our calibrated sound meter to get a better idea of how this sounds out on the road, and if you do want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before, have a look at the link in the description below. Now, if you're doing any towing, you've got a 1,900 kilo brake towing capacity, but keep in mind you've got 100 kilo max downpour weight, so effectively you really only want to be towing about 1,000 kilos with the trailer. Okay, so time to test the lane support systems here. So we do that on our bowl, and we use the three outer lanes to see how it performs when it comes to keeping the vehicle within its lane. So I'll set the cruise control to 70 k's an hour. Let's have a look around our GoPro here. So there it is just there, and then we'll get our self-steering set up as well. So you can see that's active because the steering wheel's green and the lines are green there as well. So it's doing a great job here in the first lane, sort of staying within our lane, which is good. We'll jump over to the next lane. There it is there, green, getting close to that line. That's not too bad, it's actually keeping fairly centred. Obviously with this stuff you're meant to keep your hand on the wheel, so if you were driving you would just bring it back in a little bit, that was okay. All right, we'll jump over to the outer lane, see how it performs up here. That's going green, down that wheel. Okay, so it's not willing to apply enough torque there to actually hold it within its lane on the outer side, and that kind of gives you an idea of how it's going to perform when it's going around a bend as well. So yeah, look, it's good, but I think it probably just needs a little bit more ability to hold the vehicle within its lane. Okay, time to do a little bit of performance testing. Before we get stuck into that, I wanted to tell you about Help Me Car Expert, inspired by our friends at CarWow. So CarExpert, it's a big company. We have like 50 full-time employees. We also have a network of vetted dealers, and that means that we have dealers we trust that can get you a deal on a car that is in stock or soon to arrive, like the Sportage. So if you do want to take advantage of that, if you are interested in buying a car, regardless whether it's a car or not, just go to Google and type in Help Me Car Expert. It'll take you to a page that explains exactly how it all works, and yeah, good luck with your car purchase. But let's get cracking here. So what we're going to do is accelerate through to 120 kilometers an hour, and then I'll also get an idea of 0 to 100, and then the 80 to 120 for overtaking, and we'll come back around and do a brake. So it's in sport mode. Actually, I'll turn the traction control off as well. Here we go. So nice and strong off line there. All right. Here we go. 100, and 100 now. 0 to 100, 8.5 seconds flat, which is good, and then 80 to 120, 6.29 seconds. So not too bad as well. Let's go back and we'll do a stop from 100. Okay. Accelerate up to 100. All right. 100 to 0, 2.9 seconds and 40.29 meters. So okay, but not amazing. I think it could be potentially slightly better, but it is what it is. Now, if you do want to see how the Sportage compares to other cars that we've tested before, have a look at the link in the description below where we compare all of the results to vehicles in its segment as well. Now, our reverse acceleration test. Let's see how we go. 62 kilometres an hour. So the key of Sportage, look, I reckon this spec is where you want to be. SX Plus gives you all the features you need inside. It doesn't look like a poverty-packed model, and the diesel is my pick as well because it's got a great transmission, plenty of punch, and really efficient too. Just in general, do you need all-wheel drive if you're going for Sportage? Look, if you can afford it, I would go the all-wheel drive. It just gives you a bit more surety. If you're ever driving to the snow or something like that, you've just got that extra bit of confidence, gravel roads, that type of thing. So I think that is all worth keeping in mind. Now, let me know, have you bought a Sportage? I know there's like huge waiting lists for some specs, but if you do use the Help Me Car Expert service, we will try and secure you one that's in stock or one that's about to come out. Let me know what it's like to own. Are you enjoying it? Has it been fun? I'm keen for your feedback. If you did enjoy this video, please make sure you like this video and share it with your mates. And if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon. But until next time, take it easy.