2026 Kia Sportage -- 7 Days Later... Are We Still Impressed??

What's going on YouTube? So the Sportage continues to be a top seller for Kia and they stepped this product up even more this year with a recent refresh. And we've had the chance to live with this popular model for the past week to really put it through its paces. But we want to know after seven days are we still as impressed? Well let's go ahead and find out. Let's go ahead and get things started like always under the hood with a quick spec dump. So there's a few different powertrains you can get with the Sportage. We have the hybrid model which is a 1.6 liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine with your electric components making 232 horsepower. It's paired to a six-speed automatic transmission and our combined fuel economy is 35 mpg. Now the base price of the Sportage is around $29,000 this year and if you're looking to buy one or any new vehicle we would encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash newcarquotes to get the best price. Now of course this is a real world seven day review so we have a lot to share such as our real world experienced fuel economy, our official sound level reading and we'll also talk about resale and reliability. But let's go ahead and close up the hood so that we can get into the exterior as well as the inside. Now like I mentioned at the beginning within the last year this has been refreshed and they did a pretty extensive job including things up here at the front. You can see that this has a little bit more of a squared off design than it did before and I think it really makes a big difference overall with the appearance. Now another thing that they changed for 2026 was just the fact that the hybrid powertrain actually can be had with a couple more trim levels than before so that gives you extra choices as well. Now let's take a look over here at our headlights. So you will have standard LED headlights on all models however since we have the SX Prestige today that's going to give us the most advanced headlight unit. So this is a stacked crystal design headlight and we also have the really large daytime running light and turn signal indicator finished in the amber color plus the Prestige also gets the stacked crystal LED fog lights down here at the bottom. And taking a look at the back it continues with a pretty stylish look. Yeah and we do have some refreshed elements for 2026. We have a spoiler up here at the top, a rear window wiper excuse me underneath, our Kia logos prominently here in the center and then let's take a look at our taillights. So our taillights are the area where they really updated. So we're going to have standard full LED taillights on every single model. This is your brake light and turn signal indicator. Your reverse light is also LED and that's located down here in your lower bumper area. Speaking of the lower bumper area all this is piano black. It can tow 3,500 pounds with the standard gas model or it's 2,000 pounds with the hybrids. Next up we have the wheels which range in size from 17 to 19 inch alloys. As you expect the top model gets the 19 inch contrast alloys. They've got that newer geometric look that a lot of Kias have been having recently. Whether you like that or not is up to your personal preference. One of the things I personally like is the fact that we have a gloss black wheel arch and lower moldings giving this a more premium element than most of the competition with matte black. Up here at the mirrors we're going to have blind spot monitoring and heating as standard equipment. This top model also has power folding. Now how long is the Sportage? Well 184.4 inches which is a good size for this segment. It means it's right in line with that of its main rivals like the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V. Now as far as design all of our window surrounds are blacked out. We have that unique element in the back pillar and we also have blacked out roof rails up here at the top. I really love this paint color as well over the past week and as far as your safety systems we have all four active safety features as standard equipment. Additionally if you get the fully loaded examples that's going to throw in things like highway drive assist 2.0 which is certainly a very advanced highway assistant. We found it to work really well this week but we've got a lot to talk about on the inside when it comes to luxury and what we thought about it. But first if you're new here we're brothers and we've been reviewing cars since we were 12 and 16. We started young and since then we've reviewed over 2,000 cars at every price point. No matter what you're looking for from sound level readings to cargo measurements we'd love for you to subscribe to be a part of our car confections family. Let's learn a lot and have some fun with all the latest cars. Alright now let's check out the cabin. Here's our typical Kia key fob. First of all as you can see nice shape to this you have a standard smart entry system. We also have remote start built into the fob and we have the smart parking system. Since this is the SX Prestige digital key is also available and as you walk up to the vehicle it'll center approach and go ahead and fold the mirrors outward. And looking inside the interior just like with the outside Kia made some notable changes for 2026. But before we get into those we'll start by talking about these seats. As typical for the class it begins with a cloth seat and then you move to leatherette and your middle trims. The top models those do not have real leather still still so even this SX Prestige comes with what they call premium syntax. But I have to say the seat itself very comfortable and it does have a great look to it. So you've got the perforation down the center there you even have kind of a cloth accent up here on the top and the headrest. This is the gray color but you can also get some more exciting colors such as red and the seats themselves of course are power adjusting with two-way lumbar support and we have memory seats as well on the door trim. Let's go ahead and climb on inside. First things first we need to look at the rest of the cabin materials. So they are pretty premium for the class you have a leatherette across the armrest here leatherette all through the center section soft touch plastic along the top. As you move to the upper dashboard all of this is a soft touch plastic with a stitched detail through the center we have kind of this textured trim and then that same trim is going to continue all through the center tunnel here. One of the things that we noted is the fact that this is a type of material that wouldn't get scratched or show fingerprints and dust like a piano black so this is definitely a good choice for material to go across the center console here. One thing I will point out though is they could have padded this for your knee to rest against and now we'll fire it up with our push button start. So of course after everything starts up here you can see we've got a dual screen arrangement this side is also 12.3 inches it's the full digital cluster this is not standard on all models it's just on your upper end trim levels and if you really want to go all out and spring for the SX Prestige like we have today that's going to give you the blind spot camera system and for 2026 you now get a head-up display. Mason and I were so impressed by this head-up display this week it's basically exactly the same as what is on his wife Kenzie's GV80 it's very premium and has all types of information inside of it. Now as far as the steering wheel is concerned just like the wheels on the outside this is going to be one of the more controversial elements it's a new geometric design it's very squared off on the top and the bottom and then you have the offset Kia logo it's definitely going to be a matter of personal preference whether you like this or not I'm not the biggest fan of it. As far as the wheel itself it's manual tilt and telescoping and the SX Prestige gives you steering wheel heating. Now let's take a look at interior storage next inside of here we're going to see some donuts that's because we're performing the signature donut test and it fits nine donuts inside thanks to this hollowed out design inside of the console here which is pretty good for the segment. Also cool for this class will be this big storage bin which you can kind of just pop out the cup holders on demand and then up in front of that you have your wireless phone charging pad and a little bit of concealed storage no pass-through space or anything like that so some of the rivals do offer. Taking a look at the shifter hybrid models come with the rotary style electronic one twist over to D for drive there are paddle shifters on the steering wheel twist the opposite way for reverse. The fully loaded SX Prestige gives you this 360 degree camera system with good resolution it also has the ability to go into the 3D view and spin all around the vehicle. Press the P for park there the actual shifter itself does illuminate differently depending on if you're in drive or park and then over here you've got a few more controls including your automatic brake hold for the electronic parking brake. There's another panel of buttons on the right side and that will be for your seats so heated seats are on the hybrid S trim and above so that's the majority of them but the ventilated seats will be on just the fully loaded SX Prestige that's also where you turn on your heated steering wheel that I mentioned earlier. Now the other kind of climate functions of course will be right here in this panel. So we talked a lot about this in many Kia reviews but this panel here is reconfigurable so you press that button turns into audio controls press that button it turns into your climate controls. This is not exactly the most user intuitive and certainly kind of distracts you when you reach down and you expect that to do something and it does something different because you forgot to push that button first. Nevertheless this is a dual zone automatic climate control system and as far as the audio is concerned since we have a top spec model we have a Harman Kardon sound system with eight speakers and we'll give that a sample right now. Overall sound quality is pretty good certainly fills up the cabin nicely and has a good amount of bass and balance. Alright so now we move to the second display this is a also 12.3 inch display just like the gauge cluster and this has Kia's CCNC software which means it has wireless android auto and apple car play abilities. Pairing is super simple and it works really really nicely over the week that we had it. I'll go into the rest of their infotainment system here to give you a sneak peek of what that looks like. As you can see pretty simple arrangement of the apps you have a built-in navigation system right there you have some hybrid specific apps through there and you can even set up things like youtube and entertainment inside of this. Now rising above we've got a manual dimming mirror you can option on an auto dimming one with home link if you prefer and then I'll slide back the sunshade here for the panoramic sunroof. This is included on our top model here and as you can see the sunshades really fast and the front panel of the sunroof opens up. Now we've got a lot of good stuff to talk about when it comes to the rear seats of Sportage after living with it this week because when it comes to space figures it's really quite impressive and there's also a lot of luxury features. We'll talk about that in just a second but space first 41.3 inches of legroom 38 inches of headroom that does mean that this is pretty much class leading. This and the CR-V and the Hyundai Tucson are really the largest options you can get in this segment. This seat is adjusted to Drew who's five foot eight I'm five foot nine and of course I brought along the official car confections ruler that's so I can get a realistic knee room figure for you guys and we're sitting at 10 inches of additional knee room that is absolutely fantastic. My feet can also easily slide up underneath of these seats and these seats we found to be really really comfortable as a matter of fact these headrests are absolutely fantastic headrests they hit you in just the right spot of your neck and you can easily recline the seats as well so I could really envision taking some pretty stellar naps here in the second row that's for sure. Now we do have a center armrest with two cup holders inside these are a little bit on the small side to keep that in mind and then as far as other features we have vents right here two USB ports we have little hooks as well for you to hang little grocery bags and you also have these hooks that you can use as you know a coat hook or something like that if you don't want your shirt to arrive wrinkled. Now let's look over at the door trim the door trim itself is going to be a little cheaper than the front one because this is hard touch on the upper part however the center section is leather wrapped as well as the armrest portion and in front of that you'll find a button that I'm pretty happy to see and that's heated back seats that's a feature that a lot in the segment are still not including things like the Honda CR-V don't give you that just be aware it's only on the hybrid SX prestige models so you can't get heated back seats on any of the gas ones so I'm not sure if they think that you know people that buy the gasoline variants don't need heated back seats but just be aware you have to get the hybrids to get that. Now in the lower part there's a little bit of door storage as well now let's go ahead and check out the cargo area on the EX and above you'll have the hands-free smart power tailgate and let's go ahead and talk about cargo space I think you'll be pretty pleasantly surprised with this number as well so what we're sitting at is about 39 cubic feet of space behind the second row of seats and if you fold those seats down which you can easily do with these little levers right here that will fold them 60 40 split by the way that gives you 74 cubic feet of space that is going to be really good numbers once more so just like the second row this is pretty much class leading in terms of cargo space the Honda CR-V has it beat by just about a cubic foot or two so keep that in mind but really good numbers here speaking of all of its competition we would encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash vehicle rankings we've looked at all the compact SUVs in this segment and ranked them in individual categories things like cargo space interior luxury technology powertrain choices and oh so importantly value so you can see the best options in each of those categories in this segment and make an informed buying decision now let's get get back to the Sportage's cargo area now let's get our cargo length width and height figures so behind Drew's seating position we're looking at 76 inches of length to the end of the trunk as far as behind the second row about 38 inches of length 43 inches wide as far as height 29 inches tall that's really all those numbers are pretty good let's get our load-in height it is pretty windy outside let me keep it straight about 30 inches is our load-in height underneath of the floor you might be surprised to find that even though we have the hybrid model we do have a spare tire that's certainly becoming increasingly common in this segment of vehicle well guys here we are behind the wheel of the 2026 Kia Sportage in this test drive we're going to be discussing quite a lot as you can see on the screen right now we'll also be getting things like our sound level reading and discussing our real world experienced fuel economy but first we need to start with a hard acceleration all right that was 60 miles per hour with the Sportage hybrid so we talked about at the spec dump there's a few different ways you can get the Sportage uh 2026 you have a regular gas option you have a hybrid option and you also have a plug-in hybrid option so the hybrid option is kind of the one it kind of sets in the middle this is something going to be very popular of course overall and it's a 1.6 liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine you have your electric hybrid componentry for 232 horsepower 0 to 60 is under 8 seconds so it's a good step up from the gas powered option which is a 2.5 liter naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine yeah so that honestly is worth mentioning in itself is a lot of the competition like for example the Toyota RAV4 has gone to a full hybrid setup you can still get a straight gasoline engine option so for those of you that want a fully simple powertrain experience you can get that here in the Sportage and I think that's going to appeal to certain buyers that is for sure that makes 187 horsepower 178 pound feet of torque the 0 to 60 on that is significantly slower it is going to be sitting right around 9 seconds to 60 for that standard gas option we have tested that out if you'd like to see a review on that you can find that on our channel but just be aware that this hybrid is a pretty big step up when it comes to that all electric torque that you get off the line and overall performance when it comes to more horsepower as well like Drew said 232 horsepower for this one the 0 to 60 is sitting at around 7.4 also there's the plug-in hybrid for those of you that want the maximum performance do be aware that that does raise your price quite a lot and that makes all told 268 horsepower so that's the fastest Sportage that you can get as far as the other elements of the powertrain we've got a six-speed automatic transmission that goes for both of your hybrid trims or you get an eight-speed automatic with your traditional gas-powered model that's something of course that distinguishes the Hyundai and Kia group hybrids from say a Toyota or a Honda hybrid those are using an e-cvt so you don't get that drone sound i'll also note that the 1.6 liter is very quiet even when you hammer it down like we were just revved up to over 5,000 rpm it still does not sound too loud at all yeah i do think that that is a pretty big benefit now you can go back and forth on whether the traditional six-speed uh is you know better or worse than the e-cvt i think that's largely going to depend on you know how often you maybe floor the model because if you drive really aggressively i think that uh Toyota RAV4 would kind of get on your nerves with the droning experience um but you know kind of pros and cons we've lived with that's a little bit more responsive like you know where this one you actually have to wait for it to downshift so it's a matter of personal preference yeah now when it comes to ride quality uh we were very impressed with this Kia Sportage over the past week uh as you can see as we go over this bridge abutment you have a really great ride quality you will feel some intrusion inside the cabin uh we were talking i think we think the Hyundai Tucson's may be slightly softer sprung than this Kia Sportage but overall the ride quality is really good for this model we have the larger wheels on the outside and even with those it's still solid i can imagine this is a vehicle that you can road trip for hours and still arrive pretty comfortable also these seats i have to say a plus on the seats these are super soft and comfortable i love the headrest as well it really just makes you feel right at home and that was the acceleration and support mode i mean 232 horsepower is plenty for a compact suv i mean it really gets off the line nicely with the electric torque yeah let's go ahead and get our sound level reading as well if you'll toggle us back into the normal drive mode we have it on fan speed one here and let's go ahead and see how quiet it is 57.1 seems to be the number that we have settled in at now we don't have to sit here and guess we can go to carconfections.com sound level readings and see how it compares to all of its numerous rivals and compared to the rivals it's not quite the quietest option in the segment however it is better than some of its main competitions such as the Honda CR-V that is namely a product that is definitely on the louder end so keep that in mind it's going to be a pretty quiet cabin overall and of course like we mentioned several times at this point the engine is quite a quiet experience so even if you're flooring it all the time you're not getting a ton of drone inside the cabin all right but we've got to talk about fuel economy as well that's an important part for this segment that is for sure so your gasoline options are either 26 or 28 mpg combined the hybrid options are really quite good so you can get up to 42 miles per gallon with the LX front wheel drive so if you don't mind the base trim and having front wheel drive you can get really great fuel economy now this all-wheel drive variant is coming in at 35 now it's not horrible fuel economy but i do want to point out it is several mpg worse than something like a CR-V it's quite a few mpg worse than something like the all-new rav4 as well so definitely keep that in mind if you're wanting the best fuel economy this Kia Sportage is not the best when it comes to that however what was our real world experience fuel economy well we'll go ahead and insert it in in a picture on the screen right now after we fully conclude our week-long of testing and mileaging this vehicle to see what our real world experience fuel economy is we'll go ahead and put the details of that on the screen right now do be aware though it was definitely on the colder side this week when we were testing out this Kia Sportage so that does negatively impact your hybrids when it comes to fuel economy so i would expect to get a little bit better fuel economy if you're living in a warmer climate all right let's get into today's slam dunk and airball i'm going to start off with the slam dunk and that is just the value-packed formula of the Sportage it's really always been the case but 2026 you know it just seems like you get even a few more extra details and nice goodies and across the whole lineup even all the way to the fully loaded model you still have a lot of value compared to the competition you know especially when you're looking at crv and rav4 which are very pricey yeah absolutely now on the flip side what's our airball well we wish uh they had not changed the steering wheel design we did not love living with that this week kind of it's a weird shape it's kind of ugly in our opinion but it also kind of feels weird when you're driving the vehicle yeah the two-spoke it's very thick i don't know not my favorite that's for sure and we have complained about this and other Kia products will continue to complain about it it just doesn't make a lot of sense this dual function climate and audio control panel i wish honestly they would just go ahead and ditch this across the entire Kia brand and after living with this refreshed Sportage for the week do we like it better the same or worse well the entire car confections team can agree that we like this product better i think we were super impressed with Kia Sportages of the past and living with this fully loaded model you get so much for the money that is for sure and the hybrid experience is also very good as well with plenty of power very smooth transition between gasoline and electric power i think we really liked living with this product that is for sure now let's talk about pricing so as i said at the very beginning of this video you started around 29 grand as you move up the trim structure and select different powertrain options of course that price elevates you can see the full lineup of prices on the screen right now we have what a lot of you guys might be selecting this is the regular Sportage hybrid this is also the fully loaded example so SX Prestige all-wheel drive $40,390 is our base price $200 for floor mats $1,395 destination $41,985 is what this model rings up to which is really way less than the competition things like a fully loaded rav4 are pushing nearly 50 grand in their standard hybrid configurations now as far as the final assembly point this one is manufactured in korea and if you're looking to buy a kia sportage or any new vehicle we would encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash new car quotes now the reason you should do that is because we have a tool on our website that will connect you with local car dealers in your area to get you the best price it's also going to give you access to invoice pricing information which is a great tool to use while dealership negotiating if you'd like to take advantage of that as well as things like our monthly payment tool you can find a link to that down below in our video description as well as a pinned comment at the top of this video buying a vehicle is about more than just the original msrp so let's talk about resale reliability and the warranty first up let's talk about resale value so kia as a brand is expected to retain 49.02 percent of original msrp after five years and 60,000 miles and after 10 years and 120,000 miles 21.13 now it's worth noting that is right at the industry average for all vehicle brands however it is still less than some of its main competitions such as honda or toyota we also looked at reliability when we put in the latest data kia is rated above the overall industry average for all vehicle brands now if you'd like to learn more about our resale values our reliability data or our methodology be sure to go to carconfections.com slash resale and carconfections.com slash reliability now also important that decision is your warranty kia has a really good one it's a five-year 60,000 mile basic warranty a 10-year 100,000 mile powertrain warranty you do not get any complimentary maintenance however and guys that wraps up our in-depth seven-day review of the refreshed 2026 kia sportage hybrid if you enjoyed watching our review on this where we give you our seven-day impressions of this very important model to the kia brand we'd really appreciate you hitting that subscribe button down below by subscribing you're going to be a part of our car confections family we have a lot of fun on this channel and i promise you won't want to miss out there's a ton of content especially in vehicles in this segment if you're already a part of our family thank you so much for your continued support we'll catch you next time as we sample more of the latest automotive delicacies