2019 Nissan X-TRAIL vs Subaru Forester

What's the difference?

Let’s start with the good things. First, visibility all around is excellent – the A-pillars are thin and bend away to give you a better view and the rear windows are large and make parking simple. The X-Trail is also an easy SUV to pilot in car parks, with light and accurate steering and also on the motorway, where it’s big enough to feel secure and planted.

Now, the not so good. The CVT makes the engine drone and the nature of these automatics means acceleration isn’t brisk. Next, the ride is good on a smooth surface, but on Sydney’s patchwork of roads the X-Trail struggled to keep us comfortable with a firm impact felt over even the smallest of bumps.

The Forester is nice to drive, rather easy to live with and it’s not hard on the eyes. Subarus are reliably sound, which is why you see a lot of them around, on city streets, in suburbia and on plenty of gravel tracks on the way to campsites. Bonus: there are plenty of outdoors-friendly accessories available, such as kayak or bike carriers, cargo barriers and luggage pods.

While not the most exciting SUV around, the comfortable and capable Forester is supremely well-built for purpose, if your purpose is to tackle light-duty off-roading, mostly on well-maintained gravel and dirt roads.

If minimal changes to the design of a car over the years translates to a better resale value, then the X-Trail should be a winner here, because not much has changed since the 2017 update.

That said, it’s a good-looking SUV that has aged well. I’m talking about its tough exterior, which somehow combines curvy elegance with a powerful stance.

The same can’t be said for its insides, which have dated. There’s the small screen and the analogue instrument cluster, all surrounded by a busy cabin full of buttons when we now live in a world of minimalist, cleanly designed cockpits.

Want to see how the French would design an X-Trail? The Renault Koleos is the French company’s restyled version of its Japanese partner company’s SUV, and it's very different indeed.

The Ti is the top-of-the-range petrol X-Trail and what sets it apart visually from the lower grades are the chrome strips, which skirt under the doors, a panoramic sunroof, LED headlights, 19-inch aluminium-alloy wheels... and that’s it.

The dark tinted windows you can see on our test cars also come on the ST-L grade below, and so do those roof rails and fog lights.

The Ti’s insides don’t look much different from the ST-L’s either (are you starting to get the message here?) with the black leather seats and larger touchscreen.

What are the X-Trail’s dimensions? At just under 4.7m long, 1.8m wide and 1.7m tall the X-Trail is longer than a RAV4, a CX-5 and even a Forester, which makes it a big, mid-sized SUV that’s getting into Hyundai Sant Fe territory, and that bodes well for space inside. 

The Forester has the same ol' dependable look as before (as it’s always had); it's not an eye-catching vehicle but it is certainly pleasant and inoffensive enough.

Practicality has long been the X-Trail’s strength, but in recent times rivals have come out with better packaging and more modern utilities, such as wireless charging and USB ports.

Still, it does have tall, wide-opening doors, which make getting in and out easy, big front seats and great rear legroom (I’m 191cm tall and can sit behind my driving position with about 30mm to spare), plus good storage space in the form of cupholders (two up front and two in the back), door pockets and a deep centre-console storage bin.

Headroom is reduced thanks to the sunroof, which comes standard on the Ti;  it’s also partly due to the theatre-style seating in the second row, which has the passengers sitting high for better visibility. Great for kids, but not for tall adults.

The X-Trail Ti is a five-seater, so if you need seven seats I have good news and bad news, and then good news again. The first good news is that a seven-seat version of the X-Trail can be had in the form of the ST or ST-L, and both cost a lot less than the Ti. The bad news is that those grades don’t come with all the Ti’s features, but the other good news is that this means they don’t have a sunroof, and therefore headroom is great in the second row.

Back to the Ti. For charging and media you have two 12V outlets up front, along with a USB port, and a 12V in the boot.

At this price point we’d like to see more USB ports. The new RAV4 GXL has five USB ports on board, including two in the second row, along with a wireless phone charger up front.

Backseat riders do have directional air vents, though.

The X-Trail does have a big boot – we’re talking 565 litres with the second row in place and 945 litres with those seats folded flat. Keep in mind those aren’t VDA litres, which is what Volkswagen and Mazda use to calculate boot sizes.

It’s a well designed interior with a neat fit and finish.

This is the top-shelf Forester so there’s leather everywhere, but there are more durable surfaces and material elsewhere and so it feels like an interior a family can easily do long road trips in.

There are plenty of storage spots, cup holders (up front, and in the centre arm-rest for second-row passengers), and door pockets to satisfy the driver and passengers.

There’s also plenty of real-time info depicted on the main 8.0-inch touchscreen (radio or nav etc) and the smaller screen mounted above it, which shows time, temp and aircon, as well as which vehicle-safety systems (i.e. EyeSight, lane-departure warning etc) are active.

For those with devices, there are USB charge ports up front (one) and two for second-row passengers.

The dual-zone climate control includes rear vents.

The manufacturer's listed price for the five-seater Forester 2.5i-S AWD is $41,940. The 2.5i-S has a (mostly) new 2.5-litre boxer petrol engine and a CVT automatic transmission. 

It has leather seat trim, 8.0-inch touchscreen, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity, plus DAB digital radio, Harman Kardon stereo, paddle shifters, sports pedals, an electric sunroof, roof rails, electronic parking brake, 18-inch alloy wheels, and more.

Safety gear includes AEB and active cruise control (both part of the EyeSight active safety system), as well as driver monitoring (with drowsiness warning), lane-departure warning, rear cross traffic alert, rear-view reverse camera, and more. 

You know how I said the X-Trail Ti has the same features as the TL but for less money? Well the reason is the engine – the Ti is a petrol and the TL is a diesel. Both are all-wheel drive.

Powering the Ti is a 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine making 126kW and 226Nm. I found that to be only just enough oomph (kerb weight is 1.5 tonnes) out on motorways and hilly country roads when overtaking.

The continuously variable transmission (CVT) does nothing for the driving experience, either, causing the engine to ‘drone-on’ and providing lacklustre acceleration, but it is a fuel-efficient automatic (see the mileage figures below).

The X-Trail Ti comes with an intelligent all-wheel-drive system a dial on the centre console allows the driver to select from three modes: 2WD, which will send drive to the front wheels only, but will activate all-wheel drive if it detects a loss of traction; Auto, which monitors the four wheels and will distribute torque to maintain traction; while in LOCK the electronically controlled coupling splits the torque evenly between the front and back. The Lock mode works at up to 40km/h and will switch to Auto mode at higher speeds.

It’s important to remember that while the X-Trail Ti will handle a bit of mild off-roading, such as dirt and gravel roads, the vehicle isn’t equipped with High and Low range four-wheel drive, which is vital for serious off-road excursions.

This Forester has a 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine – producing 136kW at 5800rpm and 239Nm at 4400rpm – with a seven-speed CVT auto and Subaru's symmetrical all-wheel-drive system with two-mode X-Mode, which I had the opportunity to test out on chopped-up sections of gravel road – but more on that later.

The Ti has a 2.5-litre petrol engine and Nissan says that after a combination of urban and open roads your fuel consumption should be 8.3L/100km. I took our test car on motorways, CBD peak-hour commutes and on suburban duties, too, with preschool picks ups and shopping thrown in, and when I measured mileage at the pump I calculated our test car was using 11.1L/100km.

Just to be totally clear, all my testing was done in the Auto drive mode setting,  which toggles between front wheel drive and all-wheel drive, when the system detects a wheel slipping.

This Forester has a claimed fuel consumption of 7.4L/100km (combined). We recorded 8.39L/100km during our time with it and that included 40km of gravel-road driving. 

Let’s start with the good things. First, visibility all around is excellent – the A-pillars are thin and bend away to give you a better view and the rear windows are large and make parking simple. The X-Trail is also an easy SUV to pilot in car parks, with light and accurate steering and also on the motorway, where it’s big enough to feel secure and planted.

Now, the not so good. The CVT makes the engine drone and the nature of these automatics means acceleration isn’t brisk. Next, the ride is good on a smooth surface, but on Sydney’s patchwork of roads the X-Trail struggled to keep us comfortable with a firm impact felt over even the smallest of bumps.

Perfectly adequate in all respects. It’s a solidly effective, if uninspiring, drive. 

Driver visibility is fine.

Steering is accurate without being pinpoint-precision sharp. 

Off the mark, in traffic and overtaking on the open road, the Forester does okay but it doesn’t establish any sort of new gold-star standards.

The Boxer engine and CVT work well together, but manual is still the preferred mode for Forester driving. Paddle shifters on the steering wheel are handy if you want to get lively with your driving.

Ride is nice and smooth, but its quite-tight suspension borders on too firm, although it feels more at home on bumpy gravel tracks. Road-suited Bridgestone Duelers help its bitumen cause. 

Its EyeSight Driver Assist technology is a bit annoying – it started bleeping at me soon after I first started driving the Forester – but I can see the value of it, especially if you're a driver with wandering eyes, which apparently I am.

The Forester’s auto stop-start is slow to re-start from standstill, so I switched it off most of the time.

The interior is comfortable – with power-adjustable seats up front – and, as mentioned, it’s a really family-friendly space.

There’s ample legroom all-round, and the roofline is not tapered downwards towards the back end as sharply as it is in some Forester rivals, so there's plenty of headroom in the second row.

Disc brakes at every corner pull the Forester up sharply enough.

It has a five-star ANCAP rating.

What does it cost to own? What warranty is offered?

The Forester has a five-year/unlimited km warranty and a five-year/ 62,500km capped price servicing program. Service intervals are recommended at 12 months/12,500km. After a free ‘health check and chat’ at the one-month mark, servicing costs are: $346.39 (12 months or 12,500km), $584.45 (24 months or 25,000km), $346.39 (36 months or 37,500km), $760.11 (48 months or 50,000km), and $351 (60 months or 62,500km).