Subaru Forester review

Subaru made its name with its rally cars, but its current line-up couldn’t be more different to those "race on Sunday, sell on Monday" specials. In fact, its best-selling model is a family SUV – the Subaru Forester we're reviewing here.

There’s no denying that the brand’s rich history has played some part in the model’s success though. Indeed, every Forester comes with four-wheel drive and has genuine off-road ability (which is a bit of an oddity in the class).

That should certainly help it stand out against its rivals, including the Ford Kuga, Peugeot 5008 and Skoda Kodiaq but is it enough to put the Subaru on your drive instead of one of those excellent family SUVs? 

In this review, we’re going to answer that very question, putting the Subaru Forester through its paces in all the important areas, including performance, comfort, practicality, efficiency and costs. Read on to find out how we rate it...

The Forester's 148bhp 2.0 petrol engine is linked to a small electric motor, making this a hybrid car (its full name is the Subaru Forester e-Boxer, with the "e" signifying electric tech).

In theory, the hybrid kit will help you get off the line more quickly, but it runs out of puff quite quickly and the 0-62mph time is a ponderous 11.8 seconds. For reference, even the least powerful Ford Kuga can manage the same sprint in 9.5 seconds. 

In the real world, you can feel that difference in performance with many family SUVs. You see, it makes getting up to speed a bit of a mission, and you’ll need your foot planted on the accelerator if you want to be at a decent speed by the time you reach the end of a motorway slip road. 

On top of that, the only gearbox option is a CVT automatic that holds the engine at high revs for longer than is comfortable when accelerating. As a result the engine makes quite a racket for an extended period of time. The Kuga is much less taxing to get up to speed.

The hallmark of Subaru car models is that you get four-wheel drive as standard, and the extra traction benefits that brings will pay dividends if you live in a remote area where the weather is harsh and the roads are infrequently gritted. We don't have an official wading depth but ground clearance is 220mm and you get hill-descent control and other off-roading kit as standard.

The feeling of security is mirrored by the limited body lean in corners and decent levels of grip. The Forester rides well too. It's more supple than a Kuga at low speeds to take the sting out of potholes, yet is controlled enough to avoid feeling wallowy when you go over a series of undulations at motorway speeds.

It’s just a shame that at those speeds the steering feels very vague around the straight ahead. Sure, it builds in weight as you wind on more lock while cornering on a B-road, helping you to place the car, but it doesn’t give you as much confidence at speed as the Kuga does.

It’s also a shame that the Forester suffers from a certain amount of wind noise that you wouldn’t get in, for example, the Skoda Kodiaq. There’s a fair amount more road noise too – even without the coarse-sounding engine.

"I've found that four-wheel drive adds an extra level of confidence on those typically British and very wet days. You don’t get that with many other family SUVs." – Dan Jones, Senior Reviewer

Getting comfortable in the Subaru Forester won’t take long thanks to plenty of adjustment from the driver’s seat and steering wheel. Helpfully, the front seats are electrically adjustable so require minimal effort, and while you can’t adjust the lumbar support, there’s enough to make long journeys comfortable.

You sit high up with excellent visibility all round, which is also helped by the low dashboard top that gives you a good view ahead. Better still, the large windows and door mirrors, and thinner roof pillars than on the Ford Kuga and Skoda Kodiaq, conspire to give you a great view over your shoulder.

Parking is easy too, with every Forester getting a rear-view camera as standard and a small camera mounted under the passenger side door mirror, which helps to reduce the risk of scraping your wheels on anything. It's a shame you don’t get parking sensors with any trim, as you do on most rivals. 

Unlike a lot of its rivals, which favour touch-sensitive buttons or settings hidden in their touchscreens, the Forester is pleasingly old school. You see, you’ll find physical buttons for pretty much everything, including shortcuts for the infotainment system and the air-conditioning. They’re far easier to use on the move than the touch-sensitive buttons in the VW Tiguan. 

Even the steering wheel is covered in physical buttons – if anything, there are too many and it takes some time before you can operate them without looking. 

The Forester comes with an 8in infotainment touchscreen as standard with built-in Android Auto and Apple CarPlay smartphone mirroring, DAB radio and Bluetooth as standard. You get a built-in sat-nav app if you go for Sport trim and up.

It’s not the most sophisticated infotainment system, with quite basic menus and dated graphics, but it responds well to your inputs. What’s more, the stereo is punchy enough to drown out most of the road noise – which is good, as there’s no sound system upgrade available. All in all, though, the system just isn’t as good as what you’ll find in the best family SUVs.

One gripe is that the USB ports for connecting your phone to the infotainment system are tucked quite far into the dash under the heater controls, making them hard to find.

Overall, the Forester's interior feels solid and there’s a good variety of materials used on the dashboard, with stitching and fake leather. While it avoids looking spartan, it has nothing on the plusher-feeling Mazda CX-5 interior or premium-badged rivals such as the Audi Q3 and BMW X3.

"I think it’s great that the Forester’s infotainment system comes with physical shortcut buttons, but everything else about the system makes it feel fairly dated." – Dan Jones, Senior Reviewer

Even if you’re well over six feet tall you won't struggle for head or leg room in the front of a Subaru Forester. Its boxy shape yields loads more head room than you get in the Ford Kuga and gives the front interior a pleasantly airy feel.

Storage space is plentiful, with enough room for a large bottle in the door cubby area, two centrally mounted cupholders, a storage tray under the centre armrest and an area below the air-con controls big enough for a smartphone.

Back-seat passengers get plenty of leg room and space for their feet, with loads of space for a 6ft adult sitting behind someone of the same height. Thanks to the width of the interior, you can quite easily fit three people in the rear, and the flat floor means the middle-seat passenger gets plenty of foot space without straddling a large transmission tunnel.

If you need to carry more people, it’s worth noting that there’s no seven-seater version of the Forester, as there is with the Peugeot 5008 and Skoda Kodiaq. 

There is, however, plenty of storage, with two sets of map pockets on the back of each front seat. The back doors can each take a large bottle and plenty of smaller items, and there's a smaller cubby higher up that doubles as a handle and is big enough to accommodate a mobile phone.

The Forester's rear doors open up to a near 90-degree angle to give you better access – handy when lifting a baby into a child car seat for example.

The rear seats don’t do anything particularly clever, simply splitting 60/40 and folding flat. The back seats of the Peugeot 5008 split 40/20/40 and can individually slide and recline.

The Forester has a 509-litre boot capacity. That's smaller than in some rival family SUVs but still managed to accommodate six carry-on suitcases in our tests. That’s more than enough space to swallow the average family's shopping or a couple of buggies, but way short of the nine cases we managed to stuff into the Skoda Kodiaq boot.

"I don't think you can’t argue with the amount of space inside the Forester. You don’t get seven seats as you do in some rivals, but five people will be very comfortable." – Dan Jones, Senior Reviewer

No version of the Subaru Forester is particularly cheap, with even the entry-level XE trim costing as much as the mid-spec Ford Kuga ST-Line and more than the entry-level Skoda Kodiaq or top-spec Mazda CX-5. Even the Kodiaq SE with seven seats will cost around the same.

Things don’t get much better when you look at depreciation, with the Forester predicted to lose its value faster than any of its family SUV rivals. That can have an effect on PCP finance rates, pushing up the price. To make sure you get the best price whichever model you choose, see our New Car Deals pages.

The Forester lags behind in terms of running costs too. It should be able to manage around 34.7mpg, which is way below the Kuga 1.5-litre Ecoboost (which will officially manage up to 44.1mpg) and the Kodiaq SE 1.5 TSI e-Tec (up to 47mpg). 

Company car users might want to look elsewhere too. With CO2 emissions of 185g/km, the Forester attracts a higher BIK tax rate than its rivals (despite its e-Boxer hybrid tech). You'll be even better off with a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) version of a rival or, for the biggest tax savings, an electric SUV.

Given the pricey nature of the Forester, it’s good that even the entry-level XE trim comes with plenty of standard kit.

In fact, XE is the one we’d go for, because it keeps the price down but comes with 17in alloy wheels, automatic LED headlights with high-beam assist, automatic windscreen wipers, heated front seats, keyless entry and start, dual-zone air-con and adaptive cruise control.

Stepping up to mid-spec Sport adds a couple of extras, including a powered tailgate, 18in wheels, rear privacy glass and a heated steering wheel.

Top-spec XE Premium comes with all the bells and whistles, with highlights including leather seats and seat-heating in the back.

The Forester did perform well enough to earn five stars out of five for safety when it was tested by the experts at Euro NCAP in 2019. It’s hard to compare the Forester directly with its rivals because most were tested more recently under stricter conditions, but we can say that it scored highly in all areas. 

Better still, every Forester comes with a good amount of standard safety kit, including lane-keeping assist, rear cross-traffic alert, automatic emergency braking (AEB), and blind-spot monitoring.

While the Forester as a model wasn’t included in the 2023 What Car? Reliability Survey, Subaru as a brand came 27th out of the 32 car makers involved. That’s not a great showing, and places it below all its rival brands. 

If anything does go wrong, the Forester comes with a three-year/60,000-mile Subaru warranty, which is pretty standard. A couple of brands are more generous, with Kia offering a seven-year warranty and Toyota up to 10 years if you regularly service your car at an approved centre. 

"I find the efficiency of the Forester’s engine disappointing, especially when you compare it to rival family SUVs. Indeed, during our time with the car, we struggled to maintain MPG figures higher than low 30s." – Dan Jones, Senior Reviewer

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