The 2020 Lexus IS350 F Sport isn't as F Sporty as it should be

I'm Yuri. I'm Jacob. We're going for a drive. 2020 Lexus IS350. F-Sport Series 3 all-wheel drive without launch control. What happened there? I missed it a little bit and then when I clicked it, it waited a bit longer to shift again. All right then. Horsepower and torque. 311 horsepower, 280 pound feet of torque from a 3.5 liter naturally aspirated V6. So I guess needless to say this isn't the fastest transmission. No, it's not the fastest transmission or engine. There's pretty much nothing new and high-tech about this at all. No, not really. And you used to actually have an IS350, right? I did. I had a 2006 four-wheel drive Sport. And why did you get rid of it? I just got bored. It was fun for when I had it, but I just wanted more. So I drove the ISF and I had to buy the ISF. And this being an F-Sport doesn't make it any faster. No, it just adds a little bit more appearance stuff and a little bit of suspension tweak as well. So the thing that I want to talk about first is probably the infotainment and interior, because the first thing that happened when I got in here, I had no Apple CarPlay and this is a 2020 vehicle. Yeah, this thing's pretty dated inside. So there is no Apple CarPlay. There is no Android Auto. We still don't have a touchscreen and we have to use this insane joystick to control everything. Yeah, just like we complained in pretty much every other Lexus review with this joystick and touch pad and mouse pad and whatever. It's just, it's a terrible infotainment. But this is the most terriblest of them all. Yeah, because it's the older one. Even the RC350 F-Sport that we drove was like so much better than this. And I think that was like a 2017. Yeah, because it's the generations of when they're updating, like this is really due for an update. And on top of that, going through the radios to set presets and everything was a nightmare. I just kept it on one station the whole time. But does it rewind? No, it doesn't do anything. And then sometimes I put it on the radio screen, within a couple seconds, it'll flip back to a previous screen. I don't know what this thing is doing. And it's a total nightmare to use. And it's pretty distracting. Yeah, well, 100% like you can't use it. The only way it's not distracting is you get so frustrated that you don't use it at all. But at least everything in here looks nice. Yeah, I mean, like material wise and everything. It's very nice. Yeah. But all the materials, there's no piano black. We've got this cool grayish texture, whatever that is instead. Yeah, it looks like a brushed metal kind of pattern. It looks really cool. Everything feels really nice. It's a premium interior, but just the infotainment just don't even look at that. And we've got an analog clock, which is cool, but there's no digital clock anywhere that I can find. That's a little odd. Can you see one anywhere? Not from my view right now, but I like the analog. Yeah, but I'm not a watch guy. So it takes like extra time to read that. I feel like there's usually one down here near like the Mark Levinson thing. Couldn't find one. Then another old thing about this Lexus is it doesn't have the newer Toyota lane keep assist and everything. Yeah. So it's just the lane bouncing assist. Yeah. And then we can't set our cruise at lower speeds. So like we don't have that good stop and go. It's pretty much just like not good at anything that every modern 2020 car is good at. Yeah, because it really needs an update like technologically. But what this has that modern cars don't even have yet is this cool gauge cluster that will move to the side when I click this button. LFA inspired. By the way, if any of our viewers have an LFA, send one our way. We would love to review one. Anyone. But lucky for us, we do have a volume knob and a tuning knob. They're both pretty responsive, but the display takes forever to show the station. Like if I change it, it'll take like five whole seconds to show me what channel I'm on. But nice features that we do have are a heated steering wheel, heated seats and cooled seats with a hard button. That's right. It's not buried in the infotainment. So in that way, it's kind of good. Lexus is pretty good about still leaving hard buttons. How about the visors? Are they good? Three, two, one. Nope, man. See, there's a lot that just like so disappointing in this car. Cup holder test. It fits a reusable cup of coffee. Absolutely fine. But it kind of gets in the way of my elbow all the time. I did notice that every time I get in and out, my elbow just smacks that. But the driving position here is very nice. My elbows can touch both armrests very nicely while touching the steering wheel. And since this is an F sport, we do get different seats. I love the interior color, first of all, and the seats are actually really comfortable. They're very well bolstered. Yeah, the seats are great. I love red interiors. I think that's the coolest thing. Yeah, you've come around to how much I like red interiors. Well, I mean, I've always liked colorful interiors. Like it's no orange like in the red. Red is the easy way out for a cool interior. Did you see all the Mansory builds from the Geneva Auto Show? Yes. We got like light baby blue Aqua Rolls Royce interiors and blue interiors on Ursus. Disgusting. I love that. No, no, that's so cool. And then how about the backseat room for you? For me at five foot eight and a half, it's absolutely fine behind myself. It's actually surprisingly good at six foot one and a half. Knee room is good. I could use a little bit more headroom, but you have to drop the back seats from the back seats. You can't drop them from the trunk, which kind of sucks. Some more good and some more bad. The gauge cluster has a really cool animations every time you switch from mode to mode. So that's good. The bad, the turn signal stock is BMW style, the old style, where if you click it up, it resets the center and it'll still keep blinking. That is pretty frustrating. The amount of times I've left this blinker going is insane. And then you guys can leave here, but BMW drivers don't use their signals joke. So yeah, people still make that joke, right? Really? I think so. I think so. And to end it off on the feature that this car has a rear sunshade. Yeah. Press that button for me. Look at that pretty fancy, but kind of unnecessary in a car like this. They could have invested that money into Apple CarPlay and Android auto. And I would have been a lot happier because there are no rear sunshades, which would have been also appreciated. It's like a, like a weird carryover thing that somebody had an idea of. I don't really know. I don't either. So I'll give it another little boot in sport plus in automatic. Decently responsive, but make some weird sounds. Yeah, totally. And it is kind of loud in here, but a good loud, like engine sound loud. Yeah. It's like induction noise and it doesn't sound too fake to me. Yeah. So changing the modes doesn't change the sound or anything, but I feel like it's kind of got a sound actor like the old GTIs or something weird like that going on. I think it's just intake induction noise. So with all that interior stuff out of the way, your turn to get behind the wheel, push it through cliche corner. I mean, understeer all the way through cliche corner, and then talk about whatever else you want. Sounds good. No launch control. I'm just going to floor it and leave it in auto. Gears are very long. It's a lot better in auto, but it makes some really weird noises. It does. There's a little bit of rattling and stuff going on. It's like a metal sound in here, but right off the line, it's good. And the engine sounds pretty good. Because it's like authentic sounding, but right off the line is where I really noticed how responsive this is because it is all wheel drive. Whereas my rear wheel drive one, I would do a little burnouts here and there, which was fun. Yeah. I was kind of disappointed in this. I'm like, why isn't it doing burnouts? And then all wheel drive. So as I mentioned before, 311 horsepower, that is not a bad number, but it's the way everything feels. Yeah. It doesn't really feel 311. Well, it feels decent, but like it's in comparison to everything that exists now. It just feels a little sluggish. It's not an aggressive 311. Yeah. So it's just a little bit more horsepower than I had in my 2006. So if you think about 2006, 2007, the iPhone came out in 2007. And this is like unchanged since then. That's what I'm saying. And now the iPhone has three cameras. That's what I'm saying. This needs an update. And by the way, if you've been watching these videos, if they've been helpful for you picking a new car, feel free to subscribe. We're on our way to a million subs. Thanks. So this is a six-speed auto. It's pretty ancient. If you leave it in drive, it shifts relatively smooth, but then if you use the paddles, it's pretty slow. Yeah. It's not the most responsive. But the paddles feel pretty good for being plastic paddles. Yeah. But I kind of don't like how they have that weird shape where they come up in the back. Yeah. I noticed that as well. You just kind of use the outside edge. You just don't use them at all. Pretty much. But if you're in the right gear, the engine's responsive because there is no turbo lag, but you can get an IS200, which is turbo and probably has a little bit of lag. But you can't get the ISF anymore because they stopped making that. Yeah. They only have the GSF now. And the ISF was the fast version of the IS200 and 350. Yeah, exactly. Which is why I got the F because I loved it. The second I drove one, I was like, yeah, I need this. So let's send this into cliche corner in sport plus mode, and I'll get into the modes in a second. First thing I noticed is that the steering is super vague. It needs so much input, but it's decent through here other than all the understeer. But you kind of have to manhandle this thing and then you just kind of get through it. Yeah. It was definitely not enjoyable through cliche corner, but you could get the job done. Exactly. I wouldn't call it fun. I wouldn't go out of my way to drive this to cliche corner if I didn't have to. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know 100% of what you mean. I'm sure it's a great car for punching it here and then, and all-wheel drive in some snow is great, but having real fun, not the car for it. Yeah. Going out for a drive, going for a drive, nah, I wouldn't do that in this all-wheel drive one. But what I would do is probably drive this to work and have a great drive to work because the suspension is so soft. It absorbs all the bumps. It's really good suspension, even though it is the F-sport suspension. But on your way to work, you'd be missing all those luxuries that all the competitors have, like lane keep and all the radar crew stuff that works so much better in every other car. That is true. It's just, if I was driving this with my feet in my hands... You'd be actually driving it. Yes, which is a good thing these days. But I mean, yeah, it's missing a lot of stuff. Yeah, but it is probably good at reliability. Probably. That kind of seems the theme of every Toyota Lexus. Yeah. Well, that is their thing. They don't update anything for like 10 years, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, they're super reliable. So now let's get into these drive modes. We've got Eco, Normal, Custom, Sport, and Sport Plus. I really don't notice that much of a difference between the modes. Nah, I kind of want to just keep it wherever the gauge looks the coolest. But if I'm cruising on the highway, give me that Eco. Yeah, I would definitely just leave this in Sport Plus just because, like you said, I like how the gauge looks. So with all this stuff out of the way, all the driving stuff, let's talk about the looks because that's probably its best feature. Yeah, I love the front end of this. Yeah, everyone was upset when they came out, but man, I liked it when it came out. And now it just, it still looks good, even though it's been refreshed a couple times. I really like the headlights. That little check mark I think looks great. Yeah, and depending on which car it is, they separated that out from the headlight depending on the generation. And then the grille, everything is real on the front and stuff on the bottom. Like it looks like it's not real, but if you like dig your fingers in there, it is real. Yeah, it's a very aggressive front end. And then if we move on to the side, we've got some cool flowing body lines that kind of like direct your eyes towards the front. I think it looks really nice. Yeah, it really links the front to the back, especially with those taillights. But we'll get to the back in a second. The wheels I think look awesome. They're super simple, but really nice. What's the Continental recommended tire for the IS350? The Continental Extreme Contact DWS06. So now let's get into those taillights. I love them. Yeah, it's not the best design, but it flows with the whole car. Yeah, and over the years as they've updated it, I think these look the best. But the taillights aren't modern LED style. Do you know what I mean? Well, they are LED. Yeah, but they're not like modern style LEDs. Like new Audis look a lot better. The way Tesla taillights look and everything, it just looks more of a future LED than this looks old LED. This is like thinner bars, and now everyone's kind of going into thicker LED bars. And how about the exhaust tips? The exhaust tips are relatively real, so I'll give them a full pass on that. How does it sound? It sounds not so good. I mean, it's not an IS app, so what can you expect? Exactly, it's still a V6. Or a GSF. Yeah, GSF is sick. And then we've got a little diffuser back there. Overall, I think this thing looks pretty good from the back. And then we've also got a decently resolutioned camera in the back, but no 360. Decently resolutioned. That's what I said. All right. And the coolest part about the looks, not this specific one, Lexus actually made a Sriracha edition 2016 Lexus IS for the auto show. Nice. It had a bunch of crazy Sriracha stuff. Like the heated seat button was a Sriracha flame logo and stuff. They had flames everywhere. They had green, red. It was actually pretty funny. Did Sriracha fit in the cup holder? They actually made a Sriracha thing, I think, in the back. I forget. Anyways, it was pretty cool. Yeah, overall, I think this probably looks better from the front than most of its competition. Yeah, for sure. It's unique. It stands out. So if you're going to buy this, I think you kind of just buy it for the looks. And reliability. Yes, presumed reliability. So now I guess it's time for the price. I remember the GSF being a lot more expensive than I thought it should be. So what is this? This one's exactly where it should be. It starts at $53,350. Canadian. And this one is optioned out to $57,200. Yeah, that's not that bad for options. That's exactly where it should be. It's in the ballpark of the 3 Series, the C-Class, the A4. How about the G70? The G70 as well, depending on how you spec it. Kia Stinger. Kia Stinger is actually a little bit cheaper. See, I feel like everything you just mentioned is better somehow besides reliability. Oh, I totally agree. So for me, I would risk the reliability and get more features. I think this is one of those cars, if you're going to lease versus buy, this is the one you buy, and then you lease all the other ones. So if you could have one of the cars from all the competition, which one would it be? I'd probably go with 330i, and I'd still think about the G70. Yeah, I think I... No, you know what? Stinger. I was thinking Stinger too, but maybe the 330i. Yeah, the 330i is really good. What about the Jaguar XE that we recently drove? I think overall feeling, I like that a whole bunch more. It just felt sportier. But if I had to own one for a long, long time, I'd probably go with this. Lease that one. So let us know where the IS350 All-Wheel Drive F-Sport falls in line with your four-door sedans. And click this playlist right here for more sedans. Which sedan is your favorite sedan? Let us know. Click that playlist. Have people been clicking these? I don't know. Abstract. 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