The New 2025 Audi SQ5 Is the King of the Small, Sporty Luxury SUV

This is the new 2025 Audi SQ5, and it's Audi's most important vehicle, the SQ5 and the Q5 in general. The Q5 has been Audi's bestseller for years now, but there hasn't been a brand new model, a full redesign, in almost a decade. Well, that's changed. This one is all new for 25, and today I'm going to review it and show you all of its quirks and features. Before we get started, are you ready for your next cool car? Sell your enthusiast car on Cars and Bids. Trading in your car to dealers means you aren't getting market value for your car, leaving you with less cash for your next fun car. Just look at our recent sales of these cool cars compared to current trade-in value. This is a trade-in offer, and this was the Cars and Bids result. This is a trade-in offer, and this was the Cars and Bids result. This is the trade-in offer, and this was the Cars and Bids result. Get started now on Carsandbids.com. Sell on Cars and Bids and join the best community to sell your enthusiast car. All right, time for the quirks and features of the new Audi SQ5, starting with probably its most unusual quirk, the mother of all lighting startup sequences. Okay, so you walk up to a lot of modern cars, you press the unlock button on the key fob, and the lights do some weird dance to greet you. Well, this car takes things a bit further. So, you walk up, you press the button, you can see the taillights do a little dance. They kind of show you what they're all about, they illuminate, they turn on, they slide, they do cool stuff. But then, unexpectedly, a light turns on within the rear glass that says Quattro in the center, and it's flanked by two horizontal red lights. That, I bet you weren't expecting the car to advertise Quattro as you're walking up to it to get inside. Amazingly, this isn't actually a light, but instead it's a projection from above. The light comes out of the area with the third brake light and projects onto the glass below, and that's where Quattro appears projected onto the rear glass. There's no actual lighting element there. That's pretty crazy. And amazingly, it gets even crazier, because this Quattro lighting on the rear glass actually comes on during braking. So, when you brake, when you're driving along and you press the brake, obviously the brake lights go on, and so does that extra Quattro projection onto your rear window. So, every time you're braking in your new Audi SQ5, you are also advertising via projection to the cars behind you that you have Quattro, which is definitely unusual. Now, that's strange, but lighting in general is a bit of a story with this car. There are some very interesting lighting-related quirks. For example, when you walk up to the car with the doors locked, a little arrow projects itself onto the ground below the rear bumper. That lets you know where you can swipe your foot in order to pop open the tailgate. So, if your hands are full, you swipe your foot under the tailgate with the key in your pocket, it opens up. That arrow tells you exactly where to do it. And there are other lighting quirks as well. Up front, the headlights do a little dance when you walk up to the car, just like the tailgates do, although there's no projection up front that advertises Quattro. You also have the taillights, just in their regular configuration, have kind of a weird one. You can see all these little triangles in various stages of brightness. Certainly provides a distinctive and unusual look to anyone in back of this car, even if you're not braking and advertising Quattro through your rear window projection. But, maybe the most unusual lighting element of all, even more than the projection, is inside the car, where you have this little LED light strip running the entire width of the dashboard, from the left to the right side of the car. That's not all that strange, but how about this? When you pull on the turn signal, it lights up, blinking like a turn signal corresponding to the side of the car that you've turned on this signal. So, you make a left turn or a right turn, that lights up and blinks on either side of the car, which is a crazy thing. Not just a little blinker inside your gauge cluster, but now it's blinking on the dashboard for all passengers to see, and, I guess, to give you a bigger, more obvious reminder that your turn signal is on. Some very interesting lighting quirks. But, before I move on to the rest of the surprisingly large amount of quirks and features of this car, let's talk background, and specifically what makes this car so hugely important for Audi. So, the Q5 came out way back in 2009, and it quickly became Audi's best-selling vehicle. In fact, it's one of the best-selling small luxury SUVs overall. The Q5 even outsells the BMW X3, which is probably its closest rival, even though BMW as a brand vastly outsells Audi. So, BMW overall sells way more cars, but in this segment, the Q5 really is king. It beats out basically every other vehicle. Now, the last time Audi gave us an all-new, fully-redesigned Q5 was 2018-ish, so it's been a long time, especially considering that rival models like the X3 and the Mercedes-Benz GLC, the Lexus NX, those cars have all been redesigned relatively recently, while the Q5 had gotten pretty old. Well, that's changed. We now have a brand-new, fully-redesigned Q5. That's this car. Now, as for the different models, the base-level regular new Q5 starts around $51,000, and it comes with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Or you can step up to this, the sporty S Q5, which starts around $63,000, with the top model starting around $70,000. Now, the S Q5 uses a turbo V6 that has about 360 horsepower, pretty healthy number, and it's up about 15 horsepower compared to last year's outgoing S Q5 model, so you get a little extra power here. Now, the S Q5 comes with standard all-wheel drive, and zero to 60 is in the mid four-second range, so this is a legitimately quick little SUV. And under the hood, you can see the plastic engine cover has the usual six indentations to remind you that this is a V6, and it even has red stripes, so you know it means business. Now, the Q5 and the S Q5, they're also offered in a sportback body style that has sort of a slanting, sloping rear roofline design, and that accounts for a relatively small percentage of sales compared to this, which is sort of the normal S Q5 model. Now, anyway, next up, on to the quirks and features, and let's start with styling. The overall look of this new Q5 is pretty similar to the overall look of the outgoing Q5, and that was pretty similar to the look of the original Q5 from back in 09. The Q5 has always had a pretty similar general profile and design, and frankly, it's always looked good. I think it's an attractive, nice-looking car, and I and so they basically never do. Now, the S Q5, this version, has some especially sporty touches, like, for instance, you can see the quad exhaust in back, which adds a real performance flair to this car. Unfortunately, also in back, you can see Audi's new S brand logo, which has sort of this red slash followed by the model name. It used to be that the model name was kind of integrated into the red slash. It looked cooler. It looked sportier. Now it looks like this. I don't love it, but it's also a pretty minor quibble, the new S branding. Worth pointing out, however, the wheels of this S Q5, they are RS branded, not just S, but you have a slash and then RS. What makes the wheels RS? Well, I have no idea, really. Now, the other interesting quirk on the outside of this car, the front grille, a big, wide front grille, which is an Audi signature going back years now. The strange part is most of this grille isn't functional. You can see the bottom, like, two-thirds is completely closed off. It's just there for style. The car doesn't actually need that much airflow, but you have the big grille, so people know it's an Audi. But anyway, next, we move inside the new S Q5, where we discover the real magic of this car, and the thing that is most visibly and obviously changed compared to the outgoing model. The new interior is really nice. The materials are great basically everywhere you look. You have high quality, nice stuff that looks good, it feels good to touch, a very nice solid interior in this car, and it's full of big screens and very up-to-date modern tech. In fact, the central infotainment screen is really impressive. Not only is it huge, as you can see, but it's tremendously responsive, very intuitive, easy to tap, touch, do exactly what you want, configurable. I really love the usage of this central infotainment screen and exactly how easy it is to figure out, to use, and how responsive it is. Now, one drawback of this central screen is that it integrates all of your climate control functions. Previous models, you had some climate controls in the center as separate buttons. That is no longer the case. All of your climate controls are now on the screen, and I don't think the integration is particularly well done. For example, if you want to manually change the fan speed of the climate control, you actually have to go into a menu to do that. You can't just change it at the base of the screen. Other stuff you can change here, like turning on heated seats or the climate temperature, but that's still integrated into the screen. Not ideal, but aside from that, this central screen is a really fantastic piece of technology, very easy to use, very intuitive, and it includes a video game. You can see this beach buggy racing game. You can tap here, select it, and then you can get it going and actually drive while you drive. Except, of course, it's disabled while you're actually driving. But when you're parked, you can sit here and play this beach buggy racing game. Unfortunately, it doesn't use the actual vehicle controls, the steering wheel and the pedals, like this game does in Tesla models. You instead have to use the touchscreen and just sort of tap to steer and brake and accelerate, but it still is a pretty interesting integration, and it gives you something to do if you're waiting for your kids at soccer practice, waiting for somebody to get out of work, whatever, you have this game here to play. More importantly, this screen, of course, integrates with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, like basically all of them do now. Now, speaking of screens, another rather interesting one in here, over on the passenger side, the passenger gets their own dedicated screen. This is kind of unusual. It's becoming a trend in the car industry, giving the passenger their own screen, even though there's not really that much extra for the passenger to do that they can't just reach to the center and do, and that's certainly the case here. The passenger screen is definitely a bit repetitive. It has basically all the same functions as the center screen, but it could still be nice to have in case you have Apple CarPlay running on that center screen. The passenger could have something else displayed over here. I especially like this 3D satellite image navigation map, which is pretty cool to see, but the passenger can also adjust the radio, navigation directions, vehicle settings, etc., and leave the center screen untouched, which I guess could be a nice benefit. Now, not all of the technology in this car do I consider to be an improvement, and probably the best example of that is the gauge cluster screen, which I feel has lost some of the configurability that it had before. It used to be so easy to adjust it to show exactly what you wanted to see, including a full-screen map and various things, two at once, whatever you wanted to check out. Well, now they've changed it, and it isn't as configurable as before. For one thing, your full-screen options are limited. In fact, you don't really have any ability to show any other thing as full-screen gauge cluster except what's in the default. You can adjust what's on the left and right screens, but strangely, they're pretty limited in their adjustment. The left screen has certain choices, and the right screen has certain other choices, and if you want two things from the right screen at once, well, you can't get it. Navigation and radio, for example, are both on the right screen. You gotta pick between one of the two. Definitely a bit of a drawback compared to the old gauge cluster setup. The benefit, though, is the heads-up display, which is really fantastic. Honestly, this is like having another screen inside the car. It is a big, high-resolution, full-color display, and it allows you to choose between all sorts of stuff. It has navigation directions projected on there. It shows basically anything you might want to see as sort of an extra separate screen in addition to the gauge cluster, which obviously is beneficial since I feel like that screen has gone down a little bit in its capabilities. But moving on from the screens in this car, still more to talk about, and next, I want to discuss some unusual controls. And specifically, on the driver's door panel, you have this whole control panel area with various buttons. And you have controls here for the power mirrors, as you can see. You also have seating controls here, seat memory. This is where your headlight controls are, interestingly. And it's also where your lock controls are, child locks and the overall power locks. This is all fine. It's nice to have the screen within easy reach and sort of facing directly at you. But the drawback is it's so thick and large on this panel that it actually makes it kind of difficult to close the door. You can't easily just sort of get your hand around to pull the door pull and close it because this giant button panel is here. Sort of an odd decision. Now, also unusual in terms of controls is the gear selector in this car, which you can see here in the center is just kind of a switch. You want to go into reverse, you push it up to select R. You want drive, you push it down to select D. And neutral is in the middle. Definitely an odd gear selector control situation, but that's what they've done. And making it small like this frees up space in the center console. You have extra storage in here, cup holders, et cetera, and your gear selector. Now on the subject of controls, one other that I like the steering wheel controls, you can see two little kind of electronic button pads on the left and right. And I really enjoy how they work. You can tap on them and use them like buttons, like to turn up the volume or change to the next track, or you can slide. And if you slide your finger up for volume, then that turns it up even more than just a simple tap. It's nice to have that optionality. And as far as function, they work pretty well. They're responsive and they do exactly what you ask of them. And next up, we move on to the backseat of the new SQ5, which in terms of size is normal, not particularly huge, but exactly what you'd expect in this sort of compact luxury SUV world. Good headroom, good legroom, decent, big enough for adults to sit, but not like tremendously comfortable. I will say the middle seat is so compromised. To me, it's hardly worth even having one because of this giant hump that comes up in the floor for the drivetrain. And also because of the rear of the front center console and the controls back here, it's just not possible to have anywhere for the middle passenger to put their legs. So don't buy this thinking you're going to get three wide in the backseat fairly often because you're not. Now, some nice touches back here. For one, again, the materials are good. They're carried into the backseat. You still have the same diamond stitching on the leather, contrast stitching. It looks good. Alcantara on the door panels. It's a nice backseat environment and they haven't really cheaped out back here compared to the front. You also have some nice features back here, specifically two USB-C charge ports, as you can see. There's also climate vents back here to add to the comfort of rear passengers and rear heated seats, which is nice. You also have rear sunshades built into the doors, which is good if you're carrying infants in back. And one last rather odd touch, a quirk, if you will, is this control in the center console back here. You can adjust the rear seat climate control temperature. Now, you cannot change the fan speed and you cannot change where the air comes out. You just change the temperature and hope for the best. At least they give you some bit of control in that. And finally, we move on to the cargo area in the SQ5. Open up the power tailgate and you get back here and discover it's a shockingly large cargo area considering the compact SUV nature of this vehicle. You do have a lot of space back here for stuff, which is nice. And there's even more space under the floor. You lift up this handle, open the floor, and you can see extra space underneath where you can put even more stuff, which is pretty cool. And if you want even more space, good news, you have latches back here. You can pull and then the rear seats drop forward. These aren't power operated, so you can't raise the rear seats from the cargo area once again, but you can drop them down. So you have extra cargo space in back, which is nice. To me, the only big drawback back here, and the car in general, is that you don't have a traditional household style power outlet like you do in so many other cars. Back here, you do have a cigarette lighter style 12 volt outlet, which is useful, but certainly not as useful as having a real regular household outlet. Disappointing you don't have it anywhere inside the interior of the new Q5. You get USB-Cs, which is nice, but a household outlet would add to the convenience. But next up, I'm curious how this car drives. The new Audi SQ5, very important car for Audi. Let's get it out on the road and find out. All right, driving the new Audi SQ5. Like I said, tremendously important car for Audi, the regular Q5 and the SQ5, which honestly accounts for a pretty decent portion of sales based on just how many of these I see around. So from a driving perspective, you got a lot of the same stuff that you like about the old Q5. You have a great seating position in here, a nice commanding seating position. Despite the fact that this is a smaller crossover, you do sit up reasonably high and you have a good view out over the road. You have good visibility in here. From a noise perspective, you do hear some outside noise, which is to be expected at this price point in this type of vehicle. This is not a $90,000, $100,000 ultra luxury vehicle. It is $75,000 though, but this is what you expect. You get some road noise, you get some tire noise. It's not perfectly insulated in here, but it certainly is good enough. And it's basically to be expected for most people in terms of sound deadening and quietness inside the car. One thing I'm surprised about with the SQ5 is actually just how sharp the steering and the handling is. Even though this is ostensibly a performance SUV, it's not really purchased by people who are looking for a performance experience other than being able to romp on the throttle occasionally on an on-ramp. Nonetheless, they actually do make this a pretty sharp feeling vehicle when you're steering and going around corners, which surprises me. It's more adept than I thought it would be. For those bemoaning the loss of a hot hatchback, I've always said this kind of segment of vehicle, this compact crossover, delivers a pretty similar experience. And I think this is a good example of exactly that. This feels like a pretty spry vehicle, pretty spry crossover type vehicle. And it does offer decent handling and does make you feel like you really can throw it around and have a surprisingly good amount of confidence in that. Both the steering feel, which is communicative and tight, and also just the handling. This doesn't body roll as much as you might expect. It stays relatively planted. It's not a Golf R, but it's not as far from a Golf R as you might think it would be, given that it's based on the Audi Q5, which is sort of a pretty pedestrian crossover that you see everywhere. They actually do a pretty good job of performance-izing this, despite its sort of humble roots, and despite the fact that most people interested in buying these probably aren't really going to be taking advantage of that stuff. One demerit about this car, one thing I don't like, and I've never really loved about the Q5 in general, is I really don't like the responsiveness of the powertrain right when you press on the throttle, right at the throttle tip-in, I guess you could say. It's just not quick enough to respond. It's like there's some dead zone right when you push on the throttle. And I'm not sure if it's engine-related or transmission-related, but regardless, it's there and it feels like there's some sort of dead zone when you push on the throttle where nothing really happens like you want it to. This is a very potent engine, this 360-horse turbo V6, that's a lot of power. And BMW does a good job of making sure that you feel that power at basically all RPMs. This car has always felt a little bit sluggish right at the start. You almost feel like you're an over-boosted turbo four-cylinder rather than a V6, which really should provide a wider band of torque and more power in that range. The funny thing is that when you actually get going and you're trying to make a pass, you're trying to floor it and get around somebody, the engine is very responsive. You do have a great power, a great power feel in the mid-range of this car. The interior here is great. I think that's one of the big new benefits of the new Q5. It really is a nice interior. The tech is really fantastic, all these screens, but also it's just a higher-quality interior, I think, than it has been. There was a time when I was younger when Audi was sort of the leader in car interior technology, and I don't think that we're really in that situation. I think they kind of got out of that situation, but I think that this is sort of a triumphant return. It feels nice in here. It feels certainly on par with Mercedes-Benz and BMW. A very high-quality place to spend time in this car. So I think there's really a lot of good stuff with this car. This car has always been a hit for Audi, and I have absolutely no doubt this new generation continues on that. It's just sort of the same vehicle that was successful before, kind of modernized, sculpted, improved a little bit in a lot of ways to make it continually successful now to carry it through for the next few years until the next big redesign years from now. So another big Q5 success, I would say. You're going to see these absolutely everywhere. They are tremendously popular, and this one delivers another good reason why these cars are so beloved by so many people. And so that's the new 2025 Audi SQ5. The Q5 is finally redesigned, and there's a lot to love here with great new tech and other big upgrades. The Q5 has always been a big hit in the small luxury SUV world, and I have no doubt that this latest model will carry on the success. Anyway, now it's time to give the new SQ5 a Doug's score. And the Doug's score is here, 60 out of 100, which puts the SQ5 here against rivals. This is an impressive sporty SUV, and it offers a lot of performance, technology, and quality for decent pricing. I think the BMW X3 M50 and the Porsche Macan are more exciting, but they're also more expensive. And the SQ5's combination of good performance and good everything else is probably the best for the money in its class, which is exactly why the old one was so popular, and this new one is an excellent follow-up that will surely enjoy the same success.