2025 BMW X5 (inc. 0-100 & braking) review: This SUV has one really bad feature…

We are on the bowl now to test our semi-autonomous systems. See how it goes in this top lane. Steering wheel's gone green again. Wow! That's like one of the best systems we've tested. I'm not a huge fan of the steering feel. It's like completely devoid of feel about centre and even here in sport mode. G'day I'm Paul. So we are finally driving the updated BMW X5. I genuinely thought they were hiding this from us because they just wouldn't give us one to drive and it's now here in front of us. So hopefully it's not an absolute pile, but we'll see. We'll find out shortly. This has climbed in price massively. I remember when these used to be under $100,000 for the rear-wheel drive version. Must have been a long time ago, but this is now the entry-level petrol xDrive40i. This is just under $140,000. That is too expensive. The entry-level diesel kicks off at just under $135,000. So it is a big chunk of coin, but it now comes pretty much standard with everything you need. There are still some options that you can tick, but pretty much everything is in there. Today we're going to do a detailed review of this. So if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes that are on the screen, or if you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below. Now, design. Let's talk about that first. And let's talk about the price of your optional colours. $2,000. It is an incredible amount of money and that is just for your sort of base price. If you do want anything more expensive, it jumps up to like $4,000 and then you can spend even more on individual colours as well. But anyway, design-wise, they have simply refined what the X5 was. And the X5 always had that sort of mean, tough-looking stance. And it's very much that again. They've gone with a slimmer headlight design and just kind of just made it look really nice. This is such a good-looking car. And if you compare it to something like the GLE, and I know that styling is subjective, but to me, something like a GLE just looks so pedestrian and boring. This actually has a bit of substance to it, especially with the M Sport package that this comes standard with. So big grille down the front here with these blacked-out sections. Louvers there as well for active cooling. So they open and close depending on the cooling requirements. This is a 48-volt mild hybrid system. It's quite fascinating. When it turns on the first time, it's using a 12-volt system to start the car. But once it reaches an optimum engine temperature, it's actually using the 48-volt starter generator to basically flick the engine over and it's really nice and smooth. So cool setup there, and I'll run you through a bit more detail when we do go for a drive. Full LED headlights with matrix LED functionality. Big old opening there. I suspect this is more for the M version of this car, so that it can suck in as much air as possible. Round the side here, this doesn't come standard with the 22-inch alloy wheel, but this one is optioned with the 22-inch alloy wheel. Now, that could mean that this rides horrendously, because BMWs are known with M Sport packages to ride quite horrendously if they don't have adaptive damping. This has adaptive damping, but 35 profile, 22-inch alloy wheel, there is a chance that this won't ride nicely. We'll find out shortly. M badge there for that M Sport package. Indicator and camera in the side there. There is no privacy glass, which is a little bit disappointing. I think that's another option that you got to tick. Roof rails just here, and then glass roof as well. Round to the back with me. Now, around the back, full LED taillights. Similar sort of X5 design to them. Just nice and chunky. XDrive40i there as well. I love the fact that this still has a split tailgate that I'll show you soon. Dual exhaust outlets at the rear. They are real, of course, which is good. Now, towing. Mentioned that it comes standard with a 2,700 kilo brake towing capacity, but you can actually option it with up to 3,500 kilos of brake towing capacity. But keep in mind, you are limited by down ball weight. It's 180 kilos. So you're not exactly going to have the ability to stick 350 kilos down on that tow ball. So it is worth just keeping that in mind. Okay, so we are inside the X5. Here is the key. It's got a new key. You've got lock, and then on the side you have unlock, boot, and then your light key. Nothing on the back there, but you've got the M colours on the front there. It's proximity sensing key, so you can leave that in your pocket. You've got a push button start just over here. You've got a phone app as well that you can connect to. Like, it is a pretty sort of well-featured vehicle when it comes to that sort of stuff. Love this interior too. So BMW has just gone next level in terms of giving their interiors that luxury vibe. Don't know that I love the sort of lacquered wood grain. It's got a funny vibe to it. I prefer open-pore wood, but maybe that's just me. But yeah, I do think this feels like a really nice high-end and premium interior with that sort of Alcantara finish on the roof. It just feels like a good vibe in here. Now, what about your touch points? So sort of soft in the centre there. Soft on the doors as well. How soft is it? We've got our durometer. We've tested the main surfaces in this cabin. If you do want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before, look at the link in the description below. Build quality. Let's do our shake test. That is all solid as anything. Very impressive. And this is what the door slam sounds like. Now, let's talk about this infotainment system. So it's almost a 15-inch display. It is enormous. You can operate it as a touchscreen. You can also use your iDrive controller down here that's got like a mirror on top of it. I've seen those at parties before. Then you've got a smaller display here ahead of the driver plus an enormous head-up display too. So fully featured setup and just a really sort of impressive infotainment game. So what have you got in there? So you've got inbuilt satellite navigation. And if you go back to your home menu, you've basically got the ability to change all of these shortcuts off to the side to be whatever you want. You've got a personal assistant that you can access using the voice recognition system. And then if you want more granular control, you've got the rest of your sort of individual menus through here. You can also then add your own apps as well. We'll add apps that BMW offers. You can add stuff like games, YouTube, Alexa. There's a litany of things you can add in here. So a pretty cool setup and they have definitely thought about this, which is good. Then you have a shortcut menu just over to that side as well. Now in terms of smartphone mirroring, you have both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Both are wireless. This is wireless Apple CarPlay. Very nice and fast and snappy. No dramas there at all. This is what Android Auto looks like. So nice full screen integration there as well. Yeah, all pretty sort of straightforward. Nice and quick too. So very impressive there. Screen ahead of the driver. I'll go into more detail when we go for a drive, but that is sort of pretty straightforward. Just shows you all your key functions. You can change all the settings here using the right hand side of the steering wheel. So actually, and the sound system. AM, FM, DAB, digital, 10 speaker, Harman Kardon branded sound system. You can also get an optional diamond surround sound system as well. But this sound system is actually really good. So they've done a great job with that. Now on the safety front, you've got autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, an auto dimming rear vision mirror, a blind spot monitor built into the wing mirror. You have a semi-autonomous cruise control system and a lane support system, which we will test later on. Front and rear parking sensors and a 360 camera. I will show you what that looks like. Yeah, quality is okay, so nothing too crazy. Just a little bit sort of pixelated there. But you do have some pretty cool features here. So you've got this assist view. You've got a panoramic view. You've also got a car wash view, a trailer coupling view, because this has the optional tow bar fitted to it. And you also have a reverse assistant as well. So if you do whack it into reverse after you've been driving forwards, it will map out the last 50 metres of your journey. So you can precisely navigate back to where you came from, which is a great feature. And this is what the horn sounds like. Moving on to practicality, and we'll start off with your connectivity. So behind our lacquered door there is a USB-A port and 12 volt outlet. Up there, you're going to find your wireless phone charger, a couple of cup holders and another storage nook. Centre console has a USB-C port and a little bit of storage, but nothing sort of too crazy. Got a glovey down here, barely any room in there at all. And then you've also got a little slot over here next to the driver's knee, no sunglasses holder. On the comfort front, you have dual zone automatic climate control. You've got heated seats as well. In addition to that, have a look at these seats. So this has BMW individual seats. They're very fancy and probably quite expensive, but kind of give the car a very nice look. Both the driver and front passenger are electrically adjustable, so you can go forwards and backwards. Your backrest can go forwards and backwards. You can move your whole backrest as well. You can move the bottom of the seat down here. You've got lumbar adjustment. You've got memory. And I can also move the passenger seat from here as well. It is just the ultimate level of control. Steering is electrically adjustable as well for tilt and reach. On our reach test, a lot of this stuff is hard to reach while you're driving. So thankfully, they do have the iDrive controller that lets you access stuff, but something worth keeping in. So second row of the X5. I've got my seat in my normal driving position. A bit disappointed with the legroom back here. It's sort of fairly tight there for knee room. Toe room is okay. Headroom isn't too bad. Yeah, air vents down here. You've also got a couple of storage nooks, two USB-C ports down the bottom with a 12-volt outlet. And then behind this little cubby here as well, you've got preparation for that rear entertainment with USB-C charging. Centre armrest here with a couple of cup holders and some storage there in the centre. ISOFIX points on the outboard seats with three top tether points as well. And now our window test. Does it go all the way down? So it's auto up and down. The suspense is killing me. Oh, it's very nice. Now, you're in the market for a new SUV. Well, Car Expert is here to help. All you need to do is go to Google and type in It'll take you to our website. Car Expert is a big business. It's not just me here doing videos. We even have a concierge team in Australia who is there to help you figure out which car to buy. We can even put you in touch with one of our friendly dealers as well. It is obligation-free. You can talk to someone in Australia who will guide you through the entire process. You can talk to my mate Pete or even Sophia. All you need to do is just Google and we will hook you up with the right car. Okay, cargo space as promised. Have a look at this. So you've got the top section that opens and then you have a baby change table as well that comes down and you can sit on it. This is such a good design and I do hope that when they move to the next generation of X5, they don't try and save money by getting rid of this because that would be a fatal error. So cargo space. You have 650 litres available here with a space saver under here. A little bit of hydraulics there as well to hold it all up. Very nice. First aid kit off to the side. You've got a 12-volt outlet plus some hooks as well. Show you what it looks like with our bag in there. There it is there. Stacks and stacks of space. Now you can expand the space if you want by dropping the second row. So when you drop that, you've got pretty much a flat-ish floor and a cargo space of just under 2,000 litres. So we've just hit the road in the X5. So I was worried earlier about the ride being horrendous on 22s, but it is surprisingly very good. It's nowhere near as firm as I thought it was going to be. It is firm-ish, but it's not sort of BMW firm. And what I mean by that is you jump into an X3M or an X5M and you will know what firm is. So that is a really pleasant surprise in and around the city as well. It's sort of nice and just floaty. It's not sort of too over the top. So we'll see what it's like on our body control section with the sine waves. But so far, so good. Now the reason this is one of my favourite engine combinations for a car like this is the six-cylinder the BMW has has been refined over the years. It's now efficient, which I'll run through in a sec, but it's sonorous. It is such a smooth, smooth engine. And their diesels are the same. They're really smooth as well. But this is just on another level in terms of refinement. It's mated to a fantastic torque converter as well. So it means you're not getting the fussiness of a dual-clutch transmission. So it's a three-litre turbocharged six-cylinder petrol engine, almost 300 kilowatts of power, just over 500 newton metres of torque. And it's all mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission. It also has a 48-volt mild hybrid system. Now I mentioned before that when the car kicks on when it's warm, it's using the 48-volt system. You can see the little charge status there. But when you come to a full stop and it switches back on, so the car's off now, it's completely imperceptible. You don't even notice it switching on. It is such a good, refined system that you can use it day-to-day, and it's not the first thing you go to switch off. Like in my Raptor, my sequence of getting in is exhaust open and stop-start off, because it's just an annoying system. So this is just a much better implementation of that. Now in terms of economy, BMW claims just over nine litres per 100 kilometres. Well, we're pretty much sitting on that. And now this is a car that really likes highway driving. So if you're doing a lot of highway driving, it doesn't use much fuel. Even in and around the city, if you're gentle with it, it doesn't use much fuel either. And that is such a good economy figure for a vehicle this size, you know, that has the sporty characteristics that it has. So I think from that point of view, it's quite impressive. That mild hybrid system can deliver around 10 kilowatts of extra power under throttle as well. So it does have a benefit outside of just switching the car on and off smoothly. Okay, sine wave time. So we've got it in comfort mode at the moment for the adaptive damping. I'm going to pick up the speed to 130, which is maximum speed limit in Australia, and the speed that we test every car at back-to-back in the same way. Just ignore that speed warning. So we'll see what the body control's like here on the sine waves. That is fantastic. Very nice and smooth. So you're getting comfort in terms of softness, but it's not over the top there in terms of lingering on the sine waves. Okay, let's go for a sportier drive. I'm going to put it into sport. Sport plus. There it is. For a fang around the track here. We do this in every car to see what it's like. Far out this thing is hauling ass. Love that it's all natural sounds as well. You can put fake sounds on, but this is all natural. A little bit of understeer there. This is such a good engine. So sonorous. And it has so... It has long legs. And it's just so willing to just keep accelerating. They've used this engine in so many different cars before. They've really just nailed the application. Brakes feel great. There are a big old set of stoppers on the front there with this M Sport package. I'm not a huge fan of the steering feel. It's like completely devoid of feel about centre. And even here in sport mode... It all just feels like artificial steering feel. It's not actually genuine, which I'm not a huge fan of. But this engine more than makes up for it. This is unreal. And this is the entry-level petrol. I mean, this is well and truly the best handling sort of big luxury SUV on the market in this entry-level bracket. That is simply sensational. You can feel this car has been engineered for sportiness first ahead of anything else. We've got our super bumpy road here that we do at 90 k's an hour. Basically just gives us an idea of what the ride is like on a super choppy road. Even this is fantastic. The adaptive damping tune here is great. In that sport mode, it was firmer, but wasn't anything over the top. There's our condensed sine wave. Excellent over that as well. Really impressive tune. I think from a handling point of view, it's great. But just this steering here. I mean, there's just no feel about centre. It is so just loose. Not loose, but just has no feel. So I think that is something they definitely need to work on. And not something that I thought I'd ever be saying about a BMW. Now in terms of road noise, I did notice a bit of road noise. And look, you've got tyres on the rear. They're over 300 mm in size. So you are going to have a fair bit of road noise creeping into the cabin, especially on coarse chip surfaces. So that is just something to keep in mind. This is how it went up against our calibrated sound meter. And if you do want to compare this to other cars that we've tested, there is a link in the description below. Now on the visibility front, I can see clearly down the front there. It's great to have such a big head-up display. The wing mirrors are good. They could be a little bit bigger, but it's sort of that sporty look that they've gone for. And visibility out the back is fine. There's not many dramas there. You've got a blind spot monitor there and then the 360 camera as well if you need it. Now in terms of low-speed stuff, turning circle of almost 13 meters. So it is sort of fairly sizey in that regard. Okay, so we are on the bowl now to test our semi-autonomous lane systems. So what we'll do is set the cruise control at 70 k's an hour. And then we use our three outer lanes here to see how well the vehicle holds itself in the lane. With me just lightly holding the wheel. You're meant to just hold on to the wheel the whole time, but just for the sake of testing this, we'll see how it goes. So in this first lane here, it's great. As we move over to the outer lanes, it should stress the system a little bit more and really test how much it is willing to hold on to things. So this is the second lane here. Look at that. Pretty much dead accurate there. It's quite a good system because it doesn't feel like it's constantly nagging. It just sort of gradually applies and just does the job. It's actually a really good implementation of it. It's not super rigid. So let's see how it goes in this top lane. Steering wheel's gone green again. Wow, have a look at that. It is just doing everything on its own there. That is, that is seriously good. It's like one of the best systems we've tested. That is remarkably good. Very, very impressive, BMW. Okie dokie, time to do some performance testing. Let's see what this thing is made of. I'm going to use launch control. It should be good fun. So it's just basically loading up the brake with the throttle and then it will come up saying launch control is active. We're going to go all the way through to 120 so that we can see what our 80 to 120 overtaking time is like as well. So just keep an eye out for launch control active there and then I will release the hammer and then away we go. So there it is there. Oh, nice. Fire out. There's 100, 120. I honestly can't get over the fact that this is the entry-level petrol and it is like an absolute rocket ship. So okie dokie, let's have a look at that. So 0 to 100, 5.08 seconds, which is pretty unreal. And then 80 to 120, 3.29 seconds. So that is a really strong mid-range there. So that has been tuned for nice overtaking. So let's go back, we'll do a brake test. Okie dokie, from 100 k's an hour just to see what the brake and tyre package is like. Brakes were good out there before. Let's see what they're like here. It's held me in nice and tight. Okie dokie. So 100 to zero. Yeah, nice. 2.63 seconds, 36.35 metres. For a vehicle this size, that is a very impressive stopping figure. Very nice. If you do want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before, there is a link in the description below with a whole stack of stats for you. Let's see how quick it goes in reverse. So it's 39 kilometres an hour. Okay, so the BMW X5. Why am I in the car and not outside like I normally am? Well, the trees are bending over so much that they're going to go flying and that tells you there is a lot of wind. So I'm going to just chat to you from inside here. Look, X5, I don't know why they hid this car from us and didn't let us drive it. But I have now driven it and I absolutely love it. This engine is sensational. It is just such a good pair for this car. While you're not going to be able to do a huge amount of towing, yes, you can do three and a half tonne of it. It's a bit impractical with downpour weights and the type of vehicle that it is. It is a great family vehicle. It's got heaps of room inside. The tech is really, really good and you're just getting that amazing sort of ride and handling package. Where it is let down, though, is steering. It is just so light and I really don't understand how that happened. When did BMW go from having amazing steering to that? So hopefully that is something they can fix as part of a software update. Maybe it's just this car. I don't know. And the other thing as well, be careful with your wheel and tyre selection. These are going to be very, very expensive tyres to replace if you go for the 22s and the wider tyres. So just keep that in mind. Now, if you did enjoy this video, please make sure you like it. You share it with your mates. Let me know, are you buying one of these? Have you bought one? What has it been like? I'm keen to get behind the wheel of the V8 to see how that goes around here. Until next time, though. Take it easy.