2026 GMC Yukon Denali Ultimate -- Did 7 Days PROVE This is the V-8 Luxury SUV to Buy??

What's going on YouTube? So just last year the GMC Yukon was heavily updated with new styling and new technology for this large SUV. And now we finally had the chance to live with this luxurious SUV for the week. So after seven days are we still impressed? Well let's go ahead and find out. Like always we'll get things started here with a quick spec dump. So under the hood of this Yukon we've got the 6.2 liter v8 producing 420 horsepower. It's paired to a 10-speed automatic transmission and with the four-wheel drive system the combined fuel economy is 17 miles per gallon. Now the base price of the Yukon this year is $70,000 and if you're looking to buy one or any vehicle we would encourage you to go to carconvections.com slash newcarquotes to get the best price. Now of course this is a real world seven-day review so we have things to share such as our experienced fuel economy, our official Kentucky sound level reading, and of course we'll take it out for a spin. But let's go ahead and close up the hood because a big part of why you want to buy the Denali Ultimate is the exterior and the super luxurious interior. Now like we mentioned at the beginning this Yukon was just recently extensively refreshed and one of the big elements was kind of revising the grille and overall front end design to have the latest and greatest GMC design language. Now what we have been testing this week is the Denali Ultimate so that's the highest end version of the Yukon and that's going to give you a really fancy looking design which was by the way very well received by everyone we showed this to we really like it as well. Also the Sequoia owners in particular thought this is very handsome. You've got that vader chrome finish across the front here kind of smoked off looks very premium and then also very premium is the headlight arrangement so we've got this stacked crystal led design we also have the bracket shaped daytime running light and turn signal indicator with the animation effect that also plays when you get into and out of the vehicle and you also have led fog lights down below. And moving to the back it continues with a very luxurious design. Absolutely and it's definitely very bold we have a spoiler up here at the top our wipers integrated underneath to prevent it weathering. Denali is very prominent across the back it actually replaces the GMC logo and then let's take a look at our taillights. So our taillights are of course going to be very premium these are standard on all models and they are fully led with your brake light your turn signal and your reverse light. They also have a dynamic ability and then down here at the bottom I love the fact that we have quad exhaust outlets and this pumps out a very nice sound I will tell you we'll talk about that in the test drive. As far as the toque rating it comes in at 8400 pounds for the standard wheelbase. But perhaps the thing that stands out the most about this Denali Ultimate are these absolutely massive 24 inch alloys they have a very bold multi-spoke design with kind of a mostly gloss black and little accents throughout these really stand out and again everybody who saw these commented on them this vehicle begins at 20s and you can go all the way up to the 24s you see there. Now as far as the mirrors are concerned fully loaded with all the features as you'd expect including auto dimming on the driver's side and power folding. Now at the side you're going to see that this Yukon is a massive vehicle it's 210 inches in overall length in the standard wheelbase that you see here today you can also get the XL that's 225 inches in length if you need maximum cargo and maximum passenger space. Now as far as design touches we have chrome on our window surrounds chrome roof rails up there at the top and let's talk safety systems so when it comes to that all of your active safety features are standard on the Yukon that will include things like adaptive cruise control and furthermore if you get the Ultimates that's going to have standard super cruise and we found that to work really quite well it's free for three years if you get the Ultimate trim and really I think it's a great feature to have on a road trip vehicle like this. But there's a super luxurious cabin that we need to talk about but first if you're new here we're brothers and we've been reviewing cars since we were 12 and 16. We started young and since then we have reviewed over 2,000 vehicles at every price point. No matter what you're looking for from humble to high-end we'd love for you to subscribe to be a part of our Car Confections family. Let's learn a lot and have some fun with all the latest cars. All right now to the inside first here's our key fob it's just your typical GMC key fob of course you have a smart entry system and remote start as well. Getting inside there's no sensor behind the door handle just a button there to push and unlock the door and when you open it up of course you'll see the power deploying running boards pop out those are standard on this Denali Ultimate. Now let's take a look inside this interior obviously a very rich looking place and that really begins with the seats. So the Denali Ultimate comes with a special wide grain leather and it's in a special color it's called woodland mahogany a very high quality leather very rich in appearance you have the beautiful cross stitching details and color contrast piping as well as the ultimate badging and overall these seats are quite comfortable as well. Now the seats don't have a ton of adjustments they're 12 ways of power with your four-way lumbar support you do have some additional functions and one of the most important additional functions is the fact that the ultimate gives you massaging abilities. Let's go ahead and climb inside and now that I'm fully inside the interior we can look at the rest of the materials starting with the door trim you'll see the same leather with the cross stitch detail across the armrest that will go through here and then at the top of the door trim you'll see the nice touch of the two-tone finish I really like that. Real wood trim of course through there as we move to the upper dashboard we have a full leatherette covering with stitching details more of the beautiful open pour wood with the Denali ultimate carvings throughout and a soft touch through there and then down through here you'll find more leather and wood the only thing I think is a little bit of a misstep with this interior is just the fact that this center area is covered with a piano black it's already scratched up here on this press car and it only has 3,000 miles and interestingly enough the much cheaper Acadia Denali ultimate covers the center area with wood so I definitely would like to see them add that to this Yukon Denali ultimate as well nevertheless let's fire it up with the metal push button start let's jump right into the cabin's individual details we'll start with the gauge cluster this is the 11-inch digital gauge cluster this is part of the update it is standard across the entire lineup you can change between several different designs we also have the optional night vision on today's tester it's a pricey option but as you can see that has uh well the usefulness at nighttime not really during the day but up there at the top you also find a 15-inch head up display as we pull back to the steering wheel we've got the latest GMC Denali badge steering wheel it is thick rim nice easy to use buttons power tilt and telescoping and of course it is heated as well on most of the trim levels but of course you buy a SUV this big because you need lots of storage and that begins up here at the front with our center console so open up the console and we'll see inside we've got a lot of donuts we actually have 17 donuts to be exact the reason it doesn't have the full two dozen is because this is also the power adjusting console as well so there's a little bit more storage behind there with a little bit of a drawer that you can pull out and hide your individual items but regardless this is still absolutely massive as I fold that up and we look in front we've got our two cup holders and we also have of course a wireless phone charging pad with a couple USB connections there's a little bit of storage along the side here but it's not a full pass-through now the shifter is up here on the column just pull down for drive you've got paddle shifters to shift manually and when we head into reverse here's our 360 degree camera system this is included actually on every single yukon for 2026 you've got several different views that you can choose between uh no 3d spin though I am noticing and the actual display itself is rather small considering the overall size of the screen just press that p there for park now of course really a big element of the inside is this very big display so it's 16.8 inches to be exact so very large although the cabin itself is so big it kind of seems like the right size now it's nicely integrated into the dashboard and included within the screen will be your climate controls so you have a three zone automatic climate system you can adjust the temperature easily with these physical toggles down below some of the functions though will be inside of the screen exclusively including the heated seats as well as the ventilated seats of course all the models will come with heated seats and then ventilated seats will begin I believe it's your at4 trim level also embedded inside of the screen here is the volume knob now one of the special things that you get when you choose the Denali ultimate is the ultimate sound experience it's a bose 18 speaker performance series sound system let's give that a sample right now so overall this is a very strong sounding sound system however both Mason and I thought that for the price tag it still could be a little bit better it tends to have the bass kind of overwhelm the rest of the audio profile so if it was a little bit more balanced that would certainly improve it of course as Mason showed you you even have speakers in places like the headrest here to improve that audio quality experience all right now zeroing in with the main infotainment system this of course runs General Motors newest system it is an android-based system that means it has things like google maps built natively into it or you can of course use wireless android auto or apple carplay as well overall this week we did not have any performance issues with this system it's very snappy you have plenty of features including once again google maps which is kind of a go-to when we're inside of the vehicle and I did also forget to mention earlier you've got a little bit more storage up here underneath of this hidden piece of leather wrapping up this cabin we have an auto dimming mirror during our test it's been a little blurry I'm not sure why the digital camera system has been a bit blurry but you do get that with the Denali ultimate and then I'll slide back the sunshade oops so this is the button to slide back the center console I'll show you what that looks like since I already pushed it and then the button in front of that actually will slide back the sunshade for the standard panoramic sunroof here on the Denali ultimate as you can see it's a pretty large piece of glass and the front panel does open up just be aware that on the Yukon you don't get a suede headliner even though on the less expensive Acadia Denali ultimate you get the suede headliner but now we've got to talk about the rear seats of this Denali ultimate Yukon now when it comes to this there's a lot of luxury so let's go ahead and dive in first I want to talk about the space though so what we're looking at is 42 inches of legroom 37 and a half inches of headroom those are both definitely very good figures it's one of the largest full-size SUVs that you can get and as you can see this seat is adjusted to Drew who's five foot eight I'm five foot nine and I brought along the official car confections ruler the reason I do that is so I can get a realistic knee room figure and I am sitting at about nine and a half inches of knee space that's very good also my feet can easily slide up underneath of the seats speaking of the seats they do slide forward and back a pretty good distance they also have the ability to recline a good distance and if you look at this and say yeah that's not good enough of a seat you can't actually get the executive package here on the Denali ultimate that was a change they made for the refresh and that will actually give you fully power adjusting second row seats with massage and seat ventilation so we just have the standard arrangement which is a manual setup but you can get a lot more bougie touches if you'd rather have that we also have the captain's chairs as you can see with a nice Denali engraving and as far as overall seating capacity that does mean that we're sitting at seven passenger however certain models can seat eight now let's talk about features we have two cup holders up here at the top we also have a new screen that's going to be located down here at the bottom that's going to allow you to do things for your climate controls as well as turn on your heated back seats ventilation is available it's not on this one though we have two usb-c ports two hdmi ports and we even have a household style outlet and while this screen you know looks kind of cool it doesn't really do much of anything so i do want to kind of point that out it's eight inches and it just controls your climate now one of the screens that does do something are your rear seat entertainment screens those are standard on the ultimate models and they have android-based software so they're very advanced and you can do things like cast onto them and they have built-in things like youtube as well so you can watch car confections and then we have vents coming out of the ceiling take a look at the door trim leather from really top to bottom you have that beautiful open pour wood and there's also a ton of storage as well all right so let's go ahead and check out the third row so in order to get back there all you have to do is press this lever once and then press it again and then that will release the seat up and out of the way now this is pretty convenient it makes for a nice walkthrough however i will say that it's inconvenient if you have a car seat installed i actually have a six week old at home and you definitely cannot fold it like this that's for sure i'd prefer a tilting mechanism also it'd be nice to have rear window sunshades especially for this price now let's go ahead and hop back here into the third row wow this is a fantastic third row what we're sitting at is about 35 inches of leg room and the headroom is also quite impressive as well so really a great third row this is one of the best ones that you can get out there on the market there are three seats back here and they have that same beautiful leather detail now as far as features you have a cup holder over here you have a little pad for your arm to rest on and you also have a usb port on both sides in addition to a vent now i will say it is lacking a little bit in terms of features for the price once more i wish you had power ability or heated third row available but overall this is still fit for a king just because of how comfortable it is look at the thigh support back here walking up to the tailgate you do have the ability to pop the glass uh independent which i definitely appreciate and i know a lot of you guys appreciate additionally you have a hands-free power tailgate as expected and let's talk about overall cargo capacity that's really of course one of the reasons you buy a big vehicle like this is for that 25 cubic feet of space behind the third row 72 cubic feet if you fold it down by the way of course you do have a power folding third row and then if you fold all the seats down that's going to give you around 120 cubic feet of space now of course you can expand that up to 144 cubic feet of space if you choose the xl so the xl is going to really maximize your room behind the third row and give you that maximum figure now there are a lot of competitive vehicles that you could be cross shopping this with so we'd encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash vehicle rankings we've looked at all the full size suvs things like the expedition the tahoe the escalade all of those vehicles and we've them in individual categories that might matter more to you things like cargo capacity interior luxury technology powertrain choices and value and you can see the best options in each of those categories so you can really make an informed buying decision so definitely check that out at carconfections.com slash vehicle rankings now let's get our cargo length width and height figures as far as cargo length we're sitting at 89 inches behind drew's 5.8 seating position and this is a standard wheelbase keep that in mind from behind the second row with it all the way back 52 inches of length from behind the third row 19 inches the width is still coming in at 50 inches wide which is very good and the height 33 inches tall now we do have an air suspension so keep in mind you can lower this a little bit more but as far as the load-in height that's pretty tall at 35 inches underneath of the floor there's a tiny bit of underfloor storage not much though there's also a household outlet and then your spare tire is integrated underneath of the bumper well guys here we are behind the wheel of the gmc yukon denali ultimate in this test drive we can't wait to discuss things like our real world fuel economy as well as good things like our sound level reading we'll also be discussing everything that you can see on the screen right now but first we need to start with a hard acceleration there's 60 miles an hour there you go of course the 6.2 liter v8 will put a smile on your face in terms of the sound that's for sure so good so of course this is a classic gm engine uh 6.2 liter v8 naturally aspirated 420 horsepower 460 pound feet of torque uh pretty good power as well there are of course you know rivals that are offering more power at this point but what they're really lacking compared to this is a lot of the character i think this is the the soundtrack that people really seem to enjoy in a full-size suv yeah it's not just people it's definitely uh me as well so you know driving this around this week i have to say it just really adds to the overall experience of driving a big luxurious you know tank like this you feel like you're the king of the road and that noise just really amplifies that experience that you're on top of the world you know it's not that i mind the twin turbo v6 is in the competition but this certainly is a classic experience that i really have appreciated now they also are offering two other engine choices if you'd rather get one of those you can see those on the screen right now one of them is a diesel and you also have a standard 5.3 liter v8 so you know this is just going to be the upgraded engine that's standard on you know your end versions like this denali ultimate and i do want to point out since i see a lot of comments regarding this this 6.2 liter va was recalled that was in 2024 model year and some of the models before that the changes that they made internally to it should be automatically applied to everything that was produced in 2025 model year and now with the 2026 model year now let's talk about the other element of the powertrain that's the 10 speed automatic just like in other gm body on frame vehicles we've always had nice thing to say about this transmission it's got a lot of gears but it doesn't get confused and if you put your foot down it'll downshift multiple gears at a time to keep you in the power band yeah and now we are on our designated strip of road to talk about ride quality and i think a lot of you guys probably have questions regarding those huge 24 inch alloy wheels on the outside how's the ride well let me just go ahead and start by the technology behind it so if you choose an at4 trim and above that will give you the magnetic ride control so the adaptive damper setup and if you choose the ultimate you will get standard air suspension so that dirt that definitely helps your ride immensely now normally with 24 inch wheels they probably feel awful ride quality but honestly throughout the past week of us driving this around i've been super impressed with the level of ride that this is able to deliver quite frankly compared to most of the competition that has 22s and may not have an air suspension i think this still may even ride slightly better if not you know right at the same mark despite having those huge wheels so i think we've been very impressed that's for sure yeah definitely it we were skeptical when we first saw you know 24s on these gm suvs but really they have a lot of technology behind them to make it a good experience behind the wheel i do also want to point out you can get 22s uh on the ultimate trims actually if you would rather downgrade your wheel size to get better ride quality so that is something i wanted to quickly point out and let's get our sound level reading going 55 we have it on fan speed one the rear climate is off and all of our technologies on the seats are turned off excellent sound level reading 52.4 decibels is what we are sitting at for this yukon denali ultimate now we don't sit here and guess how it compares to the competition or really any vehicle segment we can find that at carconfections.com sound level reading where we post all of the readings that we get across our reviews and wow that is a very good reading that is for sure that definitely places it as one of the quietest vehicles that we have tested in this full size segment this and really the expedition seem to be kind of shooting it out for quietest so we've kind of realized that too it feels like you're kind of in an escalade type of product when you're cruising along and that definitely has a lot to do with the acoustics inside this cabin and the ride all right let's talk about fuel economy so there are quite a few different ratings as expected it's not going to be fantastic this particular model is sitting at 16 miles per gallon and combined the xls sometimes do negatively impact the fuel economy so keep that in mind and what has been our real world experience fuel economy this week well we drove at 215 miles and that's both mixed city and highway driving and we were sitting at 15.1 miles per gallon so that's certainly not fantastic fuel economy but it is very close to whatever the epa is saying at 16 so i would definitely expect to be sitting between 15 and 17 miles per gallon depending on you know how much city and highway driving you are doing and since you'd be buying a lot of gas if you bought one of these trucks you might want to go download upside a free cash back app we routinely use upside to save 10 20 even 30 cents a gallon on gas in our area we also use it for groceries and eating out with our family so we can earn more and spend less on things that don't matter to us it's super convenient and easy to use and as an added bonus car confections viewers get an extra 25 cents off per gallon of gas on your first tank by scanning the qr code on the screen or using code car confections 25 when you sign up all right what's our air ball and slam dunk our least favorite and favorite element drew kick us off with the slam dunk slam dunks got to be the escalade level luxury really uh throughout the week it kind of just felt like we had an escalade in a lot of ways this just absolutely nails the luxury experience of course you have all that space as well and it just you know kind of is a fantastic overall luxury suv now on the flip side we are going to say that you have a pretty escalade like price that's for sure we're sitting well past a hundred thousand dollars so yes you could get an escalade for this type of money as was a lot of luxury products all right so after a week do we like it better the same or worse well i think everyone here can agree that we do like it better now i think there's kind of you know maybe a little bit of an irrational piece i like everything about this really besides the price if i kind of factor in the price i'm like okay that's kind of a lot but i really love the rest of this truck it is so so good and i love driving it you feel like the king of the road all right so let's talk pricing so you can see the full lineup of prices on the screen right now but we're started around 70 grand and of course that elevates up very quickly if you choose things like this denali ultimate this has a starting price of a hundred and three thousand nine hundred dollars now this particular model has a couple options on it not all the options but a couple of the options and we're sitting at a hundred and eight thousand dollars and if you're curious as to where this is manufactured it is manufactured in the u.s it's built in texas now if you're looking to buy a gmc yukon or any vehicle we would encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash new car quotes the reason you should do that is because we have a tool on our website that will connect you with local car dealers in your area to get you the best price it's also going to give you access to invoice pricey information which is a great tool to use if you plan on doing dealership negotiation if you like to take advantage of that as well as things like our monthly payment tool you can find a link to that down below in our video description carconfections.com slash new car quotes now buying a vehicle is about more than just the original msrp so let's talk about resale reliability and the warranty first up let's talk about resale value gmc as a brand is rated at 55.81 percent of expected retained value after five years and 60,000 miles and after 10 years and 120,000 miles at 21.63 percent now those are actually above industry average however it's not going to be quite class leading such as toyota honda or mazda now we also have reliability data with our combined reliability index updated with the latest 2026 information gmc is rated slightly below overall industry average against all vehicle mates now if you'd like to learn more about how all of that is calculated you can find that at carconfections.com now let's talk about the warranty that's going to be a three-year 36,000 mile basic warranty a five-year 60,000 mile power train and you do also get one complimentary service visit and guys that wraps up our seven day review of the 2026 gmc yukon denali ultimate if you enjoyed hearing our real world impressions after living with it this week we'd really appreciate it if you hit that subscribe button down below by subscribing you're going to be a part of our car confections family we have a lot of fun on this channel and i promise you won't want to miss out if you're already part of our family thank you so much for your continued support because you make this all possible and we'll catch you next time as we sample more of the latest automotive delicacies