Hey guys, Andrew here with another car review, and today we are going to be reviewing the all-new 2025 Subaru Outback Limited.
For those of you who don’t know, the Outback has been Subaru’s midsize wagon crossover since 1995. The sixth generation Outback that you see here was released in 2020, facelifted in 2023, and for 2025, the Limited trim that we have here gets some major changes.
It features a standard sunroof, heated steering wheel, and 11.6-inch infotainment screen with navigation. The now-available XT performance package gives us the beefy 260 horsepower, 277 lb-ft of torque turbocharged 2.4L boxer 4-cylinder engine.
The 2025 Outback is available in nine trims ranging from the $29,000 base up to the $43,000 Touring XT. Here we have the Limited that we’re talking about with a base price of $37,855. What else do we get for that money? Let’s jump right in.
Exterior Features
With this white paint color, the plastic cladding is very contrasted. You can love it or hate it, but it does protect against rock chips if you do take this vehicle off-road. With a standard all-wheel-drive system, it is surprisingly off-road capable. We get LED projector headlamps with a halogen turn signal, LED daytime running light, and an LED fog light down below.
The updated grille since 2023 features a Subaru badge in the center with some gunmetal gray metallic to the sides of it. We don’t get any functional airflow, but the plastic cladding for the sides does look very aggressive.
The wheel and tire setup with this Limited trim includes gunmetal gray and silver contrasted 18-inch rims with Yokohama Avid GT Blue Earth all-season tires. Dimensions are 225/60 R18s. With the all-wheel-drive system, the 225 should have no problem putting the power down, and with these 60 series sidewall tires, the ride quality should be excellent.
As you guys can see, the plastic cladding is pretty aggressive, especially for the rocker panel and skirt area. It’s labeled “Outback” underneath the passenger door.
We get an LED turn signal on the black contrasted mirror with a little bit of chrome underneath it and all chrome for the window trim, blacked-out pillars with blacked-out roof rails up top.
The sunroof, as we mentioned, is now standard for the 2025 Outback Limited. Behind it, we get our shark fin-style antenna. We get smart access for the driver and front passenger.
Window Sticker and Package Details
Hopefully, you guys can pick up the window sticker for this 2025 Outback. It lists the base price as $37,855, with $1,138 for the tech package. I don’t know where Subaru gets the numbers for these packages.
They end with eights, fours, and threes all over the place. With this $138 package, we get the footwell illumination kit, all-weather floor mats, LED interior upgrade, exterior auto-dimming mirrors, and a wireless phone charger. There’s also a $1,395 destination and delivery charge, totaling us out at $40,388 before any dealer-added options or accessories.
Rear Features and Exhaust Sound
Out back, we get some smoked taillights for this Limited trim, an LED brake light, but the turn signal and reverse light are halogen. The third brake light up top appears to be an LED, which is a premium touch. Subaru badge in the center.
Shout out to Subaru of Port Richie for helping to make this review possible. Subaru’s symmetrical all-wheel-drive badge is in the left corner, and on the right side, we get an Outback logo. Full rear parking sensing but no trailer hitch. Down below, hopefully, you can pick up the exhaust tip in the lower left corner.
Speaking of the exhaust tip, let’s fire up this 2.5L naturally aspirated 4-cylinder boxer engine and hear how she sounds.
Engine and Performance
Alright guys, that was the sound of the 2.5L naturally aspirated boxer 4-cylinder sold by Subaru for the 2025 Outback Limited. It sounds okay, cranking out 182 horsepower and 176 lb-ft of torque, mated to an 8-speed line-driven CVT transmission.
You can expect 0-60 in the high 8-second range, so definitely not the quickest. If that’s not quick enough, you can upgrade to the turbo 4-cylinder, which will shave off 2-2.5 seconds off that 0-60 time.
The reason you go for this naturally aspirated 2.5 is you’d rather have an additional 4-5 MPGs and an additional 50-100,000 miles of engine life with this more reliable naturally aspirated powerplant.
Also, some people don’t need the more powerful powerplant. You’re never going to use the power, so you might as well save some money while you’re at it. No hydraulic struts though. What you see is basically what we get.
Interior Features and Comfort
We can shut this hood right down, take a step back, walk around this 2025 Subaru Outback Limited, and let’s take a step inside to see what we get with just about the most luxurious trim available for this 2025 Outback.
The most luxurious trim for the naturally aspirated powerplant includes some soft-touch materials up top, with some stitching for your elbow rest, and it’s very gushy soft. This continues throughout the center gushy soft leather armrest. The color pattern here on the Limited is absolutely beautiful.
These are some of the most comfortable seats I’ve ever felt in my life. If you don’t believe me, go to your local Subaru dealership and take a seat in these. They’re so ridiculously soft, perforated, and heated.
Not ventilated though, you have to go to the top trims to get the ventilated seats. Fully adjustable, with thigh support adjustments, four-way lumbar, and you can recline, drop, lift, and slide the seats.
Taking a step inside, we can really check it out. Foot on the brake, engine start-stop, and everything fires right to life. Overall, for a sub-$40,000 base price, this might be the most premium all-wheel-drive midsize vehicle out on the road today.
Do I wish for the price point we had the standard turbocharged powerplant? Yes, but the fact that Subaru gives you an option whether or not you want the turbo for their Limited trim is a relatively low-cost option too.
For The Limited, we get a thick steering wheel, white contrast stitching, solid 10 and 2, excellent 9 and 3. On the left side of the steering wheel, we have our volume and skip controls, AM/FM/Sirius, hang up on your phone calls, mute, voice commands, adjustments for the infotainment.
Right now, we’re looking at outdoor temperature, average fuel economy, fuel left. You can press and hold the information and now we can adjust between tire pressure, compass, GPS, song that’s currently playing, and right back where we started. My personal favorite is the clock with the outdoor temperature.
Steering and Controls
The horn area is nice and rubberized, the horn itself loud and aggressive. We’ll do a window check to see if we get dual panes. No dual panes, but I believe the top trims do have them available. We get radar cruise control, active steering, heated steering wheel, paddle shifters for the line-driven CVT transmission.
The stocks have a very satisfying click, auto headlamps, fog lights, no auto rain-sensing wipers. The Forester Limited we just reviewed did get them, but we don’t get them here on the Outback Limited.
The tachometer goes to about 6,000 RPM, cooling temperature beneath it, the speedometer goes to 160 with the fuel level beneath it.
Tilt and telescoping steering wheel, stitched center part of the dashboard, stitching up top with a contrast color scheme, and all soft touch for the dashboard itself. You can turn off your power lift gate, interior brightness, and open up the lift gate as well.
Pedals and Dashboard
The pedals have some aluminum trim outlining the air vents. That’s nice and premium. There are three speakers on the dashboard for this booming Harmon Kardon audio system. The 11.6-inch touchscreen has a good response to it. It’s a TomTom system similar to what you would get in the Ram 1500 with a similar overall layout.
The response I would give is an 8.5 out of 10. It could be a little better, but it can also be a lot worse. Resolution is excellent. Up top, you can see the song that’s currently playing, alternate to GPS, also check out our acceleration percentage, fuel consumption, and angle. You can go to the weather outside and finally our X mode.
You turn on or off if you want to go off-roading. My personal favorite is the acceleration percentage, fuel consumption, and overall angle with the map beneath.
We’ll check out what else we have: map, radio, media, phone, app, Subaru Starlink, My Subaru, settings, car info, display off, valet mode, auto vehicle hold with the electronic parking brake. You can turn off the traction control and add whatever shortcuts you would potentially like.
Beneath that, we have our car info. You can see what is available with car info: driving statistics, maintenance, pitch and roll, power distribution. With maintenance, you can see the manual, engine oil, oil filter, tires, maintenance schedule, and you can reset all of that. My personal favorite to leave it at all times would be the maps, so we’ll do exactly that.
Climate and Seating Controls
Heated seats beneath, vent controls beneath that, vehicle settings if you’d like to check those out: dynamics control, X mode, cruise control, acceleration. You can adjust the acceleration for that cruise control between standard, eco, comfort, and dynamic. We can also see our steering responsive headlights, auto start-stop. As mentioned, my personal favorite would be the map.
The electronic parking brake, wireless phone charger, aux port, USB-A and USB-C ports, all stitched soft materials for your knee, will often hit the gear selector control and the 8-speed line-driven CVT. The backup camera has a nice, crisp resolution to it, guidance lines and trajectory rear parking sensing.
Since we get the vertical display here, the backup camera unfortunately does not take up the entire screen. That’s why I personally prefer horizontal layouts, even if they take up a little bit more of the dashboard space. We get two cup holders. They’re deep, so you’ll easily fit 24 to 32-ounce bottles.
The armrest is gushy, gushy soft leather. The storage piece is two tiers. You’ll fit business cards, pens, car accessories, and beneath it, you’ll probably fit six 12-ounce cans in there, maybe 12-ounce bottles because it’s decently deep with our 12V outlet in there as well.
More of that beige leather stitching, some darker navy blue leather stitching beneath it. Solid amount of space in this upper tier of the glove box. You’ll shove probably four pairs of socks in there. A damped glove box, and it’s lined with felt. It’s massive. You’re fitting 30 license plates easily, fitting two pairs of shoes, and I do appreciate the felt-lined glove box.
Additional Interior Features
Frameless auto-dimming rearview mirror, three garage homing settings on it, you can turn off the auto-dimming function. Sunglass holder, oops, there we go. Interior lights are LED, you can turn off the door lights. We can open up the sunroof.
The shade opens up with the roof; it doesn’t close with the roof. We’ll see if it goes out any further. It does, so to the end of the front row, large opening, we can poke our way out of here.
Beautiful day today in Port Richie, Florida, a little bit cloudy, mostly sunny, and 92° with a solid breeze, so it’s not unbearably hot considering the temperature. We’ll leave the shade open so we hop out back. You guys can see how much light is brought into the cabin.
That’s about it, at least for the front seat of this 2025 Outback Limited. Trip reset up here in the right corner or left corner if I didn’t mention it. Taking a step out back, let’s see how much space is offered back here as well as the overall quality of the materials.
Up top, still soft touch, get that gushy soft leather trim for the middle and upper portion, gushy soft leather armrest, auto one-touch for all four windows. We can shove probably two 6-inch subs with a 24-ounce water bottle, and we get our booming Harmon Kardon speaker.
Rear Seating and Comfort
The seats are still that beige and navy blue, dark navy blue contrast. It reminds me a lot of what you get from the Calligraphy Trim in the Hyundai lineup, but the seat feel, the quality is miles ahead. I’m telling you guys, sit in these seats.
The leather, the padding, they did such a great job making these seats feel as comfortable as possible. They’re perforated and heated just like they were up front. You can slightly recline these seats too. I’ll show you guys when I take a seat inside.
Legroom is solid, I’m a little bit over 6 feet tall, sitting behind my seat settings and still have about 5 inches of knee room, about the same as what we had in the Forester, but maybe a little bit less, which is surprising considering this is a midsize. The trunk, however, as you’ll see, is a lot bigger.
Headroom in the seat all the way upright, I still got like 2.5-3 inches. Big improvement compared to the Forester because the moonroof is a little bit larger back there. I mentioned that we can recline these seats. Let’s do exactly that, and I’ll show you what the headroom looks like when I’m reclined.
Now I have like 5-6 inches of headroom, but I’m down to like 2-3 inches of knee room. This is still definitely the more comfortable seating position for me. We get two air vents, USB-A and C ports, and heated seats for both of the rear passengers.
No heated middle seat, but I guess it wouldn’t be expected. We get map pockets behind both of the front seats with a dual tier for both of them.
Cargo Space
The center cubby, we can access it pretty easily. It’s soft leather with W trim. You’ll fit 16-24-ounce bottles. We get hooks for both the grab handles for the back seat, and the back seat lights are LED. Cool.
That’s about it though, guys, for the back seat. Let’s hop towards the cargo space, lift this seat back to its original position, see how much space is offered back here, and then take this 2025 Outback Limited out for a drive.
The trunk opens up relatively quickly. The floor is massive, and the floor is pretty low. At around 6 feet tall, my knee is about the same level as the floor, so if you have older or smaller pets, they shouldn’t have the toughest time hopping back here.
The seal compared to the Forester is a little bit lower, so if you have a really tall dog, they may prefer the taller ceiling in the Forester. The Forester review on this channel is actually a little bit cheaper than this Outback while giving you just about the exact same options and features, if not more.
Regardless, this is a larger trunk. I’ll leave a link right here to show you exactly how much space is back here. We got our Harmon Kardon speaker on the left side, not on the right like we had in the Forester.
I know, big deal. Latches to fold the second-row seats down, a 12V outlet in the lower right corner. Hopefully, you can pick it up on camera. Nice little area for grocery bags, so they’re not flying around. Secret storage, we get our fix-a-flat kit, and underneath this foam, we get our spare tire.
Closing the Lift Gate
That’s about it though, guys, for the cargo space. It is large. It’s a really practical vehicle overall. There are two buttons to drop the lift gate. This button drops it, this button drops it and locks the SUV. We don’t need to lock it, so we’ll press the button on the right. It gives you a couple of seconds to get out of the way, so you don’t have to worry about getting hit in the head.
Driving Impressions
That’s about it though, guys, for the inside and outside of this all-new 2025 Subaru Outback Limited. Heavily updated trim level under $40,000. This might be the most luxurious vehicle in the midsize segment.
The exterior styling, I guess they could improve on it, but it’s functional. You’re not going to be scratching up your paint if you go off-road, splashing through rocks, splashing through mud. It’s a very durable overall design, and it’s a very durable powerplant. Speaking of the powerplant, let’s take this 2025 Subaru Outback Limited out for a drive and see what it’s got.
Alright guys, now we’ve just about seen everything we need to see with the inside and outside of the all-new 2025 Subaru Outback Limited with a naturally aspirated 2.5L 4-cylinder. Let’s take it out for a drive and see what it’s got. My first impressions: throttle response is good.
You don’t notice that this is a less powerful powerplant at all until you start reaching the mid-range in the RPM range. This might be torquier off the line. It has a naturally aspirated sensation up top, but it’s not going to be comparable to the turbo. Hopefully, you would not be expecting it to be, but in normal mode, throttle response feels really good.
Highway Driving
We’ll take a step out onto this multiple lane highway as soon as we get the chance. Looks like we have the chance. Lean into it about a third of the way. Definitely does not blow you away, but you look down and you are at speed. It gets there solidly and efficiently.
Road noise, also with these Yokohama tires, is just about silent. Wind noise is noticeably quieter compared to what we had in the Forester. These windows are still single panes just like they were in the Forester, but it definitely sounds a little bit quieter.
We can turn around right here, try out a real-world turning radius test, open her up a little bit more, and I’ll catch right back with you.
Real-World Handling
Alright guys, real-world turning radius, throttle response feels good. Turning radius is sharp on the gas. Feels very torquey. I can see 0-60 happening in the low 8-second range if you get really lucky, but for the most part,
around 8.5 to the high 8s is probably more realistic. Once you’re moving at speed, the steering feels very sharp and direct. It doesn’t take a whole lot of throttle to keep the vehicle moving.
The CVT adjusts the revs as you lean into the throttle, so it feels like you’re accelerating without the transmission downshifting, making the vehicle feel a lot more powerful, a lot torquier than it really is while still keeping four-cylinder levels of fuel economy.
It’s just a very comfortable overall driving sensation. It’s quiet, it’s comfortable, the seats are so comfortable, and the motor, although relatively underpowered, feels strong enough for daily driving.
The initial torque is good, but once you actually start to lean into it to get more power and actually get moving, you start to wish that you had the turbocharged powerplant.
Manual Shifts
We could try out the manual shifts to see how they respond. Not sure if they respond at all. I mean, they are not actual shifts, it’s just ratios. You feel every other shift at that time. Fourth and fifth, you feel. First into second, I didn’t really feel.
Torque once here in fifth, really not a whole lot. We can try out some downshifts. Third gear, about half throttle. Yeah, it gets up and goes. It’s a cool-sounding motor.
Subaru does a great job of making their flat-fours, boxer-four, sound good. A little bit of torque, that’s about as far as I would put it.
Additional Driving Impressions
Alright guys, one more real-world turning radius test. We can open her up one more time too. Come on Explorer, you can do it. On the gas, feels fine. Can’t complain.
Not sure why Subaru’s lane departure system likes to kick in even when I use the turn signal with nobody remotely close to the blind spot, but if that’s my only complaint with this vehicle, it’s still very impressive. Looks like a good opportunity to try one out off the line. We’ll do exactly that and then wrap things up.
Conclusion
Alright guys, on the gas, good torque off the line. Not bad overall. If you’re looking for the most premium, the most spacious vehicle in the midsize segment, in any segment under $40,000, you don’t need it to do 0-60 in super quick times, you’re more than happy getting there in around 8-8.5 seconds.
This 2025 Subaru Outback Limited is a must-checkout vehicle for you. It is spacious, it’s so ridiculously comfortable, loaded with features, and the driving dynamics are surprisingly premium. No, it’s not that quick.
If you want it to be quick, spend an extra couple thousand bucks, get the turbo, and you’ll thank me for it. But if you don’t care about having 2-2.5 seconds less of a 0-60 time, you’d rather save $2,000 to $3,000, this naturally aspirated sub-$40,000 Limited is probably the most spacious, the most luxurious vehicle out on the road today under $40,000, and I would definitely recommend checking one out.
