2025 Honda HR-V Vi X review

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2025 Honda HR-V Vi X

Honda's HR-V emerged from a generational redesign two years ago as quite a different beast. It looked completely different to the old one, ended up at the smaller end of the compact SUV segment, and added a hybrid option. As part of this year's refresh, the range scored a new variant, the hybrid e:HEV X ($39,900 drive-away) to sit between this entry-level Vi X and the range-topping e:HEV L ($42,900 drive-away).

Upon the HR-V's arrival, it was also pitched into a new way of buying a Honda, with fixed-pricing and no haggling with a dealer. That purchasing model had a rocky start but things appear to be improving, not least because a lot of Hondas are cheaper now than they were then, including the HR-V, which saw a price cut of nearly $2000 as part of its stock clearance – a price this update retains.

It's a modest facelift, with some interior and exterior tweaking and virtually nothing added to the spec sheet. The price cut is a good thing, yes, but is it enough?

How much is a Honda HR-V?

The HR-V is now a three-car range, with the Vi X at the bottom starting at $34,900 drive-away. There is a lot to like about the HR-V, but on paper it doesn't look incredible value.

You get 18-inch alloys, auto LED headlights, power windows and mirrors, satellite navigation, single-zone climate control, leather wheel and shifter, fabric upholstery, two USB ports, six speakers, 9.0-inch touchscreen, and a tyre repair kit. It's the kind of spec that feels like a lot of people spent a lot of time arguing over and the accountants won most of the battles.

This is, of course, in the context of rising prices, and you'll be pleased to hear that earlier this year Honda knocked $1800 out of the price. There are no factory options, just three colours for the Vi X (red, white, grey), and you can choose a series of packs supplied by your dealer that consist of things like weather shields, floor mats, and all manner of protective plastic bits.

Honda's smallest SUV finds itself in a vicious battleground. It goes up against the Volkswagen T-Roc, the Skoda Kamiq, Toyota Corolla Cross, Hyundai Kona, Kia Seltos, Mazda CX-30 – a whole host of genuinely quality cars. Even the GWM Haval Jolion is looking pretty good buying after a recent facelift, so it has to see off a pretty strong advance from cars that are for the most part bigger and better equipped.

The HR-V returns fire on things like design and cost of ownership, though it's anything but a straightforward decision. Even if you have your heart set on a HR-V.

How big is a Honda HR-V?

There are things about the predecessor that came forward into this HR-V and a couple of things that didn't. The reasons for some of the changes became clear with the release of the ZR-V medium SUV which is only slightly bigger than the HR-V, but just enough to justify its existence and bookend the medium SUV space with the larger-still CR-V.

The old HR-V had an absolute whopper of a boot, but now it's at the other end of the scale, a competitive-but-not-startling 304 litres with the rear seats in place. Further to that drop in capacity, there's no spare hweel, something I had previously considered restricted to the hybrids to accommodate the battery.

You can liberate some space by removing the styrofoam compartments under the boot floor, but at the same time, these are useful for storing loose bits and pieces. The fabric cargo cover certainly covers the cargo from prying eyes, but does little to stop noise coming out of the rear of the car.

Despite all these complaints, I packed an improbable number of large, flattened cardboard boxes left over from a house move and subsequent furniture spending spree. Not joking, I more than half-filled a hefty-sized skip at the local recycling centre.

Being a Honda, the seats are considered ‘Magic’. You can tip the seatbacks forward or the seat squabs up. That latter function is massively underrated as it means you can contain tall items in the full-height section of the car rather than struggle with the boot. 

One imagines part of the reason there's so little boot space is the racier rear glass, but it's probably got a lot to do with the rear seats delivering a ton of leg room. They feel like they're pushed right back to the back axle. You get a rear armrest which, given there's no middle seat, will always be in play if you want. Additionally, you get cupholders in the doors as well as bottle holders, so it's all happening for water and coffee fans back here.

Less fortunately, there are no air-conditioning vents or USB ports in the back of the Vi X, so no charging devices back here.

Front seat passengers are treated to very comfortable seats, Honda finally ditching the over-stuffed vibe of years past, or at least in this cloth-upholstered version. I liked the fabric used on the seats and it didn't lower the tone one little bit.

A revised centre console means there's a good spot for your or your passenger's phone along with the space under the air conditioning controls. These controls look terrific and are easy to use, even if the figures on the screen are a bit 1980s LCD. But that's absurdly picky.

Aside from those climate controls, it's a largely uncluttered dash, nicely proportioned, and I really liked the way you can choose to have a direct or diffuse blast from the air conditioning by turning a dial next to the outboard front vents. 

Also up front are two cupholders and door cards that take a decent-sized bottle as long as it's tapered like mine. As in it fit perfectly when placed upside down.

Does the Honda HR-V have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto?

Honda sends the HR-V out of the factory with a four-speaker stereo powered by a 9.0-inch media touchscreen. The software on that screen is firmly on the old-feeling side and could do with a little more style, but the hardware itself is pretty snappy. Like a lot of screens, though, the targets are often too small to easily hit on the move once you've selected a particular function. Thankfully, Honda has resisted cramming everything into this screen by keeping the air conditioning dials mercifully separate.

Apple CarPlay is offered wireless and is a bit on the slow side. I hesitate to say laggy because that's a sort of jagged experience implying dodgy animations, but the HR-V’s screen is just slow to respond. But once you work that out, you're in good shape. The wireless connectivity was stable, though.

Android Auto is by USB only and you've a choice of two ports, USB-A and USB-C up front, but sadly that's your lot. Back seat passengers are out of luck.

On top of this is an AM/FM radio, DAB and satellite navigation, which is reasonably generous, particularly the navigation. Honda will update your maps for free for the first five years too.

Honda offers a generous five years of Honda Connect, a smartphone app that connects to the car and allows you to pop the locks, control the lights, show you where the car is, check your fuel levels and fire up your climate control before you get in. It will also let you know if your battery is low, the airbags have gone off, and if the person you've lent it to strays from an area you've defined.

The HR-V has what has been recently renamed Gen1 of the system; the Accord has Gen2 that has all these features and more.

Is the Honda HR-V a safe car?

When ANCAP tested the Honda HR-V after its 2022 arrival, it was awarded four stars. Adult occupant protection scored 82 per cent, child occupant protection 77 per cent, vulnerable road user protection 72 per cent and safety assist just 69 per cent. Almost like clockwork, the lack of a front centre airbag appears to be culprit responsible for the missing fifth star.

ANCAP also claims it's not possible to fit rearward-facing capsules in the outboard positions in the rear bench, which is important if you've got or are planning on having a newborn. You only need those capsules for a while, but carrying your infant on the roof of the car is generally frowned upon. When I asked Honda about it, Honda told me that a rearward-facing ISOFIX capsule does fit, so perhaps ANCAP had trouble with the top-tether type.

What safety technology does the Honda HR-V have?

The HR-V is missing a couple of important active safety features. The total lack of reverse AEB is a bit of a shame, and you can't even get it in the more expensive hybrid. The Vi X doesn't have reverse cross-traffic alert but does have forward junction assist, the latter still reasonably rare in this segment. It also missed out on blind-spot monitoring, which is very common among its rivals.

There are six airbags, two ISOFIX and two top-tether anchor points. The lack of a middle seat means there is no third top-tether.

How much does the Honda HR-V cost to run?

Honda limits the cost of the first five services to a bargain $199, beating even Toyota at that game in the same segment. Well, almost – you have to service your Honda at 12 months/10,000km, whereas the Toyota will let you cover another 5000km in a 12-month period before spanner work. The HR-V works out at $995 over five years while the cheapest rival – again, the Corolla Cross – is another $50 or so more per year.

Slightly annoyingly, if you'd bought the HR-V when it first arrived, servicing was just $125 per visit, but the upfront price is now lower by a wider margin, so that's an overall win, I think.

Honda, like Mazda, is also quite clear about what's included in your service. 

Rather generously, if you keep servicing at Honda and meet the "Honda Extend program criteria", you get up to another three years of warranty and roadside assist.

Our routine check on insurance came out at $1557 per year based on a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male driver living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances. That seems okay, but not exactly a bargain considering the reasonable purchase price.

Is the Honda HR-V fuel-efficient?

Honda has slightly upped the official fuel figure for the 2025 HR-V, now claiming 6.2 litres per 100 kilometres. I think this is eminently gettable as I scored 7.4L/100km in my week.

I wasn't gentle on the HR-V, either, because it needs a bit of a flogging to break into traffic, climb hills, and overtake on the motorway. If you were to nail the number, you'd get 645km between fills and in my hands it would cover 540km. The fuel tank is small but only asks for 91-octane unleaded.

What is the Honda HR-V like to drive?

Straight off the bat, I'm going to tell you that this petrol HR-V is not as good as the hybrid. With just 89kW and 145Nm to push an admittedly modest 1267kg, things are going to happen at a leisurely pace.

The 1.5-litre four-cylinder engine drives the front wheels through Honda's ever-improving CVT automatic, but to get anything but a serene pace out of this thing requires a fair amount of time near the redline, which the gearbox duly provides.

If driven sedately in heavy traffic, you won't miss much, but breaking into moving traffic and overtaking on even a flat surface requires tolerance of a high-revving four-cylinder desperately trying to please you. Single carriageways will require a lot of patience and planning.

Honda should really consider luring some Peugeot-Citroen chassis engineers away. There are any number of French cars with the same combination of struts up front and torsion beams at the rear that ride beautifully and only deteriorate under extreme provocation. 

The similarly sized Peugeot 2008 rides so well and pretty much any small Citroen rides incredibly well. Sadly for the HR-V, you really feel the beam set-up from the front seat let alone the rears. While it's not particularly intrusive, it's the kind of car where you really feel that the rear wheels are bumbling along behind and wanting to do their own thing rather than being part of a whole. There's also a fair bit of noise from the rear end on coarser motorway surfaces (hello again to Sydney's M4).

It also feels weirdly firm but still rolls a bit cornering.

The steering, however, is pretty good if a little too isolated from what's happening on the tarmac. Honda says it was improved for more feel, which might be a stretch. Pushing through a bend my wife remarked "You trust this car more than I would", and that said something about the way the car feels. Obviously, HR-Vs are not bought by hooligans for so many of the reasons already outlined, but hiding underneath the sometimes-grumpy ride is a half-alright chassis.

When you stay inside the envelope, the HR-V is very comfortable, reasonably quiet, and Honda says it's quieter than before with more sound-deadening on board. As a city car it's pretty good because its modest external dimensions make it easy to park, wrangle in tight spots, and it tackles narrow inner-city streets happily. The big mirrors are a huge help, although the lack of reverse cross-traffic alert allied with a grainy reversing camera doesn't.

Can a Honda HR-V tow?

You won't find a quicker answer than this: No.

Should I buy a Honda HR-V?

I've thought a lot about this question. I don't think the Vi X is anything like the best of the HR-V, let alone the best of Honda. I've driven the hybrid a few times and found it lovely but wanting in a few areas. The Vi X just kind of makes that feeling worse with missing safety features and slow performance.

The hybrid is more sprightly – even though the battery runs out pretty quickly – and uses about a third less fuel, both on paper and in the real world. A few more grand gets you a hybrid HR-V in e:HEV X form, which brings a similar but better overall spec along with the electrified drivetrain.

If you're not after electrification, there are so many cars to choose from for similar money but with more room, features and performance, such as the Corolla Cross, Hyundai Kona, Kia Seltos… well, the list goes on.

But if your sights are set on the HR-V, the Vi X is a lovely car to get around in – if a little on the slow side – is cheap to run, and looks and feels like you'd expect a Honda to. But if you have the cash, go for the hybrid.

How do I buy a Honda HR-V? The next steps.

Once you've decided on the HR-V and indeed which one, head to Honda's website where you can build and price one. Honda's "One Price Promise" means you won't do better with a dealer or by baiting two or three to give you a better price. However, if you choose a car that isn't in your area, Honda will offer you the choice of waiting for a car to arrive in your state or charge you $750 to bring one in from another.

If you do choose to wait, Honda says you can expect to wait between two and four months depending on your location and chosen colour.

If you prefer the more personal approach, you can find a dealer which are called Honda Centres here.

As I've unsubtly suggested, it's very much worth driving both the hybrid and the petrol if you can stretch to the former. It's a more relaxed way of getting about, along with a small but useful fuel-saving. You'll also want to check things like boot space if you're a previous-gen HR-V owner who depends on that much larger boot.

You can also find HR-Vs for sale at Drive Marketplace.

If you want to stay updated with everything that’s happened to this car since our review, you’ll find all the latest news here.

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