Nissan X-Trail long-term test: report 2
Promising to combine seven-seat practicality with the low running costs of a hybrid, the Nissan X-Trail sounds great on paper – but what's it like in reality?...
The Car Nissan X-Trail Tekna+ e-4ORCE Run by Jonty Renk, senior videographer
Why it’s here To prove that you can still buy an SUV that is both sporty and utilitarian
Needs to Offer a versatile and practical space for camera gear and triathlon equipment, be more frugal than a petrol-engined SUV and carry up to seven people comfortably.
Mileage 1811 List price £48,095 Target Price £43,317 Price as tested £50,240 Official economy 42.8mpg Test economy 39.5mpg
2 November 2024 – Mirror vs HD screen
My Nissan X-Trail is jam-packed with technology – but not in an overwhelming way. In some cars, changing the temperature requires more mental agility than it takes to solve a Sudoku puzzle, but the X-Trail does a fantastic job of making sure everything falls easily to hand and is logically laid out.
As I mentioned in my first report, the infotainment system is great and, refreshingly, things like the driving assistance tech and climate control have their own separate physical controls, which I find much more user-friendly than having everything on the touchscreen.
It's brilliant that turning off the speed-limit warning bongs, for example, is done at the touch of a button rather than by wading through a million menus on a screen.
Of course, I don’t turn it off so I can break the speed limit in peace – I turn it off because I've noticed that (like a lot of cars with this sort of warning) it often thinks the speed limit is lower than it is.
There is another piece of technology that I also tend to turn off – the digital rearview mirror. My car (and other X-Trails above Tekna trim) come with this feature, which means the traditional mirror can also show a feed from a roof-mounted camera.
The idea is that when the boot is packed high or your passengers' heads block your view out the back, you can still see what's behind the car. However, while this sounds like a good idea, I find that in reality it’s difficult to gauge any perspective from the display, making it hard to judge how far you are from what’s behind you.
Luckily, you can keep it as an old-school mirror. That's something I’m particularly grateful for after recently filming the new Polestar 4, which has no rear window at all, so relies full-time on its digital rearview mirror for a view out the back.
Even though this system hasn’t proved useful yet in my X-Trail, some of the other cameras (which are standard on all trims apart from entry-level Acenta Premium) definitely have. For example, I spend a lot of time driving this big car in a big city, where the brilliant 360-deg bird's eye view makes squeezing into tight spaces a doddle.
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