Toyota Highlander Hybrid interior
The Toyota Highlander’s cabin isn’t as luxurious as premium brand models, but it’s functional and has loads of standard kit
Style
Toyota is not exactly known for ultra-luxurious, style-focused cabins, and the Highlander is no different, despite how much it costs.
Sure, everything seems well screwed together and the dashboard layout is really easy to get along with, but even Hyundai and Kia offer classier rival cabins. Stepping out of a Land Rover Discovery into this is a stark contrast, too.
The problem is it all looks and feels quite functional. Sure, there’s some soft-touch plastics dotted about the front to make surfaces nicer to the touch, but the overall design is uninteresting and the silver plastic trim on the dash looks straight out of the early 2000s.
It gets worse the further back you go, too: the door trims in the second row do have some soft-touch material but otherwise it’s scratchy plastics, although you do get integrated sun blinds for the side windows. And the third row? The hard plastic side trim is distinctly second-class back there.
That’s a shame, because Toyota certainly hasn’t cheaped out on equipment. Even the base Excel trim has climate controls in the first and second row, adaptive cruise control, heated front seats and steering wheel, keyless entry, an 11-speaker JBL audio system and an electric bootlid, as well as a long list of active safety technology.
Step up to Excel Premium and you’ll find niceties such as ventilated front seats, a head up display and a handsfree tailgate opening function.
- Cash
- £47,614
- Monthly
- £458*
- Used
- £42,595
Infotainment
All Toyota Highlander models get an 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system positioned on top of the centre console so that you barely need to move your eyes in order to glance at it.
It’s far from the sharpest screen around, but the chunky menu graphics are at least pretty easy to read when you’re driving. You get plenty of physical shortcut buttons to help you skip from one key feature to another with the minimum of button presses.
Sat-nav is of course standard, and you can program an address using the on-screen keyboard or by using the Toyota Corolla’s voice command system. The latter works reasonably well but it’ll only recognise whole addresses, not postcodes. Once you’ve entered your destination, the system takes a little while to program a route, especially if you want to add one or more waypoints.
On the move, you’ll notice the frustratingly slow auto-zoom feature which might result in you frequently missing turns when entering a city or getting off the motorway. It doesn’t help that the arrow directions often don’t correlate with what the road ahead is actually doing.
Thankfully, both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are both standard, so you can hook up your phone and use its (likely far superior) navigation and menu features.
All models get 7-inch screen in between the dials. It looks neat and the graphics are modern, but it doesn’t really bring any new functionality, while it’s nowhere near as configurable as the full-size digital instruments you’ll find in many rivals.
Much more useful is the optional head-up display – it’s a godsend if you’re driving in an unfamiliar area because you don’t need to take your eyes off the road in order to see your speed, the speed limit or your next sat-nav direction.
- Cash
- £47,614
- Monthly
- £458*
- Used
- £42,595
Build your own Highlander Hybrid on carwow
Save on average £3,576 off RRP
*Please contact the dealer for a personalised quote, including terms and conditions. Quote is subject to dealer requirements, including status and availability. Illustrations are based on personal contract hire, 9 month upfront fee, 48 month term and 8000 miles annually, VAT included.