Kia Sportage v Mitsubishi Outlander comparison review: A tough SUV battle!

CarExpert

Which SUV is better? Paul Maric tests the 2022 Kia Sportage GT-Line against the 2022 Mitsubishi Outlander Exceed to see which one you should be buying! And...it's a close battle! You can see our detailed reviews of the Sportage and Outlander below!  Kia Sportage detailed review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgg39UjyVbY Mitsubishi Outlander detailed review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OlQrv_rvSQ  Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  More Kia content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/kia More Kia Sportage content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/kia/sportage More Mitsubishi content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi More Mitsubishi Outlander content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi/outlander  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Outlander Cabin 00:46 Outlander City Driving 02:27 Outlander Freeway Driving 04:14 Sportage Cabin 06:18 Sportage City Driving 08:53 Sportage Freeway Driving 11:47 Verdict 15:13  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #mitsubishi #kia #comparison #review

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. You guys contact me a lot about SUVs and these are two of the best sellers in

00:05 the country. It's the Kia Sportage and the Mitsubishi Outlander. So I thought we'd do

00:09 a comparison today. We have detailed reviews of both of these in our regular format and you can

00:15 scroll down below to the description to get links for those. But today we're going to do some city

00:18 driving, bit of highway driving, and I'll run you through the basics of these. The key difference

00:22 between them is that the Outlander is a seven seat and the Sportage is a five seat, but both of them

00:26 are top spec and both are petrol as well. Now if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this

00:31 comparison you can use the time codes on the screen or if you're on YouTube you can scroll

00:35 down and use chapters below. And if you haven't done so already subscribe to our channel and press

00:39 the bell icon because that's going to tell you every single time we publish fun stuff like this.

00:44 But let's get cracking. We're in the Outlander. Let's start off with the design of the cabin here.

00:51 I think Mitsubishi's done a really good job just in terms of giving this a premium feel because

00:56 ultimately when you are looking at top spec versions of these family SUVs you want them to

01:02 look and feel nice and I think that Mitsubishi has gone to the effort of just doing that in this

01:06 cabin. So soft touch materials along the top, along the dashboard here as well. I like the

01:10 infotainment system, it's really easy to use, it comes with all your latest smartphone mirroring

01:14 tech and here in the top spec version of the Outlander you also get a Bose sound system which

01:19 is a really good addition if you don't have any kids in the car and you want to crank some tunes

01:23 or if you want to drown out the kids, whatever suits. The other thing I'm liking as well just

01:26 while we're sort of driving around here in the city is the clarity of the gauges here in front

01:30 of me. They're really high resolution, everything is right where it needs to be. Same story with the

01:34 steering wheel controls, I'm not overloaded with controls here. I know exactly what I'm going to

01:39 be pushing and every button has some function. I don't need to go hunting for it while I try to

01:44 concentrate on the road. What about your practicality? So in terms of storage there's

01:47 stacks of storage around here for phones, bottles, centre console and also the door bins. One of the

01:53 things I really like here is wireless phone charging because when it comes to wireless

01:57 smartphone mirroring it tends to drain your battery a fair bit and the fact that you can

02:01 just slot your phone down there on the wireless charger and have wireless smartphone mirroring,

02:05 it is really the best of both worlds when it comes to that tech. And on the boot front,

02:09 the only downside with a three-row SUV is that you don't really have any storage behind the

02:15 third row. There is a little bit there but the second you put that third row up you kind of

02:18 compromise all of your boot storage. So keep that in mind if you do want the practicality of more

02:23 seats. It is going to come at the cost of boot storage when the seats are up. What's it like to

02:27 drive around the city? So low-speed stuff is pretty good. The engine's nice and quiet. This

02:32 uses a continuously variable transmission and to put that into layman's terms it's basically

02:37 a transmission that doesn't have any stepped gears. It is just a single gear and as you accelerate

02:43 it sort of doesn't have those intermittent delays between gear shifts. So that's a positive because

02:49 it is typically smoother than a regular transmission. The only downside is that

02:53 when you do get stuck into the throttle it can get a little noisy inside the cabin,

02:57 but for the most part it's quite responsive and good to drive in and around the city.

03:01 The ride is really good in and around the city as well. When you cop things like speed

03:05 humps or cobblestones it actually copes with them quite nicely and then at low speed it's

03:10 very easy to manoeuvre. It's got quite light steering and the visibility is great out of the

03:14 car because you can see clearly down the front there you've got big wing mirrors and you have

03:18 a litany of parking sensors and cameras to assist you when it comes to tight parking spaces.

03:23 Now what about the second row? So I've got my seat in the position I was in when I was driving,

03:28 which is pretty far back and knee room is actually really good. Toe room is pretty

03:32 reasonable and headroom is good as well and I feel like there's enough space here for adults

03:36 to sit comfortably and you can't really say that about a lot of medium-sized SUVs.

03:41 Down here you've got a third zone of climate controls, you've also got some USB ports as

03:44 well for charging your devices. I like these privacy blinds as well, they sort of help

03:49 shield your kids from getting sun in their eyes. I know that was a big issue with my daughter when

03:52 she's in her child seat, you get blinded by light from the side so it's good to have something that

03:56 you can easily prop up there. And what about ride comfort here? So we're going over some

04:00 speed humps and stuff. It's not too bad, there isn't much side support though on the seat,

04:05 so I do move around a little bit but that's not too bad and I can move my seats forwards

04:10 and backwards to give the third row a bit of extra room as well. Okay let's head to the freeway.

04:17 We've got a little on-ramp coming up here, we'll see what it's like with a little bit of pace.

04:21 I've got it in tarmac mode which is kind of a sport mode. Oh look that's fun, it's kind of

04:27 holding on surprisingly well. That is impressive, there you go. A little punch here as well.

04:33 [Car engine revving]

04:35 So that's the noise I was talking about with that continuously variable transmission. The revs jump

04:40 up, it makes a whole bunch of racket but it kind of moves okay, it's not too bad. In terms of your

04:45 other drive modes, look you're not going to be doing any off-road driving but you've got

04:49 eco-normal tarmac and then a few sort of off-road modes. We've actually shot a video with all of

04:54 the SUVs in this segment off-road to see how they actually drive and you can click up here to watch

04:59 that. In terms of road noise at highway speeds, you do get a little bit of tyre noise coming into

05:04 the cabin and you do notice it when you are running at highway speeds. This is a pretty

05:08 smooth road that we're on now and I can hear a bit of tyre noise coming into the cabin so that

05:12 is probably worth considering as well if you do want that sort of premium quiet feel. There are

05:17 going to be other vehicles in this segment that are going to be better options for that sort of

05:20 quiet interior cabin noise. On the visibility front, it's actually pretty easy to see out of

05:25 this when you are driving at highway speeds. The wing mirrors are big enough, there's a blind spot

05:29 monitor built into those and in terms of your head checks, there really aren't too many blind spots

05:34 inside the car so you can clearly see around it. You then have the option of all these cameras for

05:38 the low speed driving that I mentioned earlier but it is something that isn't too daunting and

05:43 it doesn't feel too big out here on the road. Let's talk about some of the driving functions

05:47 you have here. So you have a lane departure system so as the wheel approaches that lane,

05:51 it tugs it back into the lane gently. You also have radar cruise control so we'll set that now.

05:57 So it basically keeps a set distance of the car in front and then you can adjust the distances

06:01 as required. As you approach the vehicle in front that is moving a little slower,

06:05 it will then slow down for you and then in theory when you change lanes,

06:10 it should accelerate. There we go, nice and smooth so that's not too bad of a system.

06:21 Okay, sportage time. Look, this feels very different inside compared to the Outlander.

06:27 But to be honest, I think this feels more luxurious, more premium. I love the use of this

06:32 sort of open pore wood material around the dashboard. You've got these two giant screens

06:37 there ahead of the driver. You've got a touchscreen down the bottom here. Really is a

06:42 very nice looking setup. Only thing I don't like about this from a design point of view is all of

06:46 this piano black down here. It is everywhere and that stuff marks very easily. It just doesn't look

06:52 very nice there in terms of how much they've got all over the shop. Oh, that's cool. I actually

06:57 really like that feature as well. So we're about to make a turn now and it actually puts the camera

07:02 on down the side of the car. So we'll see how well this works when we go for the highway but

07:06 I think this is a really great feature. I think Kia and Hyundai are the few manufacturers that

07:10 actually do this and they do it really well because it's a high quality camera and especially

07:15 if you're driving around cyclists and stuff like that, it just fills in gaps that you would

07:20 otherwise potentially miss. On the infotainment front, yeah, it's a big infotainment screen but

07:24 it is pretty straightforward to use. It's a touchscreen. It also has all the latest smartphone

07:29 mirroring tech. Unfortunately though, it's all wired so no wireless smartphone mirroring but

07:33 once it is hooked up you get that full display there and it's actually quite immersive. You

07:37 then have voice recognition as well to back that up. I think compared to the Outlander,

07:42 this is the better infotainment system and you can see that Kia has gone to a lot of effort to

07:46 actually modernise this and give it the features that it needs. I love just from a kid's point of

07:50 view, you've got a quiet mode in there. That means that you press that button and while your kids are

07:55 in the second row, they won't hear any of the noise that you have coming out of the front row

07:59 speakers. And now your practicality. Look, there is so much storage around here. You've got wireless

08:04 phone charging down the front here to store your phone. You've got cup holders all the way through

08:09 here. They have adjustable sections too so you can open and close those. Lots of storage inside

08:14 the doors as well. So from a practicality point of view, this is really, really nicely fitted out,

08:20 especially if you're hauling a whole bunch of kids crap like I do. On the cargo front,

08:26 it's an interesting comparison because the Outlander has the third row there so it does

08:31 rob you of a bit of space but when the Outlander's third row is folded flat, it does feel like the

08:36 bigger boot. The boot here in the Sportage isn't actually too bad simply because we get the long

08:42 wheelbase version of the Sportage compared to Europe which picks up the short wheelbase. So it

08:47 does feel comparable to the Outlander but the Outlander feels like it has a bigger and more

08:50 usable boot. Just on low-speed driving, this uses a dual-clutch transmission and it is a little bit

08:58 jerky at low speeds. It's one of the things that I kind of dislike about Hyundai and Kia products.

09:03 When it is mated to their petrol engines, this dual-clutch just, I don't know, it just doesn't

09:08 do the rest of the package justice. So if I was buying a Sportage, I would go down the path of

09:13 the diesel which uses a standard torque converter in comparison to this. And this engine as well,

09:17 it's a 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol so compared to the Outlander, it has a turbo attached to it

09:22 but it's a 1.6-litre versus a 2.5 in the Outlander. This makes around the same amount of power and a

09:28 little bit more torque but it does feel a whole lot punchier when you do bury the throttle because

09:33 it is turbocharged. Both of these vehicles are all-wheel drive but they are the type of system

09:38 that waits for there to be slip on the front axle before it engages the rear axle. But here in the

09:44 Kia, you can actually lock it into a four-wheel drive mode as you drive. And again, if you want

09:48 to see how this goes off-road, we did some light off-roading in all of the mid-size SUVs, you can

09:53 find the link down in the description below. So on the comfort front, in and around the city here,

09:56 speed humps and things are dispatched with really nicely and the reason that is, is because Kia

10:02 actually does a local tuning program. That means before these cars are released for the Australian

10:07 market, they drive them around with camouflage on and do a local ride and handling tune that is

10:12 bespoke for the Australian market. And in fact, some other markets then take our tune because

10:18 it's so good. And Australia has a really diverse road network and it means that when you do drive

10:23 this, it actually feels like it's suitable for Australian roads. And you do notice that when you

10:28 compare it to the Outlander, simply because the Outlander doesn't have that Australian tuning

10:32 element and it's more a generic tune. And then when the roads get a little bit more technical

10:37 or you hit the sine waves that we do a lot of testing on with our regular reviews, that's where

10:41 it really starts to fall apart for vehicles that don't have a bespoke tune for the Aussie market.

10:45 So, second row of the Sportage. Knee room is excellent, toe room is excellent,

10:51 headroom is pretty good. So this to me feels like it has more room than the Outlander,

10:57 just sort of based on first glance. I do also love the fact that you have your USB ports nice

11:02 and high up here. They're both USB-C. You've got hooks here for bags, air vents as well,

11:07 and it does feel quite premium back here too. You've got that open pore woodgrain style material

11:12 there. So it is quite a sort of homely place to be seated with plenty of room. The seats don't

11:17 move forwards and backwards like they do in the Outlander. So this is the only sort of room that

11:21 you have. And in terms of the ride, it actually feels great back here. So it feels ever so slightly

11:27 firmer than the Outlander, but it's kind of a bit more plush. It's a bit hard to explain,

11:32 but I do prefer sitting back here. These seats also feel like they have a bit more side support

11:37 as well as we go over speed humps and that kind of thing when we're turning. So yeah, it is

11:42 disappointing though. We don't have privacy blinds here. That is the only downside.

11:46 Now, what about your drive modes? We're about to get onto the freeway here. You've got a little

11:50 selector here. You've got Eco, Normal, Sport and Spart. I'll pop it into Sport mode. We'll see what

11:57 it's like coming onto our on-ramp. Give this a little punch. Oh, it makes a little bit of noise.

12:02 I've got some sound plumbed into that. Yeah, look, it actually holds on pretty nicely. I'm

12:10 impressed by that. Yeah, this is actually pretty good. I wasn't thinking it was going to be this

12:15 punchy, but it kind of holds on nicely and then it sort of picks up and moves. It doesn't quite

12:19 have the punch that you get in the diesel, but it is adequate for what it is. Yeah, the engine and

12:25 transmission on the freeway is actually not too bad. It's at low speeds where I really sort of

12:29 don't love the dual clutch setup, but here on the freeway you can just sort of punch it if you need

12:33 to. It picks up and moves without too many dramas and because it is turbocharged, you get that sort

12:38 of sensation that the vehicle's actually doing something instead of just making noise and not

12:42 really going anywhere. Let's talk about some of the safety tech here. So you have a semi-autonomous

12:47 steering function. One push of that, it actually steers the car for you. So I've still got my hands

12:52 on here at the moment, but what it's doing is as we go through this corner, it's just gradually

12:56 applying steering to that to sort of pull its way around. Typically it works okay, but I find with

13:03 roadwork zones and stuff that it gets really confused and it doesn't know what it's doing.

13:06 Even now I feel it's getting really close to that line as this car comes to pass us and I'm having

13:12 to manually push it in a little bit because I don't want it to veer into that car. So I don't love

13:16 these systems because I don't know, in my opinion, they don't work that well, but you know, it is what

13:21 it is. It's there if you are doing a long distance drive and just want to relax a little bit. And then

13:25 on your radar cruise control front, that's all pretty straightforward too. I find with these

13:30 systems, they work really well because it will come to a complete stop with radar cruise control

13:34 running and that's particularly handy if you're in a traffic jam or something like that because it

13:38 will take off and come to a stop on its own. You still need to concentrate obviously and do your

13:42 own thing, but to me it is a pretty good setup and if I do compare this to the Outlander, I think this

13:48 offers the better radar cruise control system. So what's your visibility like? Yeah, look, it's not

13:53 too bad. The bonnet on this sits a little lower, so I can't really see down the front corners there,

13:57 but the wing mirrors are big enough. I've got a blind spot monitor as well, so as cars approach

14:01 that lights up and if I put my indicator on, it beeps and also shows me that there's a vehicle

14:06 there in the blind spot, which is really great technology. Visibility out the back is good as

14:11 well. There's a pretty decent envelope there. What's your road noise like? You can see we've

14:16 got a truck coming past us now. You get a bit of noise coming into the cabin when you have other

14:22 vehicles around you and there is a little bit of tyre noise as well, but for the most part,

14:26 it's actually a pretty quiet and insulated place to be. This is obviously on a new platform,

14:31 it's a new model as well, so you would expect it to be nice and quiet and compared to the Outlander,

14:37 this is probably the quieter place to be sitting if you are doing a long distance drive.

14:41 I'm going to call something out here. In the Outlander, I was able to reach the infotainment

14:45 controls without any dramas, but here in the Sportage, I'm having to lean to get to the outer

14:49 edges of these bottom controls and then also to get to the edge of the infotainment system. And

14:54 for example, if I'm on the map view, if I want to go home, the home button is this tiny little

14:58 button over here, so I've got to basically lean all the way forward and hit that. You can convert

15:03 this screen down the bottom to shortcut functions, but yeah, I just think this is probably a little

15:07 far away and just some of these critical buttons are way too small to be reaching while you're

15:12 driving. So I hope you enjoyed that really quick comparison. Who wins? That's the important

15:20 question. Look, for me, the Sportage is the winner here, but there's a caveat to that. It would be

15:25 the diesel Sportage. I prefer the transmission, I prefer the way that it drives, it's better on

15:30 fuel as well, so that would be my pick. But if you do need a seven-seater, the Outlander is a

15:36 really good option. So I love the infotainment system, it has plenty of room inside and it's

15:40 functional as an occasional-use seven-seater. You're not going to fit adults in that third row,

15:44 but if you do need to fit kids, there's no drama at all. So let me know in the comments section

15:48 below, have you bought either of these? What did you go down the path of? Do you agree or disagree

15:53 with something that I've said? I'm keen for your feedback. If you did enjoy this video, please make

15:57 sure you like it and share it with your mates, and if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our

16:01 channel and press the bell icon. But until next time, take it easy.

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