Subaru Outback 2018 review: 2.5i Premium

I quite liked the feel of this car. It’s not heavy but it does feel solid so you feel like you’ll be a bit safer in an accident - that protective feeling when you’re driving around with kids is an intangible benefit of a big car. It’s still moderately agile for a car this size and it has speed, too. There’s a 2.5-litre engine to power the car up hills and it gets there fast enough if you want it to.

The 2.5-litre four cylinder produces 129kW/235Nm. (image credit: Dean McCartney)

It’s an all-wheel drive which means you wouldn’t take it on serious off-road trips but it gives great traction on roads and especially if you like extra grip on dodgy gravel and dirt roads. 

It’s also smooth, you can barely feel the bumps while driving and the handling is good. The steering is responsive and doesn’t feel heavy when you’re driving, but it is a bit of an arm workout to turn a lot while squeezing into a tight park or doing a three-point turn. 

The car is longer than a regular SUV but not long enough to give you too much trouble while parking, and there is a reverse parking camera to help plus front and rear collision warnings. 

So it’s long, which means great leg space for both me and my 185cm husband. The front is definitely roomy, and it feels like you have your own air space in each seat. The headroom is good too, even with the sunroof. 

The back had plenty of room for my four year old and six year old to jump in and fit super comfortably. They were happy with enough air between them to stop squabbles. If you are fitting a third child in, you’ll be able to get three car seats across. 

We tried it with a six-month to seven-year-old seat, a booster seat, and a baby capsule. There’s not space between the seats but you will be able to do up seatbelts easily, which I’ve found to be the hardest thing about fitting three child seats across the one row in some other smaller cars. 

And the boot is big at 512 litres (VDA). If you’re comparing the Outback to a regular SUV you’ll note it’s not as high, but height can be deceptive when it comes to boot space, because you can’t really use all of it - unless you want to lose sight in your rear vision. The size in this boot comes with the length and almost all of it is useful space.

The Outback offers 512 litres (VDA) of boot space. (image credit: Dean McCartney)

One of the most important things to parents when purchasing a vehicle is safety and the Outback Premium 2.5i comes with all the fancy new safety tech: auto emergency braking, lane departure warning, blind spot warnings, adaptive cruise control, rear cross traffic alert, lane sway warning, a warning that tells you when the car in front has moved on in case you’re too busy trying to pick up your child’s toy from the back (while stopped at the lights of course). 

There are airbags covering driver and front passenger and side curtain airbags for front and rear passengers, plus two ISOFIX points and three top tethers for children’s car seats. The Outback gets a maximum five-star ANCAP rating. 

The Outback gets points from me for being large without feeling too high. Some SUVs are unnecessarily enormous I reckon, if you’ve only got two kids. The Subaru still gives you the space you need where you need it - in the boot - but the kids can climb into the car easily because it’s not too high off the ground.

Even though it’s long, it’s still not as long as you think it’s going to be, so you can squeeze into most normal sized parks. 

The turning circle is 11.0m which is on the small side for a car this size, and makes doing u-turns easier - a bonus when looking for that precious car park at school pick-up time. 

There are two cupholders in the front and two in the back in the middle armrest. They’re also a good size - in some cars the cupholders don’t actually fit keep-cups (which we should all be using, take-away coffee cups aren’t recycleable), these cupholders are a good size. With a bottle holder in each door, a decent sized centre storage bin and glove box, and pockets on the back of the front seat, your storage is sorted. 

There's also a full sized spare wheel which comes in serious handy if your family likes going on long road trips away.