Audi Q7 Review 2024

Ask yourself one question: Do I want arguably the best all-round seven-seat SUV you can buy? Of course you do. Why wouldn’t you? If that’s the case, then the Audi Q7 is it.

It’s not the biggest car of its type, or the cheapest, or the newest, or the most practical, or the most ergonomically sorted. However, in those areas in which it doesn’t lead the class (there are plenty in which it does, but the way), it’s still right up there with the cars that do. This makes the Audi Q7 an unbelievable all-rounder that’ll slot seamlessly into the daily life of any well-heeled family, instantly making it easier, more relaxing, more comfortable, more entertaining and more sophisticated.

Granted, if you’re after a luxury off-roader with seven seats, rather than an SUV, then the more rugged Land Rover Discovery will suit you better. If you’re like most SUV buyers, though, and you never venture further into the countryside than the muddy car park of your local farm shop, then the Q7 will be the perfect family car.

As a big, luxurious seven-seat SUV, the Audi Q7’s most obvious rivals are the Volvo XC90 and Land Rover Discovery. Obviously, you can’t talk about an Audi offering without mentioning BMW and Mercedes, and although the BMW X5 and Mercedes GLE are five-seaters as standard, both are also offered in seven-seat form as an option.

Step up a level on both size and cost, and you might also consider the BMW X7 and Mercedes GLS from the same stables. The Lexus RX-L would also be competing for your custom in the premium sphere, while more affordable alternatives include the Peugeot 5008, Skoda Kodiaq and Volkswagen Tiguan Allspace.

This area is an Audi trademark, so it’s no surprise that the Q7 absolutely smashes it here. All of the materials on view - whether they’re dense soft-surfaced plastics, stitched leather, glossy veneers or genuine metallic trims - are extremely high-grade, and they’re blended thoughtfully and tastefully to deliver a sense of effortless class.

You have to delve very deep into the lower reaches of the Audi Q7's cabin before you find a single panel of a quality that doesn’t quite measure up to the high standards of the rest, and even then, the differences are miniscule. 

The precision and solidity with which everything is bolted together, plus the slick, deftly-damped way all the switches and controls work, also help toward providing a level of sophistication that is unsurpassed by any of the Q7’s rivals, even bigger, pricier ones like the BMW X7 and Mercedes GLS. True, newer models feel a little more high-tech than the older ones due to the extra screen, but both versions are pretty much flawless when it comes to quality.

As we’ve already said, the Audi Q7’s interior and infotainment system changed completely during the 2019 facelift, so we effectively have two systems to talk about here.

The earlier one was great. An 8.3-inch screen rose electrically from the top of the dashboard, and you scrolled through the logical on-screen menus using a rotary dial controller and a handful of shortcut buttons. Simple, intuitive and not distracting. There was also a touchpad provided that allowed you handwrite instructions, which was rather more of a faff, but there was nothing you couldn’t do without it if you chose to ignore it.

With the 2019 facelift, though, the motoring world’s obsession with touchscreen technology took over, and this system was ditched for a new twin-screen arrangement that was controlled by jabbing fingers at a screen. In fairness, it’s not bad as touchscreens go with sharp graphics and quick responses. However, some of the on-screen icons are a bit small and tricky to hit, and the fact remains that touchscreens are way more distracting when you're driving than physical controls.

All the functionality you’d expect in a luxury car is covered, though, including DAB radio, navigation, wireless phone charging and various connected services.

Even in the context of large, luxurious seven-seat SUVs, the Audi Q7 is about as good as it gets in practicality terms. Perhaps that's no surprise given the sheer size of the thing.

In terms of external dimensions, the Audi Q7 is 5,063mm long, 1,968mm wide and 1,741mm tall. That's over 100mm longer than the Land Rover Discovery and Volvo XC90, although a BMW X7 and Mercedes-Benz GLS are longer still. Nevertheless, you'd never call the Q7 agile or compact. Unless, that is, you lived in North America.

Inside the Audi Q7 there's loads of space up front, obviously, and the three individual chairs in the middle row are very generous on both headroom and legroom, so tall adults will fit comfortably. There’s enough shoulder space to sit three adults across the rear bench, too, and the middle seat is almost as wide as those either side, but whoever’s in the middle will have to sit with their legs splayed either side of a bulky transmission tunnel.

Each one of the middle-row chairs slides and reclines independently, and the outer ones tip and tumble far enough out of the way to allow pretty easy access to the third row. The space surrounding these rearmost seats is among the most generous in the class: not quite as much as in a Land Rover Discovery or a BMW X7, but it easily has the beating of a BMW X5 or Mercedes GLE. Adults of a reasonable size will fit, but those much over six foot will probably want to bagsy one of the chairs further forwards on long journeys.

With seven seats in place, there’s more boot space in the back of an Audi Q7 than in many rivals at 295 litres, which is enough for a few large shopping bags. The rearmost chairs drop flush into the floor to give you a massive 865-litre boot in regular five-seat mode, enough for pushchairs, kids’ bikes, or anything else a family could think to carry. The middle row also drops flat into the floor, leaving you with an extended load-bay that’s level and true, not to mention massive.

Early on in the Audi Q7's life, you had the choice of two 3.0-litre V6 diesel engines with either 218PS or 272PS. We never drove the former, but the latter was great. Whether you were getting away from the mark or picking up speed on the move, it managed to hustle the enormous Q7 along with a surprising amount of urgency, and your progress always felt as effortless as it did brisk. 

Later, these engines were upgraded to deliver 231PS or 286PS, and rebadged to become known as the 45 TDI and 50 TDI, respectively. The more powerful one feels pretty much indistinguishable from the one we’ve just described, just with the undetectable advantage of a few tenths against the stopwatch. 

The lower powered version, meanwhile, will be strong enough for most drivers, but it does have to work a wee bit harder for equivalent performance, which is why the more powerful option edges it as our favourite.

The sole 'normal' petrol option is the 55 TFSI, which uses a 340PS 3.0-litre engine. We've yet to try it, but it's likely to lack some of the low-down grunt of the diesel, needing to be worked harder.

At the top of the range, the Audi SQ7 range-topper has been offered in two flavours throughout its life. The earliest version has a 435PS 4.0-litre diesel V8, which has loads of low-end punch and feels really muscular, giving the SQ7 an impressive turn of pace and - at a cruise - half-decent fuel economy. It even sounds good, although throttle response isn't the best.

Later SQ7s, badged TFSI were instead fitted with a 507PS twin-turbo petrol V8 instead. These offer more performance over a broader rev range than the diesels, and respond better to throttle inputs. They are, however, noticeably more thirsty, although if you're in the market for an SQ7, that's unlikely to be a big issue. 

Finally, there’s also a diesel plug-in hybrid version that combined the V6 diesel engine with an electric motor to give 258PS, and the ability to run on all electric power alone for a few miles. We've yet to try that version, however, and not many are on the market.

All versions are mated to an eight-speed automatic gearbox, which slushes up and down the gears quickly, smoothly and easily. However, it’s sometimes hesitant to respond when you ask for a sudden burst of acceleration. That’s something you can say of most cars like this, but it’s particularly noticeable in the Q7.

Another area in which the Audi Q7 does a super-impressive job. Even on a coarsely surfaced motorway, you hear very little in the way of road noise, and wind noise is also very well isolated. You’ll barely hear a peep from the suspension, either, even when bumps in the road are doing their best to upset the calm. 

The engines we’ve tried, meanwhile, finish the job off spectacularly well. You’ll hear a bit of a clatter from the diesels when you first fire them up, but that melts away once they’re warmed through, and from then on, they’re fabulously quiet and smooth. You only really hear them if you really get your clog down, which you seldom need to thanks to the engines’ prodigious muscle, and even then, the faint noise you hear is more satisfying than troublesome. 

It's worth noting, however, that models fitted with the biggest wheels and lowest-profile tyres (such as the SQ7) do suffer from a bit more road noise. It's hardly intrusive, though. 

The Audi Q7 has scored the maximum five-star rating in Euro NCAP crash tests, and when you look at the amount of standard safety kit it gets, that’s really no surprise. There’s LED lighting front and rear, a shedload of airbags, tyre pressure monitoring, automatic emergency braking, traffic sign recognition, lane departure warning and no fewer than six Isofix mounting points for child seats. 

The roster doesn’t change too much as you move up the range, either, although the range-topping Vorsprung version does get a head-up display and a huge suite of autonomous driver assistance systems that’ll pretty much drive the car for you under certain circumstances.

The Audi Q7 plug-in hybrid is said to have a maximum theoretical range just shy of 40 miles on electric-only power, but what you actually get will depend on a number of factors: how you drive, the temperature, traffic conditions and so forth. In unfavourable conditions, you shouldn’t bank on getting more than 25-30 miles. A full charge of the battery will take around three hours on a 7kW wallbox charger or a little over twice that on a domestic three-pin plug.

Audi should benefit from the efficiencies of the wider VW Group, as its cars use a number of components shared across numerous brands and models. Despite this, Audi's performance in the 2023 HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index wasn't exactly dazzling. It was named 9th on the list of the 10 least reliable brands (although most of the problems reported seemed to be linked to the A4 and A6), and ranked a mediocre 16th out of 29 carmakers for overall owner satisfaction.

The Audi Q7 in particular is one of the brand's most complex and high-tech models, particularly if it's fitted with tech such as air suspension. That increases the possibility of expensive problems, but so far we've not heard of any major issues bar the odd problems with faulty sensors. 

On post-facelift (2019) Audi Q7s, insurance groups start at 35 for the 45 TDI Sport, and rise to 49 for the fire-breathing SQ7. However, the majority of versions sit in groups 40 or 41, so somewhere in the middle.

That means premiums won’t exactly be cheap, but then again, you wouldn’t expect them to be on a big, expensive car like the Q7, and they will at least be very competitive with those of rivals.

Due to new tax rules that came in on April 1st 2017, all Q7s registered after that date will pay annual tax of £580 per year between years two and six of the car's life (factoring in the 'premium' car tax charge for cars that cost over £40,000 when brand new, as all Q7s do), and annual bills will drop to £190 after that. The one exception is the E-Tron PHEV, which gets a discount of precisely a tenner thanks to its clever hybrid drivetrain - big deal. 

Cars registered before this date vary tremendously, however. E-Tron buyers pay absolutely nothing, while annual road tax charges on the other versions range between £165 on the entry-level diesel to £305 for the SQ7.

The trim levels available - and what came with them - has changed a bit during the Audi Q7’s life. Here, we’ll concentrate on post-facelift cars of 2019 and after, so bear in mind that there will be differences on earlier examples. The entry-level Sport version is the one to go for, because it gives you all the items of kit you could want, plus a few more besides.

That includes air suspension, leather upholstery, a powered tailgate, heated front seats, dual-zone climate control, cruise control, keyless go and front and rear parking sensors. S line cars don’t get much more other than sports seats in upgraded leather and a few styling bits, but nevertheless, this is still the most popular trim. 

The Black Edition adds a few more styling bits, along with sports suspension and four-zone climate control, where the Vorsprung is packed with pretty much anything your average luxury car owner could think of. Soft-close doors, four-wheel steering, heated rear seats, a BOSE sound system, a head-up display and autonomous driving aids are all provided.

There was another mild facelift in 2024 which saw S line trim become the entry-level offering, and some minor changes to the equipment lineup of each of the other trims.