Subaru Forester Review 2025: Price, specs & boot space

Unless you're hell bent on having something a bit different and/or want permanent all-wheel drive, you'll be better served with one of the Forester's many rivals. All that being said, we can't help but appreciate it for not running with the pack, and generally being quite charming.

There’s not a lot of choice to make, here. The Forester is only available with one engine, a 2.0-litre ‘boxer’ four-cylinder turbo petrol mild hybrid. Since there’s not a lot of price difference between the entry-level Limited trim grade and the range-topping Touring, we’d recommend opting for the latter.

There isn’t really anything truly similar to the Forester, with its unusual engine configuration and ‘proper’ all-wheel drive system making it a unique proposition. That said, there are plenty of more conventional mid to large-sized SUVs vying for your cash. 

All versions of the Forester hover around the £40,000 mark, which pits the vehicle against the likes of the Skoda Kodiaq and Volkswagen Tiguan, higher spec versions of the Mazda CX-5 and Kia Sportage, plus lower spec trims of more premium SUVs like the Mercedes GLB and Volvo XC60.

All of the Forester’s cheaper competitors have optional all-wheel drive systems, though, and as Subaru is particularly keen to point out, this makes the Forester the cheapest option in the segment with driven wheels at both ends of the car. Whether or not you need that is another matter, of course. 

The Forester feels well built inside and as though it'd wear the miles well, and given the rural lives a lot of these cars will experience, those will be tough-going miles. We have no grumbles about the quality, and nothing feels cheap, but it's not an especially premium-feeling cabin either. This segment has left the Forester behind in terms of luxury. 

The Forester's infotainment touchscreen has grown considerably with the 2025 model, which gets a massive 11.6-inch portrait display with a resolution of 1920x1080. Unfortunately, some of the physical climate controls have been 'absorbed' by the screen, though they are displayed permanently along the bottom, and there are proper buttons controlling the temperature of the climate zones flanking the display. 

The screen is reasonably responsive and easy enough to navigate, but its graphics a little dreary and old-fashioned looking. And speaking of old fashioned, it gets an aux input, which might have been a feature worth talking about in 2007. Choice is king, it seems, as along with the jack input, there are also USB sockets of the Type-C and Type-A varieties - of of each in the front, and one of each in the back. 

The inbuilt navigation works just fine, but again, it's not the most modern looking. You'd be better off using the included Apple CarPlay or Android Auto connectivity and beaming your preferred navigation app onto the screen.

There's plenty of headroom inside the Forester for both front and rear occupants, and legroom in the rear is decent. In terms of boot space, you get 508 litres with all seats in place, which is decent, but some way behind some rivals like the Skoda Kodiaq, which has a whopping 910 litres in its five-seater configuration. 

Drop the rear bench in the Forester, and the figure increases to 1,720 litres. Headroom under the boot has also been increased by 30mm, so you should be less likely to whack your head when loading things in there. Also making life easier is a powered tailgate you can open by waving your foot under the rear bumper on all but the entry-level Forester trim grade. 

There's only one combination on offer - a 2.0-litre 'e-Boxer' with a continuously variable transmission (CVT). A boxer engine is also known as a flat four or 'horizontally opposed' engine, with the pistons moving in opposite directions to each other, like a boxer punching. Sort of. It's a rare configuration - only Porsche makes engines like this, and although the Toyota GR86 has a boxer four, it's made by...Subaru. 

On that subject, the CVT is also an atypical kind of gearbox, although it's a more common offering than the boxer engine it's fitted to, with Honda and Toyota selling many cars arranged thusly. It's technically an automatic gearbox, although there aren't any 'gears', just one 'speed' which is able to continuously change its ratios, hence the 'continuously variable' bit. 

This is where the current Forester is most noticeably different from the outgoing model. Where the engine in that car would seem particularly vocal at high revs, it's much more hushed this time around, while wind and road noise have been dialed back to much more acceptable levels as well. Subaru claims to have reduced cain noise by 39%, and those are claims we readily believe.

The Subaru Forester was assessed by Euro NCAP at the end of 2024, and did very well for itself, earning the maximum five stars in its overall rating. Breaking down into the individual categories, it managed 83% for adult occupants, 89% for child occupants, 86% for vulnerable road users and 72% for its safety assist systems.

The Forester also gets a rejigged version of Subaru's EyeSight driving assistance suite, working out of new front and rear wide-angle cameras. Along with all the usual suspects like lane assistance and traffic sign recognition, there's also a new Emergency Driving Stop System that safely brings the car to a stop should the driver become incapacitated through a medial emergency. 

The systems could do with some polishing, though, with a few erroneous warnings cropping up during our drive, especially for the driver attention monitor. 

Being a new car on a reasonably fresh platform, it's hard to say how reliable the Forester will prove, but its engine, gearbox and all-wheel drive system are well proven. Plus, the few Subaru buyers out there are generally very happy with their purchases, with the brand as a whole and its products usually placing well in the HonestJohn.co.uk satisfaction index. 

Insurance groups for the Forester haven't yet been confirmed, but we're not anticipating any big changes from the outgoing model, which is in group 23. 

As an alternative fueled vehicle, the Forester is subject to an annual vehicle tax or vehicle excise duty (VED) of £180. Only the entry-level version escapes the government's premium car tax - all other derivatives are liable for an additional annual £410 charge from years two to five of ownership.

The range starts with the £38,995 Forester Limited, which comes with Subaru's Eyesight 4.0 suite of safety systems we detailed earlier, plus 18-inch alloy wheels, a wireless smartphone charger, electrically adjustable and heated front seats with memory on the driver's side, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and a 360-degree parking camera. 

Opting for the mid-spec Field adds tinted windows, a heated steering wheel, a powered tailgate with a 'gesture' opening feature (activated by waving your foot under the rear bumper), and navigation. Finally, the top-spec Touring includes all of the above and adds 19-inch wheels, heated rear seats, an electric sunroof and black leather trim.