Lexus NX review

You’re immediately struck as you get inside the NX at how the dashboard is more driver focused, with the front passenger given a bit more room to relax. Mostly, the readouts and switches are where you'd expect to find them, so it's untaxing to operate.

The aesthetics are largely successful. It looks good in that pleasantly alternative way that Lexus has cultivated over the years. There are caveats though: the smaller touchscreen is swamped by the dash surround (the actual real estate doesn’t get any smaller as the inches are shed) and the interior is quite colour sensitive. To our eyes the red accents don’t really work, but we enjoyed the black and white interior with black ash accent strips about the place.

Back seat room is fine. Again, another reason families buy crossovers. The NX’s boot space hasn’t been compromised by its new PHEV status – Lexus knows a thing or two about squirrelling batteries away around the car. You get 545 litres of space in the boot of the NX, which increases to 1,436 litres with the back seats folded down. There’s even a little room underneath the boot floor for you to stow away the charging cable in the plug-in version of the car.

If you've read about – or worse, used – the awful mouse-like screen controller of the old NX, rejoice. It's gone. The new screen is touch-controlled, fast-acting and has clean graphics. There are permanent switches for most of what you need to reach quickly. Many versions have a head-up display. It's easy to find the menu to disable the ridiculously over-active lane-keep assist - good thing too. Pity it has to, by law, default to 'on' every time you start the car.

While the infotainment is a massive improvement versus the old NX, Lexus has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by adding touch-sensitive buttons to the steering wheel. They're fiddly, annoying and undo most of the good work Lexus has done to make the NX's interior, well, make sense. If only we could have the old NX's steering wheel in here, with the new giant touchscreen. Then they'd have been onto a winner. 

A concierge climate system automatically turns on the heated seats and steering wheel when it's cold. Or you can do it on the remote app before you get in. The price includes four years of connectivity for that purpose, and more important remote charging, traffic maps and over-the-air (OTA) updates. One of the first OTA upgrades will be to add remote parking so you can get out and watch it wedge itself into a space too narrow for you to open the doors. Or instruct it to come to you if someone has come along and parked tight up to it.