Lexus RX review

Your starting point for the RX in entry-level Premium spec is £62,125, allied to the 350h powertrain. Then it’s exactly six grand more for Premium Plus, and £76,625 for top-spec Takumi. Upgrading to the 450+ PHEV is about £5k in each instance, while the 500h gets its own, single trim called F Sport: that’ll be £77,195 please.

All are pretty well-equipped, but the Premium Plus is probably the best value. Takumi grade offers adaptive suspension and BladeScan adaptive LED headlights (as well as stuff like 10-way adjustable electric seats), but Premium Plus has everything you actually need.

Some of the options are expensive, too: a panoramic roof is £1,750 and side steps are £725, though some of the really nice exterior colours are only £250. Plus, you can make it look lovely on the inside with some lighter leather options. A lightly-specced 450h+ in Sonic Copper with an Ammonite Sand interior and pan roof/protection pack weighs in at £75,495. Not cheap, but quite possibly value.

Lexus reckons that the sales split will favour the PHEV 450h+ by 55 per cent versus the other two models, and that’s handy as it’s also the best version - and the one we’d recommend.

And if I want the RX as a company car?

The 500h is faster and more dynamic, but it’s a reach for a car of this size with this kind of technology. A CO2 figure of 25-26g/km for the PHEV means eight per cent benefit-in-kind for business users in 2023/24 (which will go up by one per cent per year from 2025), so that’s a decent saving.

Insurance groups haven’t been set quite yet, but seeing as this is an expensive car, don’t expect it to be too cheap to insure, especially the hotter 500h. If you’re a private buyer, the PHEV is also the variant that seems to make the best use of the RX architecture, and it’s the most relevant.

In terms of warranty, there’s a three-year/60,000 mile ticket, but that gets extended if you get it serviced at a Lexus dealer every year for another 10k, up to 10 years or 100k miles. But let’s face it, Lexus are pretty good on the reliability front.