2023 Toyota RAV4 Reviews, Pricing & Specs

The RAV4 is offered in six trim levels for 2023, giving shoppers a range of options from the sub-$30K RAV4 LE to the ventilated-seat-sporting RAV4 Limited, with two off-road-friendly trims among those that fall in the middle of the pricing spectrum. The 2023 RAV4 sticks closely to the design introduced for 2019, particularly with the Adventure and TRD Off-Road trims, which are set apart from the others by their retention of the two-part face.

We tested the Adventure trim, which shifts the Toyota badge downwards closer to the center of the more aggressively styled grille. It also blacks out the wheels and adds a faux skid plate (only the RAV4 TRD Off-Road gets a real skid plate) and beefier, more obvious black cladding around the wheel arches, but this is more of a poseur than a doer. It’s wearing the jacket, but it’s not actually hitting the slopes.

The Adventure trim also adds orange accents to the interior: The seats sport a stripe down the middle and are trimmed with contrast stitching, and orange plastic borders punch up the otherwise relatively basic center console.

Our RAV4 sported a frameless rearview mirror, a touch that lended a sense of premium in an otherwise fairly pedestrian interior. Shoppers looking for a more premium feel might consider the relatively new Toyota Venza, which rides on the same platform but offers a more car-like experience compared to the RAV4’s somewhat more rough-and-tumble, truck-like nature.

LE and XLE trims get fabric seats, while XLE Premium upgrades to synthetic leather (SofTex) upholstery. Levels of manual and power adjustability vary by trim, culminating with heated and ventilated power-adjustable (eight way for driver and four-way for passenger) front seats complete with two-position seating memory for the driver. Heated rear seats and a heated steering wheel are available as part of various options packages. Dual-zone climate control is standard on all but the base trim.

The 2023 RAV4 comes standard with front-wheel drive (FWD), except for the Adventure and TRD Off-Road trims: They are all-wheel-drive (AWD) by default, as they should be. Any trim can be upgraded to AWD, which will add a Snow Mode as well, and shoppers considering the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid or Prime should be aware that both hybrid powertrains are offered exclusively with AWD.

Treating the hybrids as separate models translates to a single engine choice for the 2023 RAV4 running purely on gas power. The 2.5-liter four-cylinder makes 203 horsepower and 184 lb-ft of torque. It’s paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission which, while preferable in our book to the continuously variable transmission (CVT) found in competitors like the Honda CR-V, does not do it any favors in the acceleration department. If you keep your foot matted, it’ll get there, but we’d place its performance closer on the spectrum to “unobjectionable” than “exciting.” What this setup may lack in pep it makes up for in noise. It’s not as loud as the boxer you’ll find in the Subaru Forester, but it’s definitely not quiet.

Again, the RAV4 Adventure shows up as only the hopeful tagalong, not able to join its TRD Off-Road sibling on the more exciting amusement park rides. Its 19-inch wheels come wrapped in all-season tires, and it has the same MacPherson independent front suspension and multi-link rear suspension that underpin the other RAV4s. The TRD Off-Road, meanwhile, sports 18-inch wheels with Falken All-Terrain tires, a TRD-tuned version of the suspension, and unique components like shocks and jounce bumpers.

Like its competitors, the RAV4 is built to seat five. With the moonroof, it provides 37.7 inches of headroom in the front row and 39.5 in the back seats, meaning it offers less headroom for driver and front passenger than either the Honda CR-V or the Subaru Forester, but more for those in the rear seats. Leg room measures 41 inches in the front and 37.8 in the second row, placing front-row leg room in line with the CR-V’s but losing out to both the CR-V and the Forester in the back. The back seat is also significantly narrower than either of those two competitors’.

Whether you prioritize head-, leg-, or hip room for that second row will likely depend on your most frequent passengers, but that may help inform your choice in a competitive segment. Do note that the 2023 RAV4 offers its front passenger plenty of convenient storage options, with a shelf running the length of the glove compartment and generous door pockets large enough for a water bottle. Front-row center cupholders sit side by side, and we appreciate the lever-style gear shifter, particularly in a vehicle aspiring to a certain amount of ruggedness.

Of course, no discussion of storage is complete without addressing cargo space. The 2023 RAV4 provides 37.5 cubic feet of space behind the second row, or 69.8 with the rear seats folded. That puts it around the middle of the pack, ahead of competitors like the Mazda CX-5, but behind the class-leading (on storage space, anyway) Honda CR-V.

For 2023, Toyota has finally brought a new infotainment system to the RAV4. Granted, tech may not have been top of its buyers’ priority lists, given the model’s more-than-respectable sales figures, but now, shoppers don’t have to actively back-burner it. Screen sizes are catching up with the modern era—an 8.0-inch touchscreen is standard, supplanted by a 10.5-inch touchscreen for Limited and TRD Off-Road trims—and the latest software supports over-the-air (OTA) updates. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity now come standard, along with voice command.

Our RAV4 Adventure tester had the upgraded multimedia system which, according to the builder tool on Toyota’s website, comes at an extra cost of $3,490. This meant we got not only the 10.5-inch screen but also an 11-speaker JBL Premium audio system rather than the base six-speaker stereo. A 7-inch driver-information display is standard for the 2023 RAV4, and the Limited trim gets a 12.3-inch version which can also be added to TRD Off-Road, but not to Adventure, XLE Premium, or any other trim.

Standard safety features for the full 2023 RAV4 lineup include lane-departure warning with steering assist (a combination also known as lane-keeping assist), automatic emergency braking, automatic high-beam LED headlights, and a pre-collision system with pedestrian detection, as well as higher-end driver-assistance features like adaptive cruise control. Blind-spot monitoring with rear cross-traffic alert is available on the base LE model and standard starting with XLE.

While the 2022 RAV4 came with Toyota Safety Sense 2.0, the new RAV4 is equipped with the TSS 2.5 suite of advanced driver-assistance systems. The updated version includes Full-Speed Range Dynamic Radar Cruise Control, meaning the adaptive cruise control system can operate at speeds below 20 mph.

This fifth-generation RAV4 performed well in evaluations with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The 2019 model achieved top scores in crash-testing, and its middling marks in the updated side and moderate overlap front crash tests did not prevent the 2023 RAV4 from earning a 2023 Top Safety Pick+ award. (The 2022 model was a Top Safety Pick, no plus.)

New-car pricing for the 2023 Toyota RAV4 starts at $28,275 and goes up from there. We spent our test-drive miles behind the wheel of the 2023 Toyota RAV4 Adventure, which came to a total sticker price of $39,894 (including the $1,335 destination fee).

The base LE trim gets 27 mpg city, 35 highway, and 30 combined with FWD, which hardly suffers for adding AWD: That will bring it down to 34 highway, while the combined fuel economy stays the same. EPA ratings place the Adventure trim we drove at 25 city, 33 highway, and 28 combined thanks to its larger wheels (LE comes with 17-inchers). To put this into context, the most-efficient version of the Nissan Rogue is rated for up to 33 mpg combined, and the Honda CR-V hits 30 mpg combined with FWD, 29 with AWD. If fuel-efficiency is a priority for you, consider the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid (base MSRP of $31,225) or the plug-in hybrid Toyota RAV4 Prime ($43,090), each of which is reviewed separately.

Naturally, all three RAV4 variants come with Toyota’s three-year/36,000-mile basic and five-year/60,000-mile powertrain warranties. The Kia Sportage and Hyundai Tucson each boast a 5-year/60,000-mile basic warranty and a 10-year /100,000-mi powertrain warranty, but Toyota’s offering is respectable and on par with those of rivals like the Subaru Forester. To sweeten the deal, Toyota also includes two years or 25,000 miles of no-cost maintenance.

The RAV4 is a no-brainer for Toyota loyalists in the market for a compact SUV, and we’d argue that it deserves a look from more open-minded shoppers as well. It offers outstanding safety, and if it doesn’t earn breathless accolades in other areas, it also fails to collect any black marks. And that constitutes an accolade in and of itself.