ALL NEW!! 2026 Toyota RAV4 vs Honda CR-V Review
I’m Yuri. I’m Jacob. And we’re going for a drive. The allne 2026 Rav 4 just came out. And we’re going to compare it to the Honda CRV in both of their most luxurious trims. Let’s start with the horsepower and torque. This Honda that I’m in has 204 horsepower from a 2 L 4-cylinder hybrid with a direct drive transmission. And that Toyota has 236 horsepower from a 2.5 L 4-cylinder hybrid with an ECVT. And I didn’t say any of the torque numbers because it’s not fair. Toyota doesn’t combine their numbers, but Honda does. And this is not the plug-in hybrid RAV 4, but there are plug-in hybrid RAV 4s available where there is no plug-in hybrid CRV. That’s right. So, these are just normal hybrids. You don’t really have to think about anything. You just kind of get in, drive, and start humming away. Okay, we’ll talk about the humming in a second, but first, the looks of both. Since this one has been redesigned, which one looks better, that older CRV looks or this newer RAV 4 looks? I personally think they both kind of look the same, but since I’ve been seeing that CRV for so many years on the road now, the RAV 4 does look a little spicier. Coming off that RAV 4 trip where we got to drive the GR Sport version, that was like burned into my memory. And seeing them both side by side, I kind of have to give it to the CRV. I just prefer the looks of it for some reason. Yeah, I I don’t know about that. To me, I think this grill kind of looks cool. Makes it look more Lexus than an older RAV 4. Seeing older Rav 4s on the road now, I’m like, h I don’t know. And then these headlights are cool on the RAV 4. The tail lights are awesome. They look Audi-ish. And then we also have nice wheels on here that aren’t just black. Yeah, the black wheels definitely lose on this Honda. I know Honda really likes to do like black editions and blacked out wheels. I don’t like those at all. So, the Toyota definitely wins. But more importantly, right now there’s a rebate for Continental tires. Click the top comment for full details of the $110 rebate. And Yuri, what would be the Continental recommended tire for both of these? the Viking Contact 8 because it’s winter, baby. Jacob got his VC8s on his car. I’m gonna get some VC8s on my Grand Caravan. When I get that, which should be anytime now. And the great news is that tire is eligible for the rebate. So, do you think the headlights and tail lights look cooler on the CRV than on this RAV 4 or what? H, it’s a tossup. I really do like the design of the RAV 4 tail lights, but they’re not illuminated evenly, which bothers me, but I guess it’s the Toyota, so it kind of makes sense. So, tail lights, I will give it to the CRV that I’m driving. But headlights, I do really like that Toyota like headlight. It’s It’s kind of cool. The Prius face is growing on me. Okay, body lines. Uh I think the CRV doesn’t hold a candle to the Rav 4’s updated body lines. We got a nice shot in the sun. You know, you know, and it’s got the same color as your Corvette. Beigious silver. Whether you’re going to admit it or not, it definitely doesn’t look like the same color as my Corvette, but I’m more than happy to show pictures of my Corvette. Look at me drifting. This thing’s the sickest. I love my Corvette. And then moving on to the back. Both have power liftgates. If I pop the trunk, I can see that I have, I think, a little more room in the CRV than we do in the RAV 4, but the RAV 4 has a lock to close button where the CRV doesn’t. So, that’s major points. And then you could also get a full spare in the RAV 4, but you can’t in the Honda. But if this was a drag race of trunks, the CRV closes faster. Yeah. And then you have to wait and then click the lock button. sucker. Okay, exhaust tips. Uh, we got no exhaust tips on the RAV 4 and doesn’t really sound like anything when you rev it. Doesn’t matter to these cars. And then the CRV has one exhaust tip and one plug. Yeah. So, I’m not really sure which one wins. Uh, let’s take a listen to some humming. Okay. So, they both make a humming noise from the outside cuz they’re hybrids. When you put it in reverse, they hum extra loud. When you’re driving around in just hybrid mode under like 30 kilometers on electric mode, the they both kind of hum a bit, but the CRV hums way louder. It’s way more annoying back to back. That one drives me more crazy. And and I don’t know if I could live with that humming. I don’t even know if I can live with Ubers coming up to my house with that humming. Yeah. So, I’ve been driving my son to school in this and it’s like a 30 km per hour zone. So, I can hear the humming while music is playing while I’m talking to my son. It is actually pretty annoying. And I know in the comments you guys are going to say it’s a regulation. However, that car also has to adhere to the same regulation. And that one is definitely not as loud. And if you put this thing into reverse, it’s even louder than this. Like, it’s crazy loud in the CRV. They don’t need to regulate this hard. Yeah. Like what? I thought there was like noise pollution laws. We’re not supposed to have loud exhaust, but we can have loud humming. What is this? Yeah. Anyway, it’s just like incredibly annoying. I hate it. It is really annoying. Like it’s actually been a grievance that I’ve noticed this week that I’m like, man, this actually sucks. Yeah. I can’t I can’t live with it. And then uh Okay, if we pop both hoods, I guess that’s probably where the humming comes from. We got orange cables cuz they’re both hybrids. The CRV has struts where the Rav 4 doesn’t. Who cares? Yeah, that was a noticeable difference. Maybe you’re a mechanic, but not us. And then, what is the Total Energy’s recommended oil for both of these suckers? For the Honda, it would be Total Energy’s quartz Ino XC50W20. And for that Toyota, it would be quartz 9000 extra0W8. And they both do pass the dipstick test, more importantly. Okay. What if we get to 0W0? Is that a thing? I don’t. It’s just water at that point, I guess, right? 0W minus 5. I don’t know how. Yeah. And if you get the plug-in hybrid version of that, it’s actually ZW16, oddly enough. Oh, and shout out when we went to see Mo Total Energies and we had the Indecent 911 in the booth. I think that was like the coolest car of the whole show. So many people took photos of that. Yeah. Thank you guys for coming up to us and uh meeting us at SEMA. We had a lot of fun. And then the last thing about the outside, which I think is very important, the door handles and the mirrors. So neither of the mirrors fold when you lock them. Fine. Both cars will make a beep when you close them. That’s nice. And then to lock and unlock, only the front door handles work. And then you can touch to close and they will also be set so that the back will open automatically. Not the best. It would nice if you could just unlock the back doors, but I guess this is like not full size SUV, but the Honda actually has way better doors in the back because they open 90°. So, it’s been really nice to get my son into the back. I guess on a positive note for the RAV 4, if you have two cars in your driveway and you don’t want to get door dings to yourself, maybe it’s nicer that your door doesn’t open all the way. So, the next thing about nice features that both of these have is remote start. Now, they do work on the key fob. The Toyota one has to kind of go through some satellites and you’ll eventually have to pay. I don’t believe the Honda one does that, but we had a little bit of a drag race to see which one would start the car first. Three, two, one, go. Is it on though? I don’t know. It doesn’t look No, there’s no lights. Nothing flashed. I don’t care if this car wins or loses. I’m just saying it’s frustrating. It’s not a competition. Not for us. We don’t care who wins or loses. Yeah, it was always so confusing in the Toyota. Like from my house, I’m clicking it and I have to look through my window to look in to see if smoke’s coming out or if the screen turns on and I still don’t know how to do it properly. I think you’re supposed to hold and click three times. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t know. Yeah, I’ve had to do that with the Honda as well. And I just wait for the lights to flash so many times and just waiting for that exhaust smoke. I don’t know how I’d be able to tell in the summer, though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not not my favorite, but I mean, they probably both have apps, which I don’t like to use for cars because then you’re going to have to pay subscriptions to cars, and I don’t like paying subscriptions to cars. I don’t either. Okay. So, comfort. We’ve both driven each one of them. Uh, is that one comfortable? Yes, this one’s very comfortable. And I am inclined to say that this one is more comfortable than the Toyota. The suspension is really, really good on both of them. But I think it might be marginally better on this Honda. And as well as the sound insulation and everything on this, it’s just such a luxurious feeling where it’s kind of almost like Acura Junior. Okay. Comfort feels equal to me. the whole luxuriousness thing. Like I feel like they’re pretty the same. Like there there’s nothing luxurious about it because you know it’s a Honda, you know it’s a Toyota. Like it’s just normal nice. No, but this one just looks nicer. And then all the touch points like starting with the steering wheel. The steering wheel on the Honda, the leather that they use, it’s like a nice smooth, very, very nice black leather. Whereas that one is like kind of this weird gray sandpapery leather. It doesn’t feel very nice. I think it feels fine because I know there’s urethane RAV four wheels that feel really not fine. And like when you look at this gigantic screen, like okay, maybe the screen’s a bit too big, but it does look fancier in here. And then like all the button placement, the way it’s like molded in, I think looks cooler on the RAV 4. Not that I really care because at the end of the day, I would much rather have the climate controls, hard buttons from the CRV than this touch stuff in the RAV 4, which I think the CX-5 is also getting all the touch in the infotainment, which I also think is going to be a red flag when that comes out to review. Yeah, the usability of this CRV I think is definitely better. I do prefer the smaller screen. It is Android Autobased, so we do have Google Maps built in. And the one update that I noticed, actually two updates because we did previously complain about this is that now you can do satellite view in the built-in Google Maps and you can also turn off saving your search history so that if you share your car, you’re not going to know where the other person went. This has something that your car doesn’t now have. It has a built-in dash camera. It works awesome. It loops constantly. It detects incidents. It works great. You can pick through all the different camera lenses and stuff while you’re doing it. But you can also It also detects your location. So, as you’re going through the camera, your spouse can get in and just like check everywhere you went based on your uh drive recorder GPS positioning. Interesting. There you go. So, you’re cheating on your spouse, but uh you can click like the top right shortcut key to record it all. It all works like pretty all right. It is really cool having a built-in dash cam that I think you need to unload to a USBC drive after the fact. It’s It’s crazy that more cars don’t have such a good built-in dash camera at all time. Yeah, it’s really nice. And I mean, I’m sure when the Honda does get updated, because now this is a couple years not as new as that, it’ll probably get something like that because Honda does like to add features like that. You know, there these are direct rivals. So, if one has it, the other one’s going to get it if it doesn’t have it yet. Oh, my car just started humming and I could like just barely hear it. I bet you yours is screaming. I can hear the humming. Like, we’re just stopped at a light. I could I could hear from the outside. Yeah, my windows are up. Like, air conditioner, heaters going, like this is this is bad. Okay, combined with that humming, there is one more red flag which would make me not want the CRV. No 360 camera, bro. No 360 camera at all. You’ve got like a 15-year-old awful reverse camera. This has the craziest 360 camera of all time. You can see everything. You can see under the car. It is fan freakingastic. Full like 180°ree. So, that stupid fence that I have in my house, I could see little kids riding on bikes. My neighbor kid just got an ATV. So, now I got to watch out for a 5-year-old on an ATV. The lack of 360 camera doesn’t bother me, but it is not a feature check mark, but the quality of the reverse camera on the CRV is just atrocious. Yeah. Yeah. And then like even like the Honda Odyssey still doesn’t have a 360 camera. So, I feel like it’s going to be another full life cycle before the CRV gets a 360 camera. Yeah, I think you’re right about that. Uh, so in the CRV we do have a wireless charger, which is nice. What about the uh Toyota over there? Two wireless chargers, bro. Damn, bro. Okay. Cup holders, they fit a small cup. No problem. Your your cup holders are back more, so you got to zoo your wrist. Mine are to the right because I got this fake shifter instead of a normal shifter. Shout out. Uh, there’s no zooing of my wrist, but I really do like to rest my hand on this regular shifter in the CRV. Like, I I love that actually. Oh, my car is breaking on its own. Whoa. Oh, you see that? Oh, you got to turn off that thing in the gauge cluster. That’s nice. Luxurious. Okay, so this has a lot of safety features. A ton of safety features, which is great. It’s got eye monitoring for your adaptive coolers, rain center, lane centering. And then if you click this button at the top right, you can get a shortcut to your driving assist, and then view all to see all your driving assists. Pretty awesome. How about the Honda? I’m sure it has some of that stuff. I haven’t really touched anything other than the adaptive cruise and lane keep assist. And the adaptive cruise is good. lane keep assist could be better. So, it’s okay. Yo, it sounds to me like this RAV 4 is beating the CRV in every single way, which makes sense because it is coming off a fresh update. So fresh that pricing is still questionable. Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, we have both in this wired and wireless, just like in the CRV. But I have noticed that every time I used wireless CarPlay in this RAV 4, it wouldn’t automatically connect. I had to go through the settings and click my phone and then connect to CarPlay. So, minus one point, the Toyota infotainment team and the CRV does have wired and wireless and the addition of built-in Google maps here. Although it does not have Sirius XM, so that may be a point against, but uh more importantly, miles per gallon. Okay, mileage. These are hybrids, right? The Honda, it’s going to be pretty good. It’s got 2 L 4-cylinder, right? You got a 2.5 big block. The Honda has 37 miles per gallon combined. And that Toyota has 44 MPGon combined, even more. Okay, I am seeing uh 6.2 L per 100 km, 6.1 L per 100 km, 5.8 L per 100 km on averages from previous days of driving. I couldn’t figure out how to do a proper trip computer reset in this. It is a little bit confusing. This one currently shows me 7.8 L per 100 over uh 250 km, but that’s also a lot of sitting idling, so it’s not exactly fair. Yeah, I know. Maybe they’re about even. I would say they’re definitely not about even. Where they’re also not even is the towing capacity. this Honda 1,000 lb, which is maybe a couple bicycles on a little uh trailer. When towing is at 1,000, it’s not even there. Just pretend like that doesn’t exist. Uh the Toyota in the most correct towing trim is up to 3500 lb. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s not this model, bro. I said in the most correct trim. So, uh I guess if we’re talking about different trims, go to tssp.trcar.com truecar.com and find the trim that you would like for the CRV or the RAF 4 or one of the competition. Yeah, because these are actually the best sellers from both of these companies and probably in this class. Okay, rewind. You said Sirius XM. This does have Sirius XM. You can use voice control to get to it since there’s no tuning knob. It is a little tricky and they got rid of the numbers of the channel. So, you really need to know exactly what channel you want before diving into it, which I do not like, but it does have rewinding and that stuff. Sound system’s good. How about your sound system? Good enough? More than good enough. I had no complaints listening to my Spotify this week. Seat presets on both of these cars. Very nice. I noticed that in the back where my child’s child seat is, she could not reach the window switch, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your situation. And my son knows not to touch the windows, so I didn’t have a problem with any of that. Uh, do you fit in the back of both cars? Uh, very comfortably front and back of both of these. Nice. And uh if you wanted to eat tacos and make a mess over your armrest, could you take it, flip it out, and put it upside down to the plastic side up and just eat spaghetti like uh AI Will Smith? Uh depending on how quickly I can break these hinges off. No. No, I can’t actually. And then drive modes, you know, we both have a little bit of off-road drive mode, a little bit of sport eco drive mode. Got an EV button, you know, nothing too crazy. Well, speak for yourself, bro. We don’t have any off-roads over here. We have normal, eco, snow, and individual. Snow is off. Snow counts. Snow counts. No, it snows on the road. My My trail/ snow button is my off-road, not my drive mode. Ah, yes. You have like two different buttons for off-roadiness. I don’t have any of that stuff. So, most importantly with these hybrid crossover SUVs, the power, the linearity, how everything feels. Okay, so they are basically evenly matched even though the horsepower numbers would suggest that one of them is much faster than the other. They are not. We’ve done some simulated testing and they are basically the same. It’s just whoever gets the jump basically wins and it’s like by millimeters or inches depending on where you live. But the CRV does feel better to me because it feels more like an EV where that direct drive transmission. It just like slingshots you and it just feels very smooth and kind of natural, at least very EV like. And that Toyota kind of feels a little bit more coarse. The engine is a little bit louder. It feels like it’s like CVTing more fake gears. So, I prefer the powertrain in the Honda. I’ll take that little CVT grinding noise in the background constantly over that hum. I just can’t get over it, man. Should we switch it up and see if we have any final thoughts about driving the other one before we get to the price and decide which one we both like more? No. I’m really comfortable in here. You don’t want to switch it up? No. All right. Well, that’s fair cuz when I got in the CRV, I noticed that it was a little like roomier and cavernier. What did he say? Which was kind of cool for a bigger guy like yourself. But I think it’s called cavernous. Yeah, that’s that’s the one. I feel perfectly fine in here. And I do really love this extra-l large moon roof. Yeah, I’ve got a pretty small moon roof. And looking down at my very nice climate controls, as I’ve been reminded of, I have heated seats and a heated steering wheel. Do you have heated seats and a steering wheel or do you have cooled seats as well? I have heated seats, cooled seats, and a heated steering wheel. And at this park right now, while I’m adjusting my heated seats, I do not hear any humming. Okay, so let’s do the visor test, Yuri, before we finish this car review. Three, two, one. So this this little panel, I can angle it up and block the sun in that specific way where that Defender Octa we reviewed, even though it had an extending one, couldn’t cover my eye. Still a fail, though. Maybe I got to put some respect on that little panel. All right. No, no, no, no. All right, with everything out of the way, I think it’s time we get to the price. Here’s where it gets funny. Once again, the CRV is $51,500 Canadian. And we don’t yet have a price for that Toyota for any of the new Rav 4s. Okay. But it’s probably going to be equivalently priced, maybe slightly higher since it has more features, right? 360 camera. I think it’s pretty safe to say that it will be slightly higher priced than the Honda. And my whole reasoning where I didn’t want to switch into that Toyota is because after this comparison, I would honestly go with the CRV. I hate the humming. But I like everything else about this so much that I would still take this. That humming is so red flaggable. Like I could not live with that. My wife was like, “Oh, that’s not a big deal.” And when I actually had a press car and then I put into reverse, she was in the house. She’s like, “I could hear that echoing through the wall.” And then my brother and then also my mom both have CRVS. I don’t know how they ended up with CRVS, but they got non-hybrids. Thank God. Or else I’d have to cancel all family reunions. Yeah. I mean, also a non-hybrid I’d take of this versus that as well. So, there’s that. Although, the, you know, wild card enters the game. The GR Sport of the Rav 4 I would take over any of these CRVS. You got an off-roady one, you got an onroddy one. No, I’m taking GR Sport over anything. And that one was pretty much just as comfortable as this one. And then if I’m comparing both of these two, honestly, I would rather just go with this Rav 4. Like, I just can’t do the humming. And I love 360 cameras. The subscriptions are going to suck. The not figuring out remote start is going to suck, but it doesn’t suck as much as I definitely don’t blame you for that. It is quite annoying in this, but everything else just kind of to me makes up for it. I really like how this interior feels and driving it. There’s no crashiness. It’s just very nice, soft. I really like it. Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Next up, we are going to compare the Honda Prelude versus the Toyota Prius cuz they look the same, right? Oh, good one. I don’t know. I don’t know. Thanks for watching. See you at the next one. It’ll be a Bugatti versus a Koig just to balance things out a little bit. This will never happen. Never in our lives. I’m Yuri. I’m Jacob. And we just went for a drive. Watch this other SUV video.
Yuri and Jakub compare the 2026 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid vs 2026 Honda CRV Hybrid on The Straight Pipes. At around $51,500 CAD would you take CRV or the RAV4?
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