2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport Review: Better Specs, Weaker Vibes

Date June 5, 2025
Category
News
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport Review: Better Specs, Weaker Vibes

The first, third, and fifth-generation 4Runners are among my all-time favorite vehicles. They have a few key elements in common: Mechanical simplicity, clean and enduring designs, and trick roll-down rear hatch windows. The new sixth-generation 2025 Toyota 4Runner has one of those things.

Today’s redesigned T4R is certainly not bad. I enjoyed the heck out of bombing around backwoods Ulster County with it, and Bramble the dog delighted in sticking her snout out the back on some warm spring days. I’ve now also driven this vehicle on Hell’s Revenge in Moab, Utah, and re-confirmed its capability beyond pavement. It still has some of the jauntiness that makes every ride feel a little adventurous, which is the real reason most people buy an off-road SUV in the first place.

Most significantly, the 2025 model is the first 4Runner in 15 years to get a new powertrain. It has two new powertrains, three if you count the rear-drive base models Toyota builds to advertise a low starting price. (But who the heck wants a two-wheel drive 4Runner?) The thirsty but stalwart V6 is gone; now you can have a turbo four or a turbo four that’s also a gas-electric hybrid.

2025 Toyota 4Runner headed down a dirt road.
2025 Toyota 4Runner cockpit, blue interior trim
2025 Toyota 4Runner side profile silhouette view.
Andrew P. Collins

I love that Toyota finally got the 4Runner’s mpgs out of the teens. But the ugly side of modernization is annoyingly apparent here, too. Big chunks of pointless plastic adorn the body and interior; screens span the driver’s view; the hood’s high enough to make you want a periscope. The sixth-gen T4R got a tiny bit bigger and more powerful than the outgoing model. The back seat still isn’t particularly spacious, but the new truck is a lot closer to “quick” than the outgoing model.

This isn’t a negative review, I like the truck … I just wanted to love it.

The Basics

The Toyota 4Runner now sits on the same TNGA-F platform as the Land Cruiser, Tacoma, Tundra, and Sequoia along with the Lexus GX and LX. That doesn’t make all those vehicles exactly the same, but there is more overlap than ever in capability and capacities. The Tacoma and 4Runner are most closely related—sit in the front seat or stare straight at the grille, and it’s tough to tell the pickup from the SUV.

Consolidating the design of two of the brand’s most iconic vehicles seems nuts to me. But hey, at least it makes them each cheaper to build. As of this writing, the 4Runner is still built in Japan while Tacomas are made in Mexico. What the rapidly shifting sands of U.S. import regs will do to its pricing long-term remains to be seen, but 4Runners have had insanely high resale value for as long as I’ve been driving, and I wouldn’t count on that changing soon.

2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport, white, front three-quarter view
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport wheel
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport hood scoop
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport cargo bay.
Andrew P. Collins

The main bullet points describing the old 4Runner still apply to the new one: It’s a boxy ladder-frame SUV with five seats (plus a third row in some trims), low-range gearing for crawling, and soft suspension suited for rough-country adventuring.

2025 Toyota 4Runner door handle.
The 4Runner’s door handles are great. Easy to grab, feel solid, look good. Don’t discount the value of high-quality touchpoints—you’re going to use this handle every time you use the car. Andrew P. Collins

The 4Runner trim levels pretty much carry over, too. SR5 is the base, then there are some base-plus options, then there’s the most on-road-friendly Limited and the high-capability TRD Pro. Trailhunter is new, but we’ll talk about that one another time.

Less visually obvious but important changes from the outgoing T4R to this one include a slightly bigger body, slightly longer wheelbase, and considerably smaller fuel tank. Base models weigh about the same, but the new hybrid TRD Pros are much heavier than the old V6 models. Approach and departure angles and ground clearance are essentially unchanged.

2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport, white, on an epic adventure river crossing.
Andrew P. Collins

Moving from an ancient five-speed auto (which was actually a four-speed auto with an overdrive setup) to an eight-speed is also a big deal and surely has a big hand in the sixth-gen T4R’s fuel economy figures.

The new 2.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder base engine makes a smidge more horsepower than the old 4.0-liter V6, and the i-Force Max hybrid powertrain has much more oomph. The hybrid system in this application is to add power, not increase efficiency. But it also adds quite a bit to the list price. I drove the non-hybrid so we’ll keep this review focused on the lower-end 2025 4Runners.

Here’s a look at how the non-hybrid I4 base trucks compare to the outgoing V6-powered SR5 base model:

Base Model Comparison
5th Gen vs 6th Gen		2024 SR5 (V6, 5-Speed AT)
5th Gen		2025 SR5 (I4T, 8-Speed AT)
6th Gen
Horsepower270 hp @ 5,600 rpm278 hp @ 6,000 rpm
Torque278 lb-ft @ 4,400 rpm317 lb-ft @ 1,700 rpm
Fuel Capacity23 gallons19 gallons
Combine MPG1721
Curb Weight4,675 pounds4,685 pounds
Payload Capacity (GVWR minus curb)1,625 pounds1,390 pounds
Length190.2 inches194.9 inches
Width75.8 inches77.9 inches
Wheelbase109.8 inches112.2 inches

The new T4R’s fuel economy and low-end torque increase are the vehicle’s biggest improvements on paper. The reduced fuel tank size and cut in carrying weight capacity are where the new model lost some ground, though under favorable and equal conditions, the 2.4-liter turbo four should yield a better cruising range than the old V6, even with a few fewer gallons of gasoline on board.

We didn’t drive the TRD Pro for this review, but I also want to compare how the top off-road 4Runner’s specs evolved from fifth (2024) to sixth gen (2025). The power increase is substantial, but look how low the payload capacity is. Keep in mind that passengers will eat into that figure, so if you put four 150-pound humans in a 2025 TRD Pro, you’ve only got 450 pounds of headroom for gear and cargo.

Performance Trim Comparison
5th Gen vs 6th Gen		2024 TRD Pro (V6, 5-Speed AT)
5th Gen		2025 TRD Pro (I4T Hybrid, 8-Speed AT)
6th Gen
Horsepower270 hp @ 5,600 rpm326 hp @ 6,000 rpm
Torque278 lb-ft @ 4,400 rpm465 lb-ft @ 1,700 rpm
Fuel Capacity23 gallons19 gallons
Combine MPG1723
Curb Weight4,750 pounds5,455 pounds
Payload Capacity (GVWR minus curb)1,550 pounds1,050
Length191.3 inches194.9 inches
Width75.8 inches79.9 inches
Wheelbase109.8 inches112.2 inches

Driving the Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport

The breadth of 4Runner trim levels is confusing, and we haven’t even talked about the model I drove yet: The TRD Sport. TRD Sport is the second-lowest model you can now order. A four-wheel drive SR5 base is about $45,000, and the four-wheel drive TRD Sport is around $51,000.

This is the variant I bet most people looking to leave the Toyota lot with the “affordable option” will get upsold to, because you need it if you want even modest comforts like heated seats. It also comes with cooler wheels than the base car and a plastic hood bulge that looks neat in pictures and dorky in real life.

Sitting behind the steering wheel feels like being in a baby’s high chair made to look like a car. Lots of big, chunky plastic pieces molded to look like more impressive metals, intensely saturated colors, and a dazzling array of blinking lights to entertain you. Above the dashboard, you’ll see the piano black plastic hood garnish.

2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport, white, rear quarter view with a dog poking out the window.
Dog looking out the back window of a 2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport, white.
The retractable rear window was really popular with my canine colleagues. Andrew P. Collins

Eventually, your eyes make their way to the tank-slit sized view of the road and horizon above the expansive hood and below the scowling roofline.

One piece of the new 4Runner’s cockpit that I genuinely enjoyed was the shifter. No knob, no weird button or twist action, just a huge scepter-stick stick to ram through a good ol’ fashion PRNDL gate as you back out of your driveway and boogie to the boondocks.

2025 Toyota 4Runner shifter.
I love a good column shifter too, but this console shifter is very satisfying to use and rest your hand on. Andrew P. Collins

The lower-spec 4Runners like this TRD Sport have a much smaller central infotainment screen than the high-feature trims. To me, this is a huge plus. The base screen is reasonably sized—it’s not a postage stamp, just not comparable to a TV at Buffalo Wild Wings like the screen you get in a TRD Pro.

2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport cargo area view.
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport cargo area view.
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport cargo cover.
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport cargo area view.
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport cargo area view.
Here’s a little tour of the rear cargo area. There’s no shortage of cubbies and corners to store things—the two-row still has the three-row model’s rear arm rests, which you can use when you’re tailgating. The second row folds forward, but the seats still take up a lot of room. Andrew P. Collins

I had no issues at all with the non-hybrid turbo four’s acceleration. The truck rides really nicely on roads and ripped-up country lanes. Steering feels fine, modern. In daily driving scenarios, the TRD Sport is definitely truckish, but it’s not wallowy or janky-feeling.

To me, the suspension and tire combination is well-suited to the task at hand: “I want to feel like I’m in a classic 4×4 but without the misery” is pretty much why you’d buy a low-trim 4Runner, right? That imperative is well satisfied by this truck. It runs a dirt-bias road tire that’s going to give you enough traction to occasionally get through gravel and gunk without hurting fuel economy too much.

Value and Verdict

The sixth-generation 4Runner meaningfully advances the platform by improving fuel economy and power delivery. The design is pretty bland but inoffensive. But the fully digital gauge cluster feels cheap, and so do a lot of the materials you’ll find around the cockpit.

2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport standing proud in the woods.
Andrew P. Collins

Objectively speaking, Toyota successfully updated the platform without straying too far from its enthusiast appeal. As an enthusiast myself, I’m just not that excited about it. Especially when the new Land Cruiser feels a lot more luxe for not too much more money—but that’s a blog for another day.

I think the TRD Off-Road, which starts at about $50,000, is the best value of the 2025 4Runner range. That won’t get you the hybrid powertrain, but it does give you a good combo of novelty features like Multi-Terrain Select with Crawl Control and some Bilstein shocks for rough terrain, plus comforts like heated seats.

2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport dashboard at night.
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport middle screen
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport door pockets.
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport HVAC controls
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport driver aux buttons
2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport drive mode switch.
The cockpit looks a lot cooler in pictures than it does in reality. Still, I strongly prefer the base model’s simple HVAC and small screen to the higher-trim models gigantic center screen. Andrew P. Collins

Got a tip? Or a different take on the new Toyota 4Runner? Send us a note at tips@thedrive.com.

2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport Specs
Base Price (As Tested)$49,250 ($51,573)
Powertrain2.4-liter I4 turbo | 8-speed auto | 4-wheel drive
Horsepower278 hp @ 6,000 rpm
Torque317 lb-ft @ 1,700 rpm
Seating Capacity5
Curb Weight4,685 pounds
Ground Clearance8.8 inches
Approach, Breakover, Departure Angle18 deg | 24 deg | 22 deg
EPA Fuel Economy19 city | 25 highway | 21 combined
Score7.5/10

Quick Take

The sixth-gen 4Runner meaningfully advances the platform on fuel economy and power delivery, but it’s lost a little charm.

The post 2025 Toyota 4Runner TRD Sport Review: Better Specs, Weaker Vibes appeared first on The Drive.