2024 Subaru Ascent Reviews, Pricing & Specs

Subaru struggles with styling. Every once in a while, the company’s designers pen an appealing vehicle, only to mess with it during a refresh. That’s happened with the latest Subaru Ascent, which last year grew some visually offensive tusks and a boldly obnoxious spear running across the grille and into the headlights.

In Canada, the 2024 Ascent lineup is unchanged, so it continues in Convenience, Touring, Onyx, Limited, and Premier trim levels. Prices range from $44,674 to $57,674, including the destination charge of $2,295 and other dealer fees. Our test vehicle is in the U.S. version of the Premier trim level, which sits at the top of that range.

A panoramic sunroof is standard in Canada starting from the Touring trim. Some features that are exclusive to the Premier include premium Nappa leather upholstery, ventilated front seats, and a surround-view camera. A navigation system and a 14-speaker Harman Kardon premium sound system are included on both the Limited and Premier trims. In other words, the Premier includes everything Subaru can install on an Ascent, aside from items on the lengthy menu of accessories, like wireless smartphone charging.

The quality of the interior materials in our Subaru Ascent Premier looked good. The design is straight out of the Subaru playbook, though, appearing as though the company snapped together modular components like a giant Lego set. It’s functional and practical but doesn’t look sophisticated or modern.

Every 2024 Ascent has a turbocharged 2.4-litre four-cylinder engine making 260 horsepower at 5,600 rpm and 277 pound-feet of torque between 2,000 and 4,800 rpm. A continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT) powers all four wheels through a standard all-wheel-drive (AWD) system with active torque vectoring. Subaru says you can tow up to 2,270 kilograms (5,000 pounds) with the Ascent (908 kilograms/2,000 pounds of towing capacity with the Convenience trim).

The Ascent is right at home in the places you’re most likely to drive it. Whether in the city or suburbs, on rural gravel roads or remote dirt trails, or traveling coastal routes or multi-lane highways, this SUV is an agreeable companion during the daily grind and on weekend adventures.

For example, it blazed over local neighbourhood speed humps like they didn’t exist and blasted across rutted off-road terrain with ease. The Ascent drove like a rally car on a winding washboard gravel road and effortlessly cleared jutting rocks on a trail. Like the Subaru Forester and Outback, the biggest Subaru crossover also handled the battles of the school drop-off lane and market parking lot with ease, and merging into fast-flowing traffic wasn’t a problem for its turbocharged four-cylinder engine.

With a classic Subaru boxer design, the turbo 2.4-litre four-cylinder engine delivers good power accompanied by a characteristic grumble. It partners with a CVT, which usually spells doom and gloom, but Subaru’s has eight programmed ratios and does a convincing job of mimicking a conventional automatic. Well, most of the time.

There are two things the Ascent can’t ace. The first is tackling a twisty mountain road. The SUV’s underlying platform feels frisky, but the Ascent’s porky curb weight, softly tuned suspension, and greasy all-season tires limit the three-row Subie’s ability to impersonate a WRX, let alone an Impreza.

The second is passing by gas stations. The Ascent’s official Natural Resources Canada fuel economy ratings are 12.3 litres per 100 kilometres in the city, 9.4 on the highway, and 11.0 in combined driving. During our test drive, the Ascent returned 14.0 L/100 km in the city and 12.6 L/100 km for the entire drive. Fortunately, it has a 73-litre fuel tank, so it can travel roughly 500 kilometres before you’ll really need to refill it.

With the Subaru Ascent, the focus is on function over form. From its dashboard shelf and large cupholders molded into the rear door panels within easy reach of children secured in safety seats to the backpack pegs on the second-row seatbacks and cargo hooks in the luggage compartment, the Ascent simply makes life easier. With Premier trim, the comfortable front seats are wrapped in soft premium Nappa leather, and they’re heated and ventilated. The only thing missing is a height adjuster for the front passenger’s seat, but it is mounted high enough off the floor and offers good leg support, so this omission isn’t that big of a deal.

The back doors open to nearly a 90-degree angle, and all four doors have wide and flat sills to use as steps when strapping cargo to the raised roof rails. Subaru says they offer 317 kilograms (700 pounds) of static load capability, enough to support a rooftop tent.

Those wide-opening rear doors also make loading children a snap, as long as you’re not parked close to another vehicle. The test vehicle’s heated second-row captain’s chairs were comfortable, but the Ascent feels a little snug regarding legroom compared to some rivals. Side window shades are available and cover nearly the entire glass area to prevent sunshine from getting into a child’s eyes.

Third-row seat comfort is acceptable for adults on short trips. Passage to this area is narrow whether you wriggle in from the side or shimmy through between the available captain’s chairs. You sit high enough that the seat cushion supports your legs, and there are air conditioning vents and plenty of storage space. Kids will love it.

Behind the third-row seat, the Ascent offers up to 458 litres of cargo space, including a plastic-lined underfloor storage compartment perfect for wet and muddy things. Fold the third-row seats down, and the Ascent offers a roomy cargo area measuring as much as 1,232 litres, while the maximum cargo space with the second-row rear seats folded measures as high as 2,140 litres. With the panoramic sunroof, all three measurements are slightly lower.

Subaru equips the 2024 Ascent with its latest Starlink infotainment system. It has an 11.6-inch touchscreen display mounted in portrait orientation, and it includes Bluetooth, wireless Apple CarPlay, wireless Android Auto, SiriusXM satellite radio, and text-messaging capability.

As you move up the trim-level ladder, you can get a navigation system and a 14-speaker Harman Kardon surround-sound system.

Our test vehicle had all of these features, and they worked well. However, the display washes out in direct sunlight, fading significantly from view. Also, the native voice-recognition system is terrible, so pair your phone and run Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to avoid it. You can add a wireless charging pad to any Ascent by choosing it from the extensive accessory option list.

Fortunately, Subaru equips Starlink with physical buttons and knobs that control commonly used functions such as stereo volume, radio tuning, climate control temperature, and window defrosters. Cabin Connect is available on upper trim levels, projecting the driver’s voice through the stereo speakers to communicate with passengers without yelling. In addition, a surround-view camera is included with the Premier trim, as is a digital rearview camera that lets you use an exterior camera to have a view of the road behind you, even when the cargo area is loaded.

In some circles, Subaru is synonymous with safety. From its high-strength steel platform to its standard EyeSight collection of safety features and driver assistance systems, the Ascent falls right in line regarding the mission to protect Subaru’s favourite people: its customers.

That core focus and goal is evident in the 2024 Ascent’s crash-test ratings. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) gives the SUV five-star ratings in all assessments except rollover resistance, where it earns a four-star accolade. Meanwhile, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) gave the 2024 Ascent a Top Safety Pick+ rating based on the 2023 calendar year.

To help you avoid a collision in the first place, the Ascent’s EyeSight package equips the SUV with forward-collision warning, automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning, lane-keeping assist, lane-centring assist, adaptive cruise control, and evasive steering assist. In addition, automatic high-beam headlights are standard.

Unfortunately, you need to upgrade from Convenience to Touring trim in order to get a blind-spot monitoring system with rear cross-traffic alert and reverse automatic braking. As you move up the trim-level ladder, you can get a Driver Focus driver monitoring system with facial recognition technology.

Historically, EyeSight has been a leader in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). However, the latest iterations of the technology leave us unimpressed. Our complaint is mainly with the lane-centring assist technology. During testing in the Ascent, it demonstrated uncertainty when passing highway exit and entrance ramps and when road lanes expand or contract. On one occasion, the steering assist attempted to put us into a left-turn lane rather than continue straight.

While driving up a winding grade, the lane-centring assist regularly challenged us to a wrestling match, and the fight over the right path to take made the tall, heavy, and softly sprung Ascent feel wobbly and unstable. The issue is EyeSight will resist a driver’s inputs and then, without warning, relent, resulting in too much muscle on the wheel and sudden veering that forces the driver to correct. It’s super irritating.

Compared to many similarly equipped rivals, the 2024 Subaru Ascent represents a good value based on its pricing. Few three-row SUVs start below $45,000 with fees these days. The closest offerings are the Mitsubishi Outlander, which is very tight on space for a three-row, and the Mazda CX-90 with its base engine, which is a compelling offering.

Unfortunately, if you use the Ascent’s turbo, you’ll also use more gasoline than you might expect. Our 12.6 L/100 km average on the evaluation loop is adequate but no better. And our in-town average of 14.0 L/100 km bordered on full-size SUV territory. But this is a common problem with turbocharged, small-displacement engines used in larger vehicles like the Ascent. Subaru needs to electrify this powertrain, stat.

Considering how sensitive people are to gas prices, real-world fuel efficiency is the biggest barrier to Ascent sales. Otherwise, if you like the way it looks and find the tech agreeable, a 2024 Subaru Ascent should serve your family well.

Note: Images show a US model.