Infiniti QX60 3.5 AWD

Pros
Power. Wow. The specs say it’s only a 3.5 liter 295 hp V6, but it has seemingly unlimited real world power. At pretty much any speed, you step on it, and the excellent continually variable transmission blips up the engine speed and zoom, you’re off.

Comfort. The QX60 is built for comfort. The ride is soft, the front seats are very comfortable, and the inside is covered in conservative, good quality materials, and appears to be well put-together. Except for the brief surge in engine noise on hard acceleration, it’s very quiet inside. All of this, and the power, make the QX60 a pretty nice highway cruiser. It’s for people who like isolation.

Room. The QX60 is considered a mid-sized SUV. Even though Infiniti also makes the behemoth QX80, which carries multiple life rafts, the QX60 is big enough for most people. It has good room for front seat passengers, good leg room for rear seat passengers, and not so good anything room for the optional third row passengers. Behind the third row, there’s even enough room for a few suitcases. Fold down the third row seats, and you can fit a cow in there. Lying down, of course.

Visibility. The airy QX60 has a large windshield and good size front and rear side windows, making it pretty easy to see out of. It’s not a high-belted tank like a lot of SUVs we drive these days. The only exception is rear visibility, which, typically these days, bites. You’ll be glad you ordered the optional 360 degree rear camera.

All the bells and whistles. Loaded up, with $14K worth of the option packages, the QX60 has every pampering amenity. Heated and cooled seats, heated steering wheel, 360 view camera. Plus, the safety stuff is all there, too. It’s got automatic emergency braking, blind spot monitoring, cross traffic alert (with rear automatic braking), and more. That stuff is optional on other trims. Get it all.

Cons
Handling. Too much body motion. It’s a little better than the Nissan Pathfinder, with which it shares mechanicals. But make any kind of sharp-ish turn of the wheel, and the QX60’s entire body will produce an equal and opposite reaction. It’s simply too sloshy for a $60,000 vehicle. For that price, you should get both comfort and poised handling. The steering also has an odd, if subtle, jerkiness. You notice it when you’re taking a long, sweeping turn of any kind, and the wheel seems to need to be constantly corrected and it tries to pull you back to center. Around town, the QX60’s handling is fine, but at any kind of speed, on any kind of curve, it shows its limitations.

Drives big. Some mid-size SUVs drive smaller than they are. The Mazda CX9 and Audi Q7 come to mind. The QX60 is the opposite. Due to its lack of agility, it feels big.

Mileage. We managed just 17.5 in mixed, but more city than highway driving. EPA dangles 22 overall.

Multitude of buttons. We’ve criticized other vehicles for not having enough hard buttons, and requiring you to surf through sub-menus do perform simple tasks. Infiniti goes the other way, and has so many small, similar looking buttons on the center console that require you to take your eyes off the road to differentiate. Infiniti’s screen menus are pretty good. Still, how about some tactile and physical differentiation between the hard buttons?

Rear end. While looks are admittedly subjective, the rear end looks a little droopy to us. And really, who wants a droopy rear end? On the other hand, Infiniti is currently selling a jillion of these things, so we’re obviously outliers in our styling opinion. Overall, it’s a nice looking SUV.