Five Months In, the Cabin of Our 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid Still Wins

August marks the fifth month of our yearlong saga with the red 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid sedan yearlong review car. Everything is going just peachy, and because all of us spend more time in our cars than looking at them from the outside, it’s time to give you a comprehensive interior review.

The Civic is king of giving you exactly what you need and then a little more—read our cross-country road trip story for our praise of its advanced adaptive cruise control—so we have very, very few complaints. No car is perfect, of course, but in this price range for this vehicle class, the Civic Hybrid comes pretty dang close.

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Infotainment

With the top-tier Sport Touring trim come the largest screens offered in the Civic playbook.

9-Inch Color Touchscreen

The very best thing we can say about the infotainment system is there’s an easily accessible Home hard button that backs you out of the menus immediately. This is very handy when you’re two swipes in, three menus deep, and want out quick-like.

Screen resolution isn’t anything to brag about, but come on: This isn’t one of those bedazzling, billion-pixel OLED setups. This screen is meant to display your radio controls, backup camera footage, navigation, and smartphone integration. It is for information, not streaming high-def movies. However, it remains bright and easy to read even in the harshest of daytime sunlight.

Other hard-button controls include a physical volume knob, which is located on the left-hand side of the screen and within easy reach of both the driver and front passenger.

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10.2-Inch Digital Instrument Cluster

The instrument cluster is likewise easy to read. There are a few ways you can customize the layout and design, but all of your most crucial information is always right there. Me personally? I like having a view of my total mpg because it’s always a game to get the highest number.

As for a highly underrated but massively appreciated feature: You can easily adjust the brightness of the instrument cluster via a toggle wheel at your left knee, so it’s not beaming the lumens of a thousand suns directly into your eyeballs at night.

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Climate Controls

Physical controls! Physical controls, praise the Lord! My personal car is from 2002, and there really isn’t much different between it and this 2025 Civic in how you change the climate. There are dials and buttons aplenty, plus dual-zone climate controls, which was considered a luxury feature not too long ago.

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Tech

Apps vs. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay

The Civic now comes with built-in Google and Alexa apps. I think I clicked around those apps for about five minutes when I first took possession of the car, decided I didn’t want to log in to any of them, and have been using Android Auto ever since.

Speaking of, wireless Android Auto displays perfectly on the screen, though sometimes it can take a minute or two to connect. This might be because both my partner and I have our phones saved to the Civic’s system, but the delay still happens even though my phone is the primary device.

Things work a bit faster if I use a cord to connect it.

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Comfort

Front Seats

As mentioned in the road-trip story, the seat-bottom foam tends to be a bit thin, so you might want to invest in an aftermarket cushion. Besides that, there’s good back support, and the leather feels supple. There are also plenty of places to rest your elbows on those long highway drives.

If you regularly share your Civic with anyone else in your household, however, the lack of memory seats could be inconvenient.

Heated seats are a godsend in colder months, but I’d kill for a heated steering wheel, too—especially considering Canadian Civics get one. Add that to the list of things Canada has that we don’t.

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Rear Seats

While front passengers get to experience a delightful fully loaded car, those privileges end for rear passengers. The seats themselves are comfortable enough and offer good head- and legroom, but the lack of amenities back there is where the Civic shows its economy pedigree.

There’s only one rear seat pocket, on the back of the front passenger seat. It also lacks USB ports and—crucially—climate vents. I’ve ridden back there on a hot summer day and can confirm it can get quite toasty.

The lack of USB ports is curious, too, as my family’s 2024 Civic Hatchback Sport Touring has them, yet this 2025 does not.

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Trunk

Folding down easily, the rear seats offer a 60/40 split for additional cargo room. Just note there does not appear to be any way to shift the middle seat belt out of the way, so it gets pulled down along with the seat backs and then just sort of ... chills there.

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With the seats upright, the trunk remains decently sized and can easily fit a large- and medium-size rolling suitcase side by side, plus some extra room all around for soft bags.

There is a bit of a height limitation due to the dimensions of the trunk opening. I had some trouble stashing a second large moving box in the trunk and had to use the back seat instead. This is where I missed the family hatchback the most.

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Everything Else

Not only does the current Civic manage to arm itself to the gills with everything a driver would need, but it also manages it in a way that’s stylish and modern. We really like the full-width, honeycombed vent work—even more so than the current Acura Integra’s layout—and how it adds cohesion to the overall dashboard. Even the surface plate surrounding the transmission lever and cupholders wear a subtle striped pattern.

The only piano-black trim used at all is found in strips along the door cards and climate vents, but since this is hardly a high-touch area, it’s very easy to keep clean and glossy.

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Dual USB ports, one wireless phone charger, and cupholders support front passenger needs, even if they bring their big emotional support water bottle. Any bigger, and you can still comfortably tuck it into the under-arm center console cubby. I personally could use a couple of more small cubbies for other loose items like keys, but that’s not a big deal.

And although it might get accused of looking dated, I really like the physical ka-chunk of shifting the transmission lever. Call me old-fashioned, but I enjoy knowing what gear I’m in by feel or a quick glance.

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The 2025 Civic Hybrid sedan overwhelmingly nets more wins than losses and is proof that “economy” no longer has to mean “crap.” Unlike some of the so-called high-end and luxury cabins that occasionally force you to relearn how to use a car, this demonstrates the power of decades of incremental improvement.

More on Our Long-Term 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid Sedan:

• An Incredible Win for the Masses?
• We Took Our 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid Sedan on a 3,000-Mile Road Trip Back Home