2025 Honda Odyssey First Test: Slightly Less Old, Still Solid?
Honda’s minivan has been around a long time, and minor revisions aim to keep it competitive.
Pros
- Excellent ride
- Harmonious primary controls
- Clever rear seat solutions
Cons
- Low roof
- Still looks too familiar
- Buttons scattered this way and that
The Honda Odyssey is old. Don’t let the minivan’s 2025 refresh fool you; it’s the same fifth-generation Odyssey on sale since 2017, long enough to have witnessed major revisions of its Chrysler Pacifica and Toyota Sienna rivals, as well as the total replacement of a third—Kia’s Carnival, which hit the scene in 2020, taking over for the Sedona. Only close watchers of the minivan space might notice the 2025 Odyssey’s revised bumpers, new wheel designs, and new digital displays inside, although that assumes there are fevered minivan fans who track this stuff in the first place.
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Lucky for you, we count ourselves among those hawkishly surveilling the van space for minute changes in cupholder locations, video screen counts, and other minutiae. America might think of vans as boring runabouts for parents who’ve given up (or empty-nesters lugging trays of flowers from the garden store), but to those who appreciate them, these little changes can make or break a minivan. Which brings us back to the Odyssey.
Small Changes, Meaningful Impact
Those “new” displays are merely current Honda units like those found in the Accord, Civic, and others for at least a generation. The 9.0-inch touchscreen is therefore new to the Odyssey, but not new to anyone who’s driven another Honda of the past couple of years or so. Ditto the 7.0-inch digital display that stands in for the left half of the gauge cluster—it mimics an analog tachometer, leaving a physical speedo on the right, and can be configured to show a number of different trip, audio, and safety notifications via a scrolling button on the steering wheel.
Compared to the 2024 Odyssey's two-generations-old low-res gauge cluster display with its weird sci-fi design and laggy, equally graphically challenged touchscreen, the new gear is welcome, if not exactly cutting-edge. We also welcome the adoption of Honda’s latest-gen steering wheel controls, which look and feel as upmarket here as they do in the Civic, Accord, HR-V, and other models, as well as wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto capability.
On models so equipped, the flip-down rear-seat entertainment screen is all-new this year, with a larger 12.8-inch display and a thinner bezel, giving it a more modern appearance than the old 10.2-inch unit. It can be paired to devices wirelessly or via an HDMI port, and it offers separate Bluetooth channels for occupants to pair headphones to. Though not as wow-inducing as the dual displays available in Kia’s Carnival or Chrysler’s Pacifica, the Honda’s TV folds up and out of the way and can be seen by every rear-seat passenger, save for the center third-row rider when the center second-row position is occupied.
Most families today carry at least an iPad (or several) when traveling, however, making such screens largely unnecessary; luckily, the Honda has USB ports throughout (though only on the right-hand side of the third-row area), so charging all those screens is easy. On upper Touring and Elite trims, Honda’s CabinWatch system for keeping tabs on rear-seat occupants via the front touchscreen remains handy—and is matched only by the Pacifica’s FamCam.
The Rest Is as It Was
Outside of the above revisions, the 2025 Honda Odyssey is mechanically identical to last year’s van. That’s a very good thing, since the Odyssey is among the best-driving, most comfortable minivans you can buy. Other than slightly elevated road noise at higher speeds—this is typical of most Hondas relative to their direct competitors—the Odyssey rides smoothly, rounding-off bumps like its tires are filled with memory foam. That’s great for keeping baby asleep, siblings from elbowing each other as they jostle for arm space, or trays of flowers from tossing this way and that.
For the driver, there’s more satisfaction yet—the Honda simply drives well. It’s no sports car, obviously, but the primary controls feel cohesively tuned, so the van always responds as you’d expect it to, whether you’re stabbing the brakes, hitting the gas, or turning the wheel. There is body roll, and the brake pedal’s stroke is long and softly sprung, but these are worthy tradeoffs for that soft ride and the ability to pull off chauffeur-like stops—again, don’t want to wake the kiddos or disturb the cargo.
The Odyssey still is powered by a 3.5-liter V-6 engine. There is no hybrid option, as there is in the Carnival, nor a plug-in hybrid option like in the Pacifica. In fact, the Honda remains the lone minivan powered solely by a gas V-6 (if you don’t count the Chrysler Voyager as a separate model from the identical Pacifica); Toyota’s Sienna is hybrid-only now, and Volkswagen’s new ID Buzz is all-electric. Front-wheel drive is the only choice, too. Chrysler, Toyota, and VW offer all-wheel drive, though Honda includes a Snow drive mode for slippery conditions.
Far from holding the driving experience back, the Odyssey shows how great this simple powertrain can be—the 280-hp V-6 spins smoothly and makes great, Honda-typical noises. Seemingly unburdened by the van’s 4,500-pound heft, the V-6 whisks the Odyssey to 60 mph in 6.8 seconds, on the quick side for the class. It’s certainly the quickest gas minivan out there. The 10-speed automatic shuffles through its gears adroitly, though the pushbutton gear selection isn’t as seamless as the Pacifica’s knob shifter or the Sienna’s traditional shift lever. Fuel economy is also better than you’d expect, given the V-6—EPA figures top out at 28 mpg highway, and we had no problems getting over 20 mpg in mixed driving.
The rest of the Odyssey’s numbers don’t fully convey how light on its feet it feels and how agile it is on the road. The 123-foot stop from 60 mph is pretty good, while the 0.74 g of lateral grip is pretty average for the class. Still, it bears repeating that although other minivans (namely, Chrysler's Pacifica) might drive slightly better, posting spicier numbers and riding just as well as the Odyssey, the Honda is the only van out there that seems eager to dive in and cosplay a sportier vehicle when the driver gets bored one morning during a commute and starts daydreaming about the Porsche they want when their kids finally go off to college.
A Great Package
More central to the Odyssey’s mission is how its interior handles people and cargo. As before, it stands out in the class with its second-row seats that can slide fore and aft and side to side. These Magic Seats, as Honda calls them, can also be removed entirely. The center second-row perch, which is narrower than the others and can’t slide side to side, is lightweight and comes out easily. The outboard chairs are larger and, because the fore/aft slider mechanism comes with them, heavier, though Honda includes a little handle behind each seat’s cushion to make lifting them out less awkward.
All three second-row chairs come out the same way: After folding the backrest forward, pulling a seat-side lever releases the rear support posts from the floor, and you simply hinge the entire assembly toward the front of the car until it's vertical and lift it out (the front of the seats hook into horizontal bars in the floor). Depending on the front seats’ positions, you might need to first move them forward; here, a button on the B-pillar that does that for you—while you’re working on those seats via the sliding doors—would be welcome. Honda doesn’t include them, however. Chrysler does on Pacificas with the second-row seats that stow in the floor, but it doesn’t on Pacifica Hybrids whose second-row seats must be removed if you want to open up the cabin’s entire length for cargo.
A benefit to the Magic Seats? Remove the center second-row perch, and you can slide the two remaining captain’s chairs together and over to one side of the interior, leaving a permanent walk-through to the third row on the other side, so that you never need flip and slide a second-row seat to gain access to the way back. Or you can simply adjust the lateral position of the outboard seats so that, say, a car seat can be drawn closer to a parent in the front passenger seat. As ever, this second-row seat solution’s pros and cons relative to the segment’s other most flexible second row, the Pacifica’s Stow 'n' Go setup, depends on how often you plan on needing the full interior for cargo. If that’s almost never, the Honda’s second-row seats are more versatile and comfortable than the Chrysler’s, yet removable in a pinch; if you often carry sheets of plywood between kid runs, the Pacifica’s second-row seats that fold flat into the floor without needing to be removed are preferable.
Still a Good Deal?
The 2025 Odyssey lineup has been simplified to four trim levels—EX-L, Sport-L, Touring, and Elite (tested here)—dropping last year’s entry-level EX. Low- and mid-spec Odysseys are better equipped, too, well enough to account for the effective price hike that accompanies the EX’s departure, with every Odyssey now including standard leather seating, a wireless phone charger, and a sunroof. Comparing the remaining trim levels to 2024’s equivalents, price increases are mild—just $610 on the now-entry-level EX-L, to $43,315. The top-level Elite trim pictured here is only $510 more than before, starting at $52,275.
Though the prices can’t compete at the low end with stuff like Chrysler’s resurrected Voyager minivan, Toyota’s Sienna, or Kia’s Carnival, they line up favorably with the majority of Chrysler’s pricey Pacifica lineup. And among today’s minivans, the Honda’s interior—particularly with its this-decade tech upgrades and classy new white-on-black gauges—holds up; thing is, the baseline materials and such may date back a few years, but Honda interiors of a few years back were in some ways better, materials-wise, than some of the brand’s more cost-cut current wares. Just look at the latest Accord sedan, which has nice-but-not-exceptional plastics and fewer padded surfaces throughout its cabin than before. And compared to the Sienna and most Pacifica trims, the Honda’s cabin stands out with more mature styling and better fit and finish. The Odyssey is getting on in years, and we really thought there’d be an all-new model for 2025, but it remains a solid choice, being pretty good at most things and great at a few.
A lifelong car enthusiast, I stumbled into this line of work essentially by accident after discovering a job posting for an intern position at Car and Driver while at college. My start may have been a compelling alternative to working in a University of Michigan dining hall, but a decade and a half later, here I am reviewing cars; judging our Car, Truck, and Performance Vehicle of the Year contests; and shaping MotorTrend’s daily coverage of the automotive industry.
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