2025 Infiniti QX80 First Test: The Best One to Date—but Is It Enough?

This is by far the best Infiniti QX80 three-row SUV to date. No longer a gussied-up Nissan Armada, Infiniti proves it takes the competition seriously with this new version of its full-size body-on-frame ode to luxury cruising. With a full makeover, the 2025 QX80 now stands out on the road and gets more love with richer materials inside. It certainly deserves a seat at the table with other luxury SUVs, but has it improved enough to unseat the Cadillac Escalade and new Lincoln Navigator?

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Rich Materials Inside

Infiniti designers set out to create a quiet and more comfortable interior for the 2025 QX80, complete with retractable running boards to clamber into this large luxury SUV. Our test vehicle had a two-tone burgundy interior with black accents, slashes of silver trim, laser-cut open-pore ash wood, and etched metal trim. The perforated leather seats’ and doors’ rich color are a virtual warm hug and a welcome contrast to the black interiors that dominate the industry. The seats are comfortable in all three rows and are heated, cooled, and massaging in the first two rows. The third-row seats are heated, sit at a good height, and offer reasonable thigh support.

The second-row captain’s chairs offer great visibility in concert with the luxury SUV’s giant rectangular windows and low beltline. Second-row passengers enjoy large armrests, a touchscreen control panel for the HVAC, cupholders, and USB and power outlets. Second- and third-row seats are powered to fold flat or return to the upright position quickly and easily.

The pampering continues with an excellent 24-speaker Klipsch audio system. The center console seems small for such a large vehicle, but there’s an angled area for your phone with a couple of USB outlets and cupholders. There’s a deep but difficult-to-reach cooling box for beverage enjoyment. One annoyance: The covered area that houses the phone charger lies right under your elbow and opens every time you put any pressure on it.   

You get three screens up front as part of the infotainment system, including a pair of 14.3-inch displays under a single pane of glass and a lower 9.0-inch angled screen with HVAC controls. Below is the push-button transmission shifter, plus buttons to raise and lower the air suspension and for activating the camera and its different views.

Google Built-In is the new infotainment system, a first for Infiniti, and it displays a wealth of customizable information. A nice feature: Touch the seat control, and the screen will display an image of what all the buttons do and their present settings.

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How Does It Drive?

Is the 2025 Infiniti QX80 Autograph a perfect cruiser? Yes and no. In highway driving, the SUV provides a comfortable, almost floaty ride. ProPilot reduces the strain of a long drive with its ability to keep the vehicle nicely centered in its lane. For passengers, simply activate the comfortable massaging seats, crank up the stereo, and ignore the outside world as you ride along in great comfort.

However—and not to sound petty—there are only three massage settings: lumbar, relaxing, and refreshing. Many luxury vehicles today offer more. The massages themselves are weaker than most, and the mechanism was loud enough to undo some of our Zen feelings.

Worse, the powertrain is the real weak point. The new twin-turbo V-6 has 50 more horsepower and 103 lb-ft more torque than the naturally aspirated V-8 it replaced. But it has lost some of its character, and even with its 450 hp and 516 lb-ft of torque, the 2025 Infiniti QX80 is about a half-second slower to 60 mph in MotorTrend testing, clocking 6.8 seconds. With more tech on board, the 2025 model gained about 170 pounds, but the weight-to-power ratio still plunges from 15.1 to 13.8 lb/hp and the new nine-speed's overall gearing is 15 to 22 percent shorter all the way through the quarter mile, so our vehicle must have been having an off day.

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Master Class in Braking

On a more positive note, the brake pedal delivers a relatively short travel. The system is brake-by-wire and uses an electric brake booster, and it feels perfectly well tuned for suburban driving. In other words, it’s easy to smoothly get the exact deceleration you want. Braking distances from 60 to 0 mph ranged from 122 to 124 feet in our testing, better than many smaller and lighter vehicles.

We were surprised by the handling balance the QX80 displayed on our figure-eight course. Stability control remains active without interfering too much, and the brake pedal lets you push quite hard without triggering the ABS. We got the sense the brakes help the car rotate in these conditions, but we never felt like they slowed the QX80 down more than we wanted in this test.

The 2025 Infiniti QX80 rides on a new platform shared with the Nissan Patrol, with a new frame that offers greater stiffness. The ride and handling, along with the interior upgrades, make this the best full-size Infiniti SUV to date. The company offers it in four trims: Pure, Luxe, Sensory, and Autograph, with a starting price of $84,445 for the base model and $112,590 for the top-end Autograph we tested. Road-trip cruisers will be content with the powertrain, hotfoots not as much. The bigger problem for Infiniti might still be the luxe mobiles found in Cadillac and Lincoln showrooms. 

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