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    Stress-Free SUVs That You'll Love Driving and Owning

    These vehicles got high scores in CR's evaluations for quietness, visibility, easy-to-use controls, and rear-seat comfort

    2022 Subaru Forester
    Subaru Forester
    Photo: Subaru

    An SUV shopper can’t discover every flaw in a car during a brief test drive. Even if you take the vehicle home for a weekend, there are certain problems that will become apparent only after living with it. Sometimes the flaw isn’t noticeable until you bring along a passenger or two, run some errands, and travel on varying roads.

    That’s why Consumer Reports’ auto experts drive each car, SUV, and truck for a lot of miles—2,000, in fact—before we even begin to test it. By doing this, we live with and use the cars in everyday situations, just like you do. Add partners, spouses, and children into the mix, and each CR expert comes away with a unique take on what works for them and what doesn’t when driving and living with a vehicle.

    After that, we evaluate every vehicle in more than 50 objective and subjective tests. The results are tabulated to create composite scores that are presented on the car model pages, where CR members can find our complete road tests and survey results.

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    Through this process, we’ve identified four categories where there can be deal-breaking flaws that will make a buyer regret a purchase: how the controls work, visibility, rear-seat comfort, and cabin noise. These are things that can be easy to overlook on a test drive but become a true annoyance over time that could have been avoided.

    To steer you in the right direction, we have identified the compact and midsized SUVs that perform best in each category, along with alternatives in rank order. All are recommended by CR, meaning they scored well in our road tests, have good reliability, have key active safety features, and performed well in crash tests.

    We also note the SUVs with the worst performance in our evaluation.

    If you’re a CR member, this article and the list below are already available to you. But if you haven’t signed up, click below and become a member to access the list and all our exclusive ratings and reviews for each vehicle we buy and test. Joining also gives you full access to exclusive ratings and reviews for every product we buy and test, including grills, mobile phones, appliances, and flat-screen TVs.

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    We investigate, research, and test so you can choose with confidence.