2025 Nissan Murano Road Test and Review

2025 Nissan Murano Platinum ・ Photo by Brady Holt

The Lexus RX is America’s best-selling luxury vehicle. This mid-size five-seat crossover is sleekly elegant, opulently finished, comfortable and quiet, and packed with available high-end features. Unfortunately, it costs $49,125 and up. 

When you don’t require a luxury badge on your premium SUV, the Nissan Murano is a tempting alternative – at a starting price of $40,470 with lots of standard features. Newly redesigned for 2025, the Murano is a high-value premium crossover with greatly improved driving manners and a modern interior. For this review, we recently spent a week driving the new 2025 Murano to learn more about its pros and cons. Keep reading to learn about what we found and whether it’s the right upscale mid-size crossover for you. 

Graceful New Design

In 2003, the first-generation Nissan Murano was a wild-looking sporty crossover. It pioneered a swoopy design that later became the norm, unlike the boxy SUVs that were ubiquitous at the time. The third-generation Murano generation debuted in 2015, and even a decade later, it was still looking unique – not aggressively sporty, but festooned with swooping curves and elaborate details. 

The new fourth-generation 2025 Murano is more conventional but still graceful and upscale. Its silhouette remains curvy for a mid-size crossover – it’s not built to chase maximum cargo specs or squeeze in a third-row seat. It wears Nissan’s new front-end-design language: split headlights with the bottom section embedded in the grillework. We also like an arcing chrome strip that follows the windowline from the base of the front windshield, along the tops of the side windows, and down to the base of the rear windshield. We think it comes together more cleanly than Nissan’s similarly sized, similarly shaped Ariya electric crossover. The old Murano had more personality, but the new one is upscale while courting less controversy.  

2025 Nissan Murano Platinum ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Modern New Interior

The Murano also follows the Ariya’s interior design. A 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster connects in a single panel to a 12.3-inch central infotainment touchscreen. And the rest of the dash follows this horizontal spread for an airy simplicity. It’s also beautifully finished using attractive materials – even nicer than you’d find in a Lexus RX. It’s a far cry from last year’s Murano, whose 8-inch infotainment screen was straight out of 2018 and whose overall dashboard design wasn’t modern even 10 years ago. 

Ergonomics took a back seat to style, though. Touch-sensitive controls now hide in a flush dashboard surface, which provides a cleaner look than plastic buttons or protruding knobs, but which take more concentration to use. And while the new touchscreen looks good, Nissan jams too many functions into it. To use or adjust the heated front seats, you must tap just the right tiny spot on the screen to summon a menu. Buttons, please! Controls on the attractive two-spoke steering wheel also require a learning curve. It’s not unusual for premium vehicles to have clunky controls, but we wish Nissan hadn’t followed their example. 

2025 Nissan Murano Platinum ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Comfortable Seating

Nissan has long boasted about its “Zero Gravity” seats, and the new Murano’s foam remains supportive without being too hard. In the back, you won’t find any more legroom than in an already-roomy compact Nissan Rogue – adults will be comfortable, but legroom isn’t infinite. The Murano is wider, though, making it easier to fit three people across. We were surprised that you can’t recline the Murano’s backseat, though. 

Leatherette upholstery with heated, power-adjustable front seats is standard on even the base SV model. And the top Platinum like our test vehicle adds genuine leather along with heated rear seats, ventilated front seats, and even a front-seat massaging function. Don’t count on the massage to work the same magic as a top-tier luxury vehicle, but it’s rare to find that function at all for around $50,000. 

2025 Nissan Murano Platinum ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Useful Cargo Capacity

The 2025 Nissan Murano has 32.9 cubic feet of cargo space behind the rear seat and 63.5 cubic feet with the rear seat folded down. That’s about the same as last year’s Murano, and it’s more than a Lexus RX or Acura RDX. And the folded rear seat conveniently lies flat and flush with the cargo floor. 

Still, keep in mind that the Murano is designed to maximize style more than cargo space. The smaller but boxier Nissan Rogue has significantly more cargo room. If you have enough space in the Murano – except for fitting three people across the rear seat – check out a Rogue. You might find it can meet your needs for thousands of dollars less. The Rogue also matches the Murano’s modest 1,500-pound towing capacity. 

2025 Nissan Murano Platinum ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Advanced New Engine

The old Rogue had the same approximate powertrain that Muranos had used since 2003: a 3.5-liter V6 engine paired with a continuously variable automatic transmission, or CVT. In recent years, this wasn’t a thrilling combo. The CVT made the V6 rev high even under gentle acceleration, while keeping the engine at a steady rpm produced a droning tone. 

The new Murano follows the industry trend of replacing V6s with turbocharged four-cylinders – in this case, a 2.0-liter with 241 horsepower and 260 lb-ft of torque. But hiding behind these ordinary specs is Nissan’s exclusive variable compression technology, which automatically adjusts to maximize either acceleration or fuel efficiency, depending on your driving habits. And it’s paired with a conventional nine-speed automatic transmission. The Murano’s engine sounds nice, and its ample low-end torque means it accelerates more eagerly than the old V6, especially right off the line. 

Despite its advanced variable compression and loss of two cylinders, the 2025 Murano is no more economical than last year’s model. It gets an EPA-estimated 21 mpg in the city, 27 mpg on the highway, and 23 mpg combined on regular-grade fuel, and we averaged 22 mpg during our weeklong test. That’s decent mileage for a peppy mid-size crossover, but some others are even quicker yet even more efficient. And unlike a number of key luxury and mainstream-brand rivals, you can’t get the Murano with a gas-electric hybrid powertrain. 

2025 Nissan Murano Platinum ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Polished Ride and Handling

Complementing its torquier new engine, the Murano’s handling also got more responsive as part of the new generation. The old Murano had lazy steering that was neither quick nor effortlessly easy to drive. Now it’s crisp and composed. Pushing it hard, you won’t enjoy the same precision as a Mazda CX-70. But in routine driving, the new Murano feels solidly engineered and decent fun to drive. 

It rides well, too. Its suspension isn’t set up for cushy isolation like a Lincoln Nautilus, but once again, this Nissan delivers luxury-level composure. The Murano feels solidly built and absorbs bumps steadily. You feel the bump and move on – no cheap-feeling slams or shudders. Coupled with good noise isolation, the Murano delivers a premium-grade driving experience. 

2025 Nissan Murano Platinum ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Lots of High-End Features

The 2025 Nissan Murano starts at $40,470 for an SV model that’s already well equipped with leatherette upholstery, heated front seats, automatic climate control, a power liftgate, the big touchscreen, dressy 20-inch wheels, and driver-assistance technology that includes adaptive cruise control, front and rear automatic emergency braking, a lane-departure warning with lane-keeping steering assistance, and blind-spot monitoring with a rear cross-traffic alert. An SV with AWD costs $1,000 more. 

Upgrading to the SL, $46,560, brings a panoramic moonroof, a surround-view parking camera, a 10-speaker Bose stereo (versus the SV’s six speakers), a heated steering wheel, a more advanced adaptive cruise control that can bring the car to a complete stop, Google-based GPS navigation, and standard AWD. That’s an OK price bump for all that loot, but Nissan doesn’t let you pick and choose. If you want any one of those features (except AWD), you’re forced into the expensive upgrade. 

The top Platinum, $49,600, has genuine leather upholstery, ventilated and massaging front seats, heated rear seats, power-folding mirrors, rain-sensing windshield wipers, and hands-free liftgate operation. You don’t necessarily have to spend 50 grand to get most of those features individually on a mid-size crossover, but especially compared with a luxury-badged rival, the Murano has a lot for the money. Just watch out for pricey add-ons like our test vehicle’s $1,600 worth of accent lighting and $90 USB cables. 

2025 Nissan Murano Platinum ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Varied Competitors

The Murano faces a variety of competitors. Its closest mainstream-brand rivals are the Hyundai Santa Fe, Mazda CX-70, and Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport. These are sporty, premium mid-size crossovers with less of a family-sized focus than big three-row models like Nissan’s own Pathfinder. And we’d also shop the Murano against the luxury-badged Acura RDX, Cadillac XT5, Lexus RX, and Lincoln Nautilus. 

The Santa Fe, CX-70, and Atlas Cross Sport are roomier than the Murano, and all but the CX-70 have lower starting prices. The Mazda is more powerful and fun to drive but has an outdated, hard-to-use infotainment system. The Hyundai is a winner for comfort, luxury, spaciousness, and value, but it has a polarizing boxy design. The Volkswagen is pleasant to drive, attractively finished, and quite roomy, but it doesn’t look or feel quite as fancy as the others, and its controls are even clunkier than the Murano’s. The Santa Fe and CX-70 are also available as fuel-sipping gas-electric hybrids. 

Against stylish luxury-branded crossovers, the Murano’s style, driving manners, and interior quality stand up well – despite its lower prices. However, the competition tends to have more powerful engines and more potent stereo systems, and the RX and Nautilus have economical hybrid options. And the Acura and Cadillac offer a luxury badge at a fairly minimal price premium to the Murano. The Lincoln stands out for its serenity and advanced yet user-friendly interior, too. Of these luxury crossovers, it’s the one that most justifies its extra cost versus the Murano. It also has the highest starting price.  

2025 Mazda CX-70 Turbo S ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Final Thoughts

Last year’s Murano didn’t have much going for it. It was a pretty-looking SUV, but it was dull to drive, drab inside, and not cheap enough to justify its weak points. The redesign is transformative. The new 2025 Nissan Murano is luxurious and modern through and through, while only getting slightly more expensive. 

The Murano’s new powertrain is neither thrillingly powerful nor incredibly fuel efficient. Its beautiful new dashboard doesn’t have the simplest controls. And its cargo capacity could be better. But overall, the new Murano looks, feels, and drives like a more expensive car than its price tag would suggest. 

2025 Nissan Murano Platinum ・ Photo by Brady Holt