2017 Toyota Highlander Review

hey everybody! brock frady here helping you enjoy your ride. in today's video we're going to take a detailed look at a 2017 toyota rav4 xle .this vehicle has lots of very cool equipment and we're

2017 Toyota Highlander Review, going to go over all of that in this video. we're going to go over the outside, the inside, look in the back, then we're going to look at all the safety and

comfort & performance features as well. we're going to end up in the driver's seat behind the wheel and i'll show you how all the buttons and features and knobs and radio and all those cool things how they work. by the end of this video you'll pretty much be an expert on the rav4. let's jump right in to look at a 2017 toyota rav4 xle. and before we

get started i would like to thank midstatettoyota in asheboro, north carolina for the opportunity to film this vehicle. you can check out their information including new car inventory, used car inventory, and just about anything else you could want to know by checking out their website andii'll put that in the description below.

let's take a look at how the key works. from the top you have lock/unlock hold and hold the hold button. on the very bottom is for the power rear door and the hold button to the right of that is for the panic alarm. you have lock and unlock. when you press lock once it unlocks the driver's door, if you press lock twice in

unlocks all four door and the rear gate. we'll press and hold the bottom left button to open the back door and then to close the back door you simply repeat. you press and hold. you can do that remotely. it makes it a lot more convenient if you're coming out with your hands full from the grocery store or something. that way the doors

already open when you reach it. to activate the panic alarm you press and hold the red button. and then pressing unlock will deactivate the panic alarm. the msrp is $29,561.00. the optional equipment for this particular rav4 is a height-adjustable power liftgate, carpet mats with a lipped cargo mat, clear paint protection with door package. and that

clear paint protection is going to put a protecting layer on the hood, the mirrors, and also the door edge guards and the rear bumper as well. you also have a phone cable and charged package.this is actually really neat. it's an accessory bag and i found this in the in the glove box and it includes a dual usb car charger to apple cords and a micro usb

to usb cord. it's actually pretty neat. that's an option that's $69.00 bucks. the fuel economy is 23 miles per gallon city / 30 miles per gallon highway. this rav4 is sitting on dunlop grandtrek 225/ 65 r17 tires. the wheels are 17 inches. and on the tire there you can see it is m + s and that's mud and snow. you do have four-wheel disc

brakes and you can see the disc right there on the inside of the wheel. let's check out the headlights. i've got the flashers on so you can kind of see everything working there. i've got the main headlights on. also the fog lights. you should always use your fog lights in bad weather. especially if it's raining or something.

that allows you to see a much greater view of the road and obviously increases your safety. let's take a look at the heart of the beast. okay. the engine on the rav4 is a 2.5 liter four-cylinder dual overhead cam 16-valve with dual vvti. it has a

176 horsepower at 6,000 rpm and produces a hundred and seventy-two pound-foot of torque at 4,100 rpm. you have your battery there. you have your air cleaner box. so that's where you're going to put your air filter. your brake fluid is right down there kind of tucked in the corner. it's

hard to see its kind against the firewall. you see that little lid right there. so that your brake fluid. your oil cap is going to be right there on top of the engine. and then you've got coolant there on the left where the pink is and there's your windshield washer fluid to the far left.

you have signals that are integrated into your mirrors right there. and they are led turn signal indicators so every time you turn your signal own that's going to light up. a little fish eye lens right there and that's going to give you greater visibility while driving so you can see further out into your lane.

the mirrors are also collapsible in the event that you need to go to a car wash or park in tight quarters. and you can see how that led indicator basically wraps almost up halfway through the length of the mirror itself. and you can see here in this image the benefit of this signal that's integrated into the mirror. i don't know it may be hard to

tell but you can see that i have the signal on and it's blinking on the mirror right there and also right here on the brake light. with the benefit of that is you can see how in the tail light right here that's one you know that's an indicator here obviously that you can see. but look how further out and wide this indicator is. so this the

people that are directly behind you can see but if they're further behind you they may not be able to see this light. it's going to be more likely that people further behind you can see this light and therefore they know you're turning intentions. reducing the likelihood of a potential rear-end incident. pretty neat and i like how the rear taillights all

kind of come to a point right there. all to the center right there and point to the toyota sign. it's a actually pretty good-looking taillight as far as taillights go.and as i mentioned, this one is the xle, so this has got a good amount of equipment on it and we'll go over all those features. let's take a look at how the back door

works and then we'll hop inside and look at the cargo capacity. so i'm going to press this as i showed you a little bit earlier. and then it's going to open our tailgate. you noticed also that the rear lights the signals flashed to let me know that the tailgate was opening. you can see how it opens really high.

i like that and that's actually going to be helpful for somebody like me. i'm over six feet tall and check this out. so that reduces the likelihood that i'm gonna knock my head. you've got an excellent cargo area in the rav4 . and you can see that those rear seats there are 60/40 split so you can fold the right side and the left side

independently. and that left side is going to be a little bit larger to fold. the maximum cargo area with the second-row seats folded flat is 73.4 cubic feet and with the second row seat folded up is 38.4 cubic feet. that's a good amount of space i would say. and you can see the way that i folded

the seat there is that handle so you can just pull the handle up. the seat will go right down. you've got a mat right here and you can take that and you can actually it's this is kind of neat you can flip the mat over and it's rubber on the backside of it and that allows you to if you have like potted plants or something you don't

want to get mud and stuff on the carpet, just put that over. there is your spare tire with your jack. there's a light right here for added convenience and that will go out when the back door closes. you can see four tie-down positions here. these are little metal hooks right there and there's one there on the right side. there's also one on the left and then

there are two more that are further back in the back corners here. and that's if you need to secure something big. you also have child safety seat anchors and that's going to be right there and that's what you would use in the event that you had a child safety seat to latch into the backseat. now i can close this by using the key

here with the button on the bottom left or i can press this button and that's going to close her up nice and tight. that's it. the insides of the back doors are really well-put-together. you can see it's kind of modern looking. you've got your areas of like a brushed aluminum look all along the door handles right here and then you have some soft

surfaces that are all right here that are gray. and you have your power window button, your door open, and lock. rear windows are tinted and that provides for security but also it helps with keeping the temperature down in the car. you've got some really good cubbies right there and that's for storage of like a water bottle. there's a switch right here and

when you push it down the door handle cannot be used so if a child were inside the door and tried to pull it open that would not be able to open the door. if that latches press down and that obviously is to keep kids inside the car. so they can open the door while you're riding down the road. when you pull it up the door can be used now. you can see plenty of

storage area there. you also have a powerpoint on the rear of that center console and that's a 12-volt power point. you also have pockets on the backs of the seats there for storage. those are nice. i want to point out now the rear leg room. you can see that front seat.

i just sat in the front seat and adjusted it for myself and now i'm going to sit in the rear seats. you can get an idea for the leg room. so i'm sitting here now and as i've told you before, i'm over six feet tall and you can see thatii have plenty of room for my knees. and again i adjusted this front seat for my comfort and so

now you can see that you've got plenty of room back here. i really appreciate all the materials that go into the making of the seats because they're tough yet they're comfortable and that's that's a pretty hard combination to have. that right there is is a material that is not going to give easily. you know as far as

wearing and everything and then the material right here is even a little more sturdy than that however the seat is nice and comfortable. you can see that seat bottom is wide so it's going to fit an array of body frames. now let's take a look at the driver's door. you can see that the driver's door is much like the rear door that we just

looked at with your soft areas there. and that button is to lock access to the power windows. that's locked and unlocking of the doors. your one-touch automatic driver's window. and then switches for the other windows in the vehicle. you can see you have a pocket there and that's to store bottles. not necessarily cans because you can see

there's aren't for cups. you wouldn't want to put a cup down in there because it can mess you up. then you've got a speaker there in your door with your door lock and handle there. pretty nice-looking door. the controls for the driver's seat are right here on the left side and the control that you have right here is going to be for ratcheting the seat

bottom so you can see that as i move it the seat moves up and that's to raise it up and down. and then this is going to be to tilt the seat back. you can see a sign here that says srs airbags. srs stands for supplemental restraint system and there's an airbag that's integrated into the side of that seat the seat the materials here i like the contoured or

the contrast stitching on the seat bottom and then you have a really good bolstering right here on the seat that comes up nice and high. then you have the same type of bolstering on the seat back there. and then that material that's kind of like a waffle looking pattern that's there on the seat bottom. nice and tough and durable but

yet comfortable at the same time. these are the controls that you're going to see if you're sitting in the driver's seat. so these are going to be in front of your left knee. this is the control for the mirrors. you can press left and that's going to allow you to move the mirror, the power mirrors left right down and up. then you'll

switch here and do the same. this controls your gauge brightness so when you roll it all the way up high that's the brightest setting for your gauges and you can lower it there. this is lane departure alert and so there is actually a little camera that's mounted up in the windshield and i can see the lanes on the road. and that will

let you know when you're getting outside of your lane. i really recommend using that. the control for your power rear door is right here and you can just press in and hold. that will open the rear door then you can press in and hold again. and that will close the rear door. here you see your hood latch so that's going to pop the hood. and then here is

your fuel tank and the fuel tank is on the left side. and you use regular 87 octane gas. i like the amount of foot room that's there in that foot well. you can see how much room that you would have and then you also have a control here. and that is going to be the lever that you push down and that will allow you to adjust the steering wheel down

and up in and out. and then you can push this back up to secure it and it will stay right there for you. you can see here that i adjusted the seat and everything from my height and my comfort. and i've got a few inches from the dash for my knee. there's the dead foot right there so that's where you're going to keep your

foot sometimes while you're driving. but you have plenty of room here to access the break and the gas. and it's nice and comfortable. plenty of room. you can see your steering wheel controls that are over here on the left side of the steering wheel. starting at the top you have plus and minus and that's going to be to change the volume so you can turn

it up her. turn it down here. these are going to be bluetooth settings for your phone and this is basically just a shortcut to bluetooth. and then you also have an up and down here and that's going to be to change the preset settings for your radio. so these are going to be radio and phone controls over here on the left side of the

steering wheel. and then you have a button here this isn't mode and hold and so you can press mode and that's going to change the mode setting on the stereo. so if you're listening to a cd and you want to listen to the radio, you can just thumb through your different modes here am/fm/xm? cd bluetooth so this will allow you to change the mode without having to

take your eyes off the off the road. and then you can press hold and that will mute the radio for you. then you have voice controls right here. these are really neat. and then here on the right side of the steering wheel are going to be controls for the information screen that's displayed between the tachometer and the speedometer. and you have your

trip info button and so that's going to be to show you your odometer. trip a. trip b. then this is a back arrow so that if your in an information screen and you want to get back to the home screen, you can press this up down left and right allows you to make all the selections you want to make. and then when you get to the selection that you actually want to make

you press the button in and that makes this selection. and you can see the cruise stalk that's right here. the way you use cruise is you press it in and you can see an icon that pops up on the dash when you get to the speed at which you want to cruise, you press down to set . that's why it says set right there. while you're cruising, if you want to

increase the speed, you want to speed up, you can press it up and that increases by one mile per hour or you can press up and hold and it'll increase it in three to five mile per hour segments as you holding it in keeping held up. you can see where it says cancel here and you can pull it toward you and that cancels cruise control.

you also can see a little icon right there looks like a speedometer with a car right there and that's because this one has the radar cruise control in the button that indicates radar cruise control is right here. and it looks like a little radar going out from the front of the vehicle. so when cruise is actually on, you can press this button and that

will allow you to change the distance or the sensitivity of your radar cruise control. and so when i press that button you can see this icon and there's three blue blocks in front of the vehicle. i press it again and it decreased about one. press it again and there's the single. that's the maximum sensitivity of the radar cruise control. that's going to

keep me at the greatest distance between my vehicle and the vehicle in front of me. it will even apply the brakes. i can adjust the sensitivity here and that's the least sensitive and that allows me to be at the closest distance to the vehicle in front of me. i'm using the multi-directional keypad on the right side of the steering wheel right now and i'm

pressing down. lda is lane-departure alert. i'm going to select that and steering assist, sensitivity, sway warning, sway sensitivity. okay. steering assist allows the vehicle to nudge the steering wheel left and right in the event that it senses you're getting outside of your lane. that steering assist in that zone right now. and you can see that you can

actually adjust the sensitivity of that feature. it says sensitivity and that says standard. i'm pressing the little button on the steering wheel and it says high. i recommend doing it in high so you can have an idea of how it works. how sensitive it is when you first get the vehicle. sway warning will allow the vehicle to warn you in the event that

you're getting outside of your lane. let's change the sway sensitivity to high so that is at its maximum sensitivity. that's lda. i'm gonna hit the back arrow. pre-collision system is here. tthat allows the vehicl,e in the event of an imminent impact, it is going to mitigate an imminent impact. in other words, it can see out in front, for lack

of a better term, you can see that in front of the vehicle and it can determine when you are about to get into a wreck and it will activate the brakes. it will tap into a reservoir special brake fluid to maximize breaking potential. it will also pre-tension the seatbelts so that it reduces the likelihood of you being injured upon

collision. there's the sensitivity there and that is the minimum. that's the maximum. and the button i'm hitting to adjust that is right here. you always have that little dot right there and also you can always see right there in the bottom of that screen where it says push the dot to change pre-collision. and so i'm gonna get out of

that screen and you can see here it says push the dot to change settings. i'm gonna move to the left and any screen that i go into that you is something that you can change, it will say it at that bottom right there. push the little dot to change. pbd is power back door. i can change the settings on the power

back door and i can actually cut that off. so right now i just cut it off. the power back door will not work now. that's on. opening adjustment. i can adjust the opening height. you see how the little doors moving up and down when i just the number. volume vehicle settings. alright i'm gonna hit the little back arrow

or the left arrow i mean and there's information. this is fuel economy information. i'm pressing down right now. sway warning. that's the feature that i just showed you. what this will do if you have that if you have this screen up and displayed, it will determine how you're swaying or how you know how you're moving in and out of your lane and it

will let you know if it's determines that you're swaying too much. and you should take a break. pretty neat. there's your radio and you can see trip b right there in the very bottom. 79.2. the way you access that as you have trip right here i'm going to be pressing that repeatedly. so there's the odometer. trip a. trip b. i

can press and hold trip and it'll reset it. you can see you have your tach on the left and there's your oil gauge and your tachometer. you have your speedometer there and your fuel gauge. on the left side we have our lights and our turn signal stalk. and this is also the fog lights. so i can press up and that will signal. whenever i press it up

without fully engaging it, that is a three blink lane change signal. and then i can press it up and fully engage it and it will continue to blink. auto or drl off.you can see there's it says drl off. daytime running lights off, so that's all the lights off. auto cuts on the daytime running lights. parking lights. and then this is headlights on manually.

i recommend keeping them on auto so that the vehicle can determine when the sun's going down and it will cut them automatically come on automatically in accordance to the lack of light outside. and you have your fog lights here. if they are in auto and that switch is engaged and, you know, that little hashtag right there is on right there

then every time they cut on automatically your fog lights are going to cut on. you don't necessarily want your fog lights on all the time. you can but it's not necessary. you can do that and then whenever it's raining or it's nasty outside cut your fog lights on you can push this forward to use the high beams. you can see on the very inside

here it says high/ low/ intermittent /off and mist. i press it up once in that mist. just a single wipe. the default is off and then you can see intermittent. so i can pull it down once and then a wipe intermittently according to the setting that is on this ring here. so that is the greatest time distance in the wipers. so that's if it's

only like misting and then you can increase the speed of the wipers by rolling it up toward the front of the vehicle. i can pullit down for low, pull it down again for high and then the end of the stalk controls the rear wiper . it also controls if i pull that forward toward me it's gonna wipe off and wash the front

windshield. if i push it away from me it's gonna wipe and wash the rear windshield. i can turn this dial and that's going to control the rear wiper. now we're looking at the radio and you can see this whole section right here. this whole section that's basically this frame that is going to be your all of your radio controls so that's the easy

way to think about it and then you have a little section down there below that and all inside that frame, climate controls. i love how the leather is on the dash right and you can see the contoured stitching. that is such a nice touch in a vehicle of that's in this price range. you really don't see that very much.

that's really nice. you see something right there. this is hd radio and gracenote. hd radio is a feature software that allows you to take advantage of the full bandwidth of any fm radio station and gracenote is music identification software. so while you're playing music over hd radio it has the ability to to display album art. so

you can see whenever something comes through in hd and let's do that now. i'm going to tune this here and you can see that the tuner changes there. so i'm going to tune this to a local radio station here and you're going to see the hd icon will pop up. there you go and you see this hd 1 and 2. now i was just talking about gracenote right here and grace

note allows that album art to be displayed right now. and that is a fantastic song by the way. if you haven't heard the commodores sing brickhouse. yeah, that song is mighty mighty. and then you can see right here it says hd one and two. i can press that and that allows me to go to the other 98.7. and so right now that's still the same 98.7 station but

it's playing a different song. remember i said it allows you to take advantage of the full bandwidth of any fm station so i can press it again and you can see it's still 98.7 right there. so there's more than one 98.7. so when you tune into an fm station right here and you see that little icon pop up, when it turns yellow that means you can listen to more

than one of that given fm station. pretty neat. i can go here and tag it and that will allow the track to be sent to my device the next time i connected in the event that i want to go on itunes and purchase that song. it's pretty neat. and then i have scan that scans the radio stations station list. and then i have sound and that allows me to adjust

the sound and i have source and that allows me to go to am/fm/xm/bluetooth audio. and these are grayed out. cd usb and auxiliary. you can see it says here one through six and i can press down and i actually have several pages of preset stations all the way up to 36 and that's pretty neat. because i can memorize all kinds of different stations

up to 36 and i can combine am fm and xm all on 1 block of of stations right there. so you can see i have xm radio and then i have am radio and then there is fm radio. i don't have to switch the sources. i can just use them all right there from that one block. that's really neat. and then home screen. very very neat feature. i'm

gonna pick three panel becauseii want as much information displayed on that screen at all times as possible. and you can see where it says audio, phone, and weather. so at this point i can customize this screen. i'm going to press phone and i had audio and weather and i'm just going to say clock. see that? so now watch this.

there's my home screen now i just customized that. isn't that neat. now check this ou. all three of these screens are clickable so i can touch a screen and it's going to expand the whole screen into that information. i can press three day and that's going to give me the specific forecast in my area for three days.

this is used via hd radio by the weather channel. this is actually free. its software you don't actually have to pay for. it it's not a subscription-based service. i can present any of those days and see the specific weather of that day and then i can back out of that and looking at current weather, national cities, other cities. pretty neat stuff.

the way i explain this screen, this setup screen inside of apps, is this is where you are going to customize the vehicle and how it works. and it's going to determine how you basically work the vehicle the whole time you have it and how efficient you are at it. and i really recommend spending some time in this screen early on so that you can

customize it and begin to enjoy all of its capabilities. and then here are my climate settings. here you have dual zone climate control control for the driver, for the passenger. i have sync. that allows the same temperatures to be used whenever the driver has control. you can see i'm controlling both sides when sync is deactivated. now the passenger has

controlled their side. air filtration, fan speed, fan direction, defrost, front and rear recirculate. auto allows the car to adjust the temperature automatically in accordance with what is displayed here. so you can see when i hit auto it's going to keep the cabin temperature at this temperature. so it works just like the central air in your house. right now

we're looking in the lowest part of the center console. right in front of the gear shifter near the cupholders and a little bit of storage there as well but what i wanted to point out is you have two buttons here that say eco mode and sport. eco mode allows something called throttle mapping to work and i can press eco mode and that is going to show a

display in the center of the dash. and it says eco-mode. you see them down there and down low? and that is going to make it drive in a more fuel efficient manner. pretty neat. and then sport is the opposite of eco mode. right now the dash says sport and that's going to have a feeling of a little bit more torque. whenever i press the accelerator and

then i can lift up this little area and i see a usb port. there's an auxiliary jack and of course a phone charger here. i've got a good amount of storage with your cup holders and then a little triangular shape storage area there. here's your transmission or your gear shifter and i can put this in reverse.

when i put it in reverse, i see a backup camera and it has dynamic gridlines. you can see that i'm turning the wheel. and when i turn the wheel those gridlines turn and the point of that is whenever i go to park i'm going to take those blue lines and put them inside the white lines on the parking lot. and use that as a guide in order to get into the

space more accurately. when i back up into the space all those lines should line up. and that way i can use when i use this properly i can actually back into a space more straight than i can pull forward or park it more better-ish. and then i've got a cup holder. here the parking brake. and then whenever i put it in drive, this is

going to be the regular drive mode so this is going to be that where you know drive it most often. at any speed i can shift it over. i can get down here. i can gear up here. and i can see where it says on the dash it says s4 and i can gear and it does have a six-speed. and this is called sequential shift. and sequential shifting allows me to shift

it without a clutch. i can shift it manually without a clutch. i can see the center console here. nice storage area and then a neat little storage area right there and here's your glove box. and there's your books. right now we're looking straight up at the map lights and the control for the

sunroof. you also have a door here for your sunglasses. this allows you to open the sunroof completely. the whole, all the glass and this allows you to tilt the the back of the glass up and down like that. and then your switch here for your lights cuts them on. that allows them right here, that setting allows them to cut on when the doors

are open and that's completely off. and this is the microphone in case you ever wondered for bluetooth. if you're using your phone for bluetooth. okay everybody that wraps up our look at the 2017 toyota rav4. i hope this helps you! if you have watched this video and you go to look at a rav4, make sure you really kind of like take notes on

the video and everything. so when you go to look at one you can really know exactly what you're looking at and you can probably, from this video, you'll probably know more than that salesperson does. that will just be pretty cool. thanks again for watching! if you want content just like this delivered to you hot off the press as soon as i make it,

make sure you hit that subscribe button. if you would give this video a great big thumbs up if i have earned it and make sure you have a great day! thanks for watching everybody!

deddyhits Monday, April 17, 2017