2026 Kia Sportage X-Pro Review: Forget about Off-Roading. This is a bargain!
2026 Kia Sportage X-Pro Quick Specs
MSRP: $39,690
Engine: 1.8L Turbocharged 4-Cylinder
Horsepower and Torque: 177 hp @ 5,500 rpm / 195 lb-ft @ 1,500 rpm
0-60 and Efficiency: 9.1 seconds / 24 City - 28 Highway - 26 Combined MPG
Guy who did stuff: Yousef Alvi
Photography: Manufacturer
The 2026 Kia Sportage joins the ranks of soft off-road vehicles like the Mazda CX-50, the Toyota RAV4 TRD Off-Road, and the Honda CR-V TrailSport. I say soft off-road vehicles because while they may ‘look’ like they’ll follow your neighbor's Bronco through the woods, they’re more designed to flaunt your desire to go through the woods rather than any actual ability. Let me explain.
The X-Pro trim of the Sportage gives you blacked-out trim, some interior badges, and 17-inch wheels wrapped in BFG all-terrain tires. That’s essentially it. Sure, there is AWD, but the system is a passive setup, which means it primarily kicks in only when it senses wheel spin and immediately tries to shut off when it doesn’t. For ‘off/soft roading’ purposes, that frankly sucks. You want all four wheels under their own power—not at the mercy of programming trying to democratically select when to engage a wheel while you’re sliding down a muddy embankment. It also lacks any type of serious underbody protection. Without real steel skid plates, slamming down on a pointy rock means goodbye to your oil pan. Lastly, it shares the same basic suspension geometry as the regular Sportage. There is no significantly raised ride height to avoid that pointy rock or hop over a log, which will leave you teeter tottering while your neighbor’s Bronco happily drives away.
When stacked against its peers, the Sportage is the best bang for the square footage buck. In terms of interior space, the Sportage is a packaging marvel, boasting a class-leading 39.6 cubic feet of cargo space behind the second row—beating the Toyota RAV4’s 37.5 cubic feet and the Mazda CX-50’s 31.4 cubic feet. Rear legroom is equally cavernous at 41.3 inches, making it feel a full size larger than the Mazda. However, when the pavement ends, the Sportage X-Pro and the Mazda CX-50 both feel more at home on the tarmac rather than mud bogging or climbing technical trails. While they look the part, they are essentially street cars in hiking boots.
If you want even a modicum of extra mechanical help, you have to look at the Subaru Forester Wilderness. A full time, mechanical, symmetrical AWD system, with the extra off-road accoutrement to make your Bronco driving neighbor embarassed. Or even the RAV4 TRD Off-Road, which features a TRD-tuned suspension, Dynamic Torque Vectoring AWD, and a front steel skid plate, heck even the CR-V TrailSport, which utilizes a rugged-tuned suspension, steel underbody flares, and specific "Trail" logic for its AWD system. The Sportage is the choice for the family that needs the most luggage room, but for anyone actually eyeing a muddy trail, the competitors offer more mechanical substance to back up their rugged plastic cladding…or you can just get a Forester and been done with it.
When you look at the window stickers, the Sportage X-Pro’s "All Bark" strategy becomes harder to swallow. At a starting MSRP of $39,690, it sits uncomfortably high in a segment where its rivals offer more specialized hardware for similar or even less money:
Mazda CX-50 Meridian Edition (~$33,150 - $40,400): Mazda offers the Meridian look on two tiers. You can get the blacked out aesthetic on the base engine for significantly less than the Kia, or pay about the same as the Kia to get the 250-hp Turbo engine that while still sounds agricultural, at least as the power/torque to move you.
Honda CR-V TrailSport (~$38,800 - $40,195): The TrailSport comes in slightly cheaper or right at parity with the X-Pro, but it includes a much more sophisticated Hybrid powertrain and actual steel underbody protection (flares) that the Kia lacks. But it also has a CVT and CVTs make me cry.
Subaru Forester Wilderness (~$38,385 - $40,585)
The newly redesigned 2026 Forester Wilderness has the crown for ground clearance at a massive 9.3 inches. It’s the only one with a full time mechanical AWD system. Yes, it’s also stuck with a CVT but the Subaru Symmetrical AWD system makes up the difference.
Toyota RAV4 TRD Off-Road (~$39,900): For a negligible price jump, the Toyota gives you a tuned suspension and a torque-vectoring AWD system that is vastly superior to the Kia’s reactive setup. Also has a CVT, so yeah, crying.
Essentially, Kia is charging you a premium for a styling package and tires, while the others are at least attempting to justify the $40k price point with actual mechanical upgrades.
All of that is not to say the Sportage is bad in every way. Well, it’s bad in other ways, but I’ll get to that later. It’s still a very large, comfortable, family crossover. This means it has plenty of room for you and your family. There is a huge cargo area for the obligatory Costco and Home Depot runs, and it’s fuel-efficient enough not to break the bank when you fill up—at least on paper.
The steering is another hallmark of the Sportage. Actually, every Kia, Hyundai, and Genesis vehicle I have driven over the past ten years has had the best steering out of any car in their respective categories. The Sportage is no exception. It’s light when you want and need it to be, but it also brilliantly builds up resistance in a linear fashion with great feedback for its class. In other words, it’s a cinch at low speeds and confident at highway speeds without any drama or confusion in between.
The best part, however, is the interior. No, it’s not Mazda levels of refinement and craftsmanship, but what it has is... common freakin' sense. There are actual buttons for almost every control you need, and they are placed logically and easily in the cabin. It’s not like some other manufacturers who have panicked and just threw buttons haphazardly at a dashboard to appease their increasingly frustrated customers. This Sportage was designed from the onset with common sense. Bravo Kia. Just Bravo!
To quote my people: “It ain’t all perfect,” though.
The 1.8-liter turbocharged four-cylinder makes a barely okay 177 horsepower and 195 lb-ft of torque. That gives a 0-60 time of roughly 9.1 seconds, which is again… just ‘ok’ in the slowest sense of the word. Unfortunately, while doing it, the engine sounds like a misfiring lawn mower. This is one of the most coarse-sounding engines on the road today. That coarseness is not just auditory; you can feel it vibrating at stoplights and under heavy acceleration. Sure, it’s efficient enough at 26 MPG combined, but God, it’s painful to get there. The final nail in the coffin, is the throttle. It’s extremely sensitive and one ounce of pressure has you flying off into the horizon. Which is even worst, when there is an odd dip in power and then a surge of it in the middle of the rev range. All in all, it’s not easy to drive this smoothly at all.
The brakes are another point of contention. It’s a bit weird because the first 5% of pedal travel feels pretty great, then anything more than that feels like you’re stepping on a piece of plywood. Now, that could be forgiven if that movement resulted in actually stopping, but it doesn’t. You have to dig further down past that wooden wall to make the Sportage stop. It’s just not a pleasant sensation at all.
BUT WAIT.
We are going about this all wrong. Take way the ‘X-Pro’ from the equation and look at the 2026 Kia Sportage objectively. You’ll start seeing something. It’s space. A lot of space. In every row and cargo area. So much space in fact, that when you compare the numbers to vehicles like the Toyota Highlander and the Honda Passport, you start to be amazed.
Model Front Legroom 2nd Row Legroom
2026 Kia Sportage 41.4 in 41.3 in
2026 Toyota Highlander 42.0 in 38.7 in
2026 Honda Pilot 41.0 in 40.8 in
From a sheer dollars-to-inches perspective, the 2026 Kia Sportage is an absolute bargain! So much so, in fact, that I’m frankly surprised no one else has been screaming about this! It’s, on average, $12,000 cheaper compared to the Toyota Highlander and the Honda Pilot. That’s monumental, folks!
It’s not like you are downgrading on the interior, either. As I described earlier, the interior of the Sportage is a "common sense palace." Everything is logically placed, but with a lower dash line, the added visibility, and the extra sunlight, the perceptible space is frankly huge! The quality of the interior also lines up—maybe not quite with the Highlander, but definitely with the quality of materials found in a Honda Passport.
Yes, both the Passport and the Highlander handily spank the Sportage in every appreciable performance metric—from power and torque to powertrain refinement, acceleration, and even fuel economy. But if you can live with the performance disparity—and let’s be honest, that is 90% of the buying public out there—the Sportage is your buy of the year, folks!
So let’s forget the "X-Pro" completely and focus on what truly matters to a modern-day automotive consumer: price. The 2026 Kia Sportage is the bargain of the decade!
Yousef Alvi
