I Spent A Week With The Honda Pilot—Would I Choose It Over The Toyota Grand Highlander?

Last year, five models of large (and very large) two- and three-row SUVs sold very well. Combining the Toyota Grand Highlander and Highlander, the Honda Pilot, the Kia Telluride, and the Hyundai Palisade, you’re looking at 500,000 large crossovers in the $40,000 range.

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FYI: That Hyundai won our Buzz Award for the best family car, in large part because the value play is simply exceptional. Despite that model-year changeover for the Palisade, Hyundai had a record year selling that vehicle. Telluride sales were up, even though a new Telluride just debuted. The Toyota picture is a little more nuanced. Toyota discontinued the slow-selling Highlander last year and now just makes the Grand Highlander, a roomier edition, and combined sales in 2025 were up just shy of 20 percent.

And the Pilot? Sales flagged and were down last year. But I’d argue that the Honda hits a pretty nice middle ground on price and performance. It doesn’t win on any single metric, but after a week behind the wheel, it’s subtly very good, and there are a few types of buyers who should probably be looking at the Pilot who may be overlooking this Honda.

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Base Trim Engine

3.5-liter V6

Base Trim Transmission

10-speed automatic

Base Trim Drivetrain

Front-Wheel Drive

Base Trim Horsepower

285 hp

Base Trim Torque

262 b-ft

Make

Honda

Model

Pilot

Segment

Midsize SUV

It’s Better Looking Than The Grand Highlander

TopSpeed | Michael Frank

I’m well aware that when you’re shopping for a family rig, beauty comes about 15th on the list of priorities, but I think the Pilot looks pretty nice, and even if you’re all about carting kids to school, band practice, and everywhere in between, you should like the beast of burden you’re, um, piloting. This Honda not only gets those chores done, but looks handsome along the way.

Sharp Inside, Too

TopSpeed | Michael Frank

TopSpeed | Michael Frank

Those are shots of the digs of the Elite trim Pilot, which will run you a painful $55,000. But the basic goodness of the Pilot isn’t that brutal. The Sport starts at $43,690 with destination, and comes with heated leather seats, wireless phone pairing, wireless charger, and Honda Sense (a suite of safety tech). The latter includes emergency braking, lane keeping if you start to drift off the road and during use of cruise control (which is adaptive), and a low-speed function for the latter. That enables using cruise control easily in town, not just on the interstate, because you can re-engage the system with a simple throttle tap from a stoplight. The safety suite also prevents merges into your blind spot and includes a backup cross-traffic monitor as well as automated high beams.

Someone At Honda Has Kids

There are double-decker cubbies on the doors of the second row of the Pilot. In the way back, there are dual cupholders for the outboard passengers. No, I doubt your kids are that thirsty, but with 12 cupholders spread across this cabin, their toys, action figures, and munchies can all find a happy home throughout this cabin. (Yes, you’ll definitely murder a vacuum cleaner at some point, sucking one of those toys up, too).

But the bigger picture is that the Pilot is hugely pragmatic, and the execution of each storage space, and the buttons you reach for as a driver, all seem to be a little more obvious and comprehensible. Nothing is fiddly, delicate, or “jewel-like.” This ain’t a Bentley, it’s a Honda, so you can stuff a giant, 40-ounce water bottle into a door pocket mid-road trip and it’s swallowed whole.

Where the Honda Comes Up Short

TopSpeed | Michael Frank

I don’t mean this as a pun, I mean that literally. Note this very information-dense table and spy the middling cargo capacity behind the third row and also how the Pilot stacks up vs. the Toyota on total cargo capacity. Here, the Honda is very close to both the Hyundai and Kia for roominess, but the Toyota, whether you get the hybrid or not, walks all over the competition in the feud for hauling stuff and people simultaneously.

The Hyundai Palisade I tested recently is exceptionally quiet, with standard acoustic glass on the front doors and windshield. And the 2027 Kia Telluride gets standard acoustic glass up front across all models. The Pilot I tested seemed at least as quiet as the Toyota Grand Highlander in my most recent test drive, but I’m giving the nod to the Palisade here, which has near-luxury refinement that the Toyota and Honda cannot match. (Note: I’ll get in the new Kia Telluride shortly, but if I were in the market, I’d definitely cross-shop that family rig, too.)

Short On One Standard Tech Feature

TopSpeed | Michael Frank

I don’t have your kids; you do. And maybe they’re too young to care about USB charging, but unless you step up to the EX-L trim ($46,190) or above, you’re limited to four USB ports. Spend more, and that jumps to six USBs. Meanwhile, the base Telluride and base Grand Highlander each get seven USB ports. More is definitely better in our device-charging-hungry era.

The Smoother Transmission Gives Honda An Edge

TopSpeed | Michael Frank

While the Pilot isn’t exactly fast, the 10-speed gearbox Honda equips it with makes for smoother power delivery, especially compared to the base (non-hybrid) Toyota and the Hyundai Palisade. In fact, the only issue I had while testing that Hyundai was that the transmission tended to “hunt” while climbing steeper hills. The Honda suffers zero gear-change challenges, and I’ll add that the shorter wheelbase and excellent damping enable better, more agile handling.

TopSpeed’s Take

TopSpeed | Michael Frank

The biggest reason you might want the Hyundai or Kia over the Honda, in my book, is that the Telluride and Palisade get more standard safety tech. Base safety includes pedestrian detection, parking distance warning, lane-centering cruise control, and 10 airbags, all at the entry price, and you have to move higher up the trim (and price) ladder to get these features from Honda.

Importantly, beyond the tech, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety awards the Honda Pilot its second-highest Top Safety Pick rating, but the Palisade edges it out with a Top Safety Pick+ award. The outgoing Telluride, FYI, did have a Top Safety Pick + rating, but that’s for 2025, not the redesigned 2027 model that’s yet to be rated.

Given all of that, the Hyundai we chose for our Buzz Award still feels like a formidable match against the Honda. That said, I’d still test-drive both. Because the family-friendly features and layout of the Honda’s interior are that impressive. Then again, I’m not you. You might want that Toyota over all these choices, for its extra-large roominess, and I can’t fault that choice.