G'day i'm Syed Faizan so the isuzu d-max but it's been updated for the 2022 model year so today we're going to check it out have a look at all the changes and see whether it's still worth spending money on now
This right here the x terrain is at the top of the d-max tree it's priced at just under 66 grand so the price has increased since we reviewed it the first time and they've also adjusted some of the driveway office so just make sure you check to see what the exact pricing is when you do watch this this competes with things like the ford ranger the toyota hilux the mitsubishi triton there are lots and lots of competitors in the segment today we're going to do a detailed review of this ute okay so let's talk exterior you get eight different colors to pick from all but white is an additional 500 bucks but there are no changes to the outside for the 2022 model year it's all sort of inside and also with gcm and i'll run you through that in a second so that means the rest of this design looks pretty familiar so i'll quickly run you through it you have this double decker grille section i know that i found this fascinating i never actually noticed it until one of you guys in the comments section pointed it out but there's two of these things here
I do wonder what it looked like if there was just this top section or just the bottom one i don't know it'd kind of give it a different appearance i don't dislike this i just think it's it's interesting the way that it looks so you've got isuzu along the top there you've got all these big openings for cooling and then you also have parking sensors nestled in down the bottom there you've got this different color differentiation so you have the body colour a darker color here and then a lighter silver color there with piano black on that grille section over with the headlights you have bi led headlights with led daytime running lights you also have fog lights down the bottom here with an indicator built in that bottom section unfortunately despite a lot of the lights in this car being led they still do have some incandescent globes here and in the back which i don't know if you're going to go led you may as well just do everything in led and not just have these random little globes that you'll have to replace more frequently so all right we'll whip around to the side down here you've got a set of 18-inch alloy wheels we've also got these wheel arch guards up the top there so fairly chunky and they're offset from that body color love this red i haven't seen an x frame before in this round i've only really seen the orange color and a few other sort of colors but this red actually looks pretty cool and offsets nicely with that sort of body arch protection there you've got a set of highway terrain tyres now let's talk about this wheel design because isuzu initially said that they were looking at offering an accessory wheel for the x terrain for people that didn't like this but it doesn't look like they've actually done that at all
so you're stuck with this design so some people love it some people hate it but it is just worth keeping in mind that if you do want a different design you have to fork out your own money to do that but look often what people will do is buy the new wheel leave these in the shed and then when they go to sell the car they'll swap it back over so it might not be a bad idea up the top here we've got an indicator built into that wing mirror you can again see you've got that sort of plain plastic down the bottom there and that same color as the wheel arches along the the top you don't have any cameras or anything built in under here because i don't have a 360 camera available for this just yet now on the side steps down here look they look okay but if you are doing some proper off-roading they're probably going to damage those pretty quickly i'd love to see something like the raptor side steps here big chunky meaty uh side steps that really give you the ability to hit rocks and climb onto them and all that sort of stuff you've got roof rails up the top here you've got a sail plane so they've added some stickers here i don't think that was standard on the 2021 but the sail plane has a plastic outer surround on it you can't really hook anything onto that it's here just as a decorative piece for those wheel arch protection four by four on the side there and if you come around to the back you've got an x down here which signifies x-train three-liter turbo diesel because that is the engine fitted to this there is a 1.9 liter diesel coming which we'll review in the coming months and i think that'll be an interesting step down it may not be sort of as grunty as this but it will be more affordable and probably more fuel efficient as well when it's finally launched and then isuzu d-max on the side there let's talk about the tray so up the top here you've got this roller cover that you can push out of the way
A little bit noisy and then it comes with a rope as well to pull it back in the actual tailgate itself has the camera built into it there and then the handle that drops down unfortunately no
torsion bar over here it is becoming common theme now a lot of use to add that torsion bar to make it easier to open and close this tray so it is missing out on that but inside the tray you do have some hooks off to the side a little channel here to collect water so it doesn't come into the tray itself and then in terms of the tray dimensions it has a load length of just under 1600 millimeters you've got a load width of a little over 1500 millimeters and then a little over 1100 millimeters between the wheel arches you have a payload of almost one tone and as part of the 2022 model year changes the gcm has increased by 50 kilograms to 6000 kilos so that gives you just a little bit more capacity you also still have a three and a half ton braked towing capacity so we are inside the d-max uh let's run with the key first so here it is here you've got a remote start function up the top there lock unlock blank down the bottom got a little bit of metal trim around there then on the back you've got isuzu it's a proximity sensing key so you leave that in your pocket once you're inside you have a push button start and then this little key here this is for your cargo cover so you can lock that so no one can get inside and steal your goodies now what about the design so i did mention in our last d-max review
I reckon this is completely chalk and cheese compared to the last d-max it's a huge step forward in terms of design but also just in terms of the fit and finish and premium materials used here throughout the cabin so talking about stuff like here on the dashboard it's all nice and soft touch you've got that stitching along the top there you've also got these materials that i know they're scratchy plastic but they're not sort of offensive they actually look nice and soft through there and then as you come down you do have a fair bit of piano black around here which i'm not a massive fan of but it's there anyway but i do think this is nicely presented now part of the model year 22 changes are things like the red stitching here on the steering wheel that continues along the dashboard there i think in the previous one that was like white or something like that it's red on the seats and also this gear lever they've also changed some of the silver highlights that were around the air vents and the steering wheel so that's all been piano blacked so there's just more piano black as we go not less we've also got some changes here in the gauge cluster as well little x down there as well so visually it looks very similar to the model year 21 iso d-max x terrain now what about our touch points well that feels good there and not too bad on the door how soft are they well we've got our durometer we've tested the main surfaces in this cabin if you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before have a look at the link in the description builds quality right oh let's see what this is like that feels not too bad a little flex there in the center but it's not too bad and all that's pretty solid as well so damx has been out for a little while now how has yours been going if you have already bought one has it been okay have you had any dramas with it let me know in the comments section and what about our door test nice and solid right oh let's talk infotainment so up the top here you've got a nine inch infotainment screen so it's a color touch screen and then you have shortcut buttons down the bottom here comes with inbuilt satellite navigation and you also have voice recognition there's am fm and dab plus digital radio so that means you do have some pretty good coverage there in terms of audio in addition to that you also have the ability to hook up a usb audio device an auxiliary audio device and then also stream through bluetooth and on the smartphone mirroring front you have apple carplay and android auto the good news about apple carplay is that it 's wireless and that means that i honestly don't know what all this music is i didn't download that um so yeah full screen integration a tiny bit laggy as you go through those screens but for the most part it's not too bad and the good news is with the voice recognition that it does it through your phone so if you do have siri or you know the google equivalent of siri it's doing that via the cloud it means you're getting far more accurate voice recognition you can send text messages into all that kind of thing so look i do like this infotainment system it just can be a little bit annoying sometimes what i've noticed is that once you get into the car and it connects to apple carplay which it does automatically once you hope in it switches your audio to apple carplay instead of the radio so you have to then get out of it go into the sort of radio again and then go back into car place so I don't know it's a tiny bit clunky now i am curious uh just very quickly ford has just released a new ranger they've got a giant infotainment system are you a tech person do you prefer a giant infotainment system or do you prefer something smaller like this that's easier to use let me know in the comments section below and this is what android auto looks like so again a full screen integration it feels a little snappier than carplay which is uh good news and it's all plumbed through an eight-speaker sound system with live surround sound now let's talk about the screen here ahead of the driver it's a 4.2 inch display this gives you basic functionalities such as your um you know engine temperatures fuel fuel economy range and your four wheel drive controls as well now what about your safety tech you've got autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection you've got an auto dimming rear vision mirror now so this is new to the range you've also got a center air bag here this prevents occupants hitting each other in a side impact there's also radar cruise control you have rear cross traffic alert lane departure warning and a lane-keeping assistant but there is something exciting i did complain about this in our last review with the lane keeping assistant it's not a very good system it kind of keeps pulsing you back into the lane even when you are already in the lane to turn it off you had to basically go through all of these menus and and faff about with everything it was really frustrating now all you do is push and hold this button here and it disables it now this is part of the model year 22 upgrade but given it's the same button it's always been i don't know why this can't just be applied to other models with a software upgrade so maybe they're going to roll that out eventually who knows you've got a blind spot monitor built into that wing mirror you have front and rear parking sensors and a reverse view camera i'll show you what the camera looks like there it is there so pretty decent quality yeah so it's not terrible you've also got these guidelines as well to help you uh getting into parks and a very clear view there for the trailer when it comes to rigging up your trailer but no 360 the camera here moving on to practicality and we'll start with your connectivity options so down the front here you have one usb port one auxiliary outlet and a 12-volt outlet would have like to see another usb port down here i reckon just the ones kind of not enough you do have a tray down here for your phone no wireless phone charging but it does fit into there pretty easily your phone can also, be stored here in the cup holders without any dramas coffee cups so watch this it disappears and your lid will disappear as well if you go to get it so not the best spot because it is quite deep and there's no teeth on the side there but they do have a solution and that is cup holders in front of the air vents so you can slot your coffee cup in there if you need to and it means that it will stay warm on a cold day and it will stay cool on a hot day i'm just trying to get my head around that stuff so there is an option there if you do need it in terms of your other storage for bottles your bottle can easily live in there without any dramas but like i said there's no teeth so it does move around a little bit you can also fit your bottle inside the door and try a big bottle let's see how that goes so it doesn't fit in the center there but it does fit inside the door which is good news i'll get that out of the way other storage so you've got this center console reasonably sized it's not too bad you've also got this storage spot down here then you have a box up the top here it's now easy to open i remember the last d-max you have to kind of you know do a push and a pull at the same time to get that to open but that is very straightforward you've got a glove box down here there is no room in there at all once you've got the manual but you do have a second glove box just above it with enough storage there for bits and pieces and then finally you have a sunglasses holder up the top it's worth pointing out as well that the 22 upgrade brings you lights inside your vanity mirrors now let's talk about comfort you've got dual zone automatic climate control finally there's heated seats look at this you've got buttons there for your heated seats which is good news you've also got electric seat adjustment for the driver so it goes forwards backward backrest goes forwards backward seat goes up and down as well
you also have a lot of seat comfort because when you're driving in this they just hug you in beautifully and for long distance drives it's a good place to be seated i've done a few long distance drives in d-max since it launched and I've been pretty impressed with the seat comfort and how they feel and they're also perforated as well which means on hot days you don't have to really sort of peel yourself off the seat it just um you just come off nicely and there's enough sort of aeration there in addition to the heated seats i've also added heating for the wing mirrors so if it is frosty in the morning they will sort of defrost nice and quickly as well so you do have all bases covered now in terms of steering wheel it offers both tilt and reach adjustment and on our reach test all this stuff is easy to reach while you're driving so before i hop in the back let's talk about what you got back here so these lift up in an interesting way because you can lift just this side which gives you access to a little storage nook down here then what you can do is lift this side as i drape myself across the seat and you've got another storage nook under there and if you do have kids you have iso fix points on the two outboard seats and also two top tether points and you access them behind here through this thread so they basically go through there and then connect into the center that's also where you'll find your jack but no real storage space behind here now in terms of room use a handle to hop in let's see what it's like so look knee room is okay it's not amazing i'm sort of there is like a gap there i am comfortable but if this seat was any further back i'd be sort of sitting with my knees in there toe room is yeah average not that fantastic and head room is reasonable but not amazing if you're any taller than i am outside of that you do have some creature comforts back here so you've got two map pockets you've got air vents a usb outlet there it's a usb a outlet you've also got a hook here to hold
you know stuff like shopping and bags and other random things you have a center armrest here with two cupholders and that holds a bottle without any dramas no teeth though so that does move around a little bit and you can pop this inside of the door if you need to but look outside of that it's actually not a bad place to be seated it is fairly comfortable and i've got visibility out the sides as well which means i won't feel claustrophobic while um you know I'm relegated to the back while my mates are driving and doing fun things up the front so we're on the road in the d-max so with the model year 22 there's no changes to the engine so you're getting the same three-liter turbo charged four-cylinder diesel makes 140 kilowatts of power and 450 newton meters of torque so that is more than the outgoing model but it's still a bit short on the rest of the competitors in this segment they all produce about 10 more torque at around that 500 newton meter mark look it's not the end of the world the six-speed auto that this is mated to and by the way the six-speed auto is the only gearbox you can get in the x terrain it does a good enough job but you know if you sink the boot in look it does sort of pin you back in the seat it's really not that bad i just think when you've been spoiled with 500 newton meters you kind of feel that top edge missing a little bit and you'll notice that most when you're towing and have a load in the tray i think that's where the 450 is going to feel the most different to 500 newton meters and how does that gearbox feel behind the wheel look it's pretty good it can be a little lazy at times but it does take the advantage of the torque band of the engine so instead of dropping back through gears i can lean on the throttle and it will just progressively feed in that torque and it doesn't have to hunt which is i guess one of the advantages of not having 10 speeds to deal with like you do in the ranger isuzu doesn't have an official 0-100 time but this is how it went up against our stopwatch
isuzu claims a combined fuel economy of 8 liters per 100 ks we are currently sitting on 11.9 I will mention that we have been doing our off-roading before we went on our drive and this car is brand new or pretty much brand new it's under 100 kilometers old so I do expect that fuel use to settle a little bit i know when i've done a lot of highway driving in these before that they settle around the sort of 9 liter per 100k mark so pretty efficient and you should get about a thousand k's out of a tank if you're hitting those numbers let's talk about the rides so d-max comes standard with a three-leaf rear suspension setup generally the fewer leaves that you have at the back the smoother the ride should be and in this instance, it is smooth so it can feel a little bit brittle on some of the corrugations you'll find on a country road but it is softly sprung just slightly firmly damped but for the most part it is pretty comfortable especially in and around the city you can whack speed humps potholes all that sort of stuff you don't really feel anything inside the cabin but in terms of road noise so it's pretty quiet in terms of tire noise but where it is a bit noisy is the engine so it's making a fair old racket coming into the cabin so it is something that you do notice when you do lean into the throttle and try and sort of keep up with traffic and then on the visibility front i can see clearly down the front of the car there the wing mirrors are massive so good visibility down the side you've got a blind spot monitor there visibility is excellent at the rear as well keep in mind when you do you know get to parking and that kind of thing you've got front rear parking sensors a reverse view camera and the steering isincredibly light at low speeds means that it is very easy to place the car when you do need to you don't have anydrive modes but i will just call out your driving modes so you've got a two wheel drive high range and that is for sealed surfaces so unlike stuff like the triton which has the super select full drive system you can't drive this in four wheel drive high range on sealed surfaces because you can do damage to the car so just keep that in mind we did shoot a video on four wheel drive controls that i've run through a little later on there's a link in the description as well if you do need to catch that and that will explain why you can't do that but you also have a full drive low range and i'll demo some of these when we do our light off-road section just on steering feel they've ditched the hydraulic steering rack and you now have this electrically assisted steering rack
The steering is very light and look i think that's good for low speed maneuvers such as parking and that type of thing there isn't a great deal of steering feel and that is because you know they've made it as large as they possibly can so it's kind of polar opposites or something like a ford ranger which has just a little bit of meat to it so i think some people are either going to like or dislike that depending on their driving mood you don't have any drive modes you can select gears manually by doing this but let's see how it goes through our corner it's kind of fun um it's it's not a ferrari but uh it it holds its own okay when you do punt it through a corner that's a good thing with dual cab utes they're sort of big and cuddly enough that you can you know throw it around a bit without it snapping over steer or doing anything you're not going to expect it to do so let's do a little bit of light off-roading in the d-max let me run you through the specs first so nothing's changed with the model year 22 so it all stays the same i mentioned down on the road that you have a number of different drive modes in terms of where you're sending drive but these are the only ones that you want to use while you're off-roading so two-wheel drive high range is for on-road driving or you know if you're going down a very basic gravel road and you don't want to switch into four high but four high is what you want to be using on unsealed surfaces you also have four wheel drive low range you have a rear differential lock only works in low range you have a hill descent control as well then in terms of your ground clearance millimeters of clearance which is the amount of space you have before you start hitting anything underneath the the car you have an approach angle of 30.5 degrees that's the angle of the face you can approach before you hit anything at the front of the car and then a 24.2 degree departure angle which is the same but in reverse and finally you have an 800 millimeter waiting depth as well now
And that will run you through all of that and when you use all of these controls but let's flick over to four wheel drive high range for the moment you can see it activate down there we'll also do is bring up our four-wheel drive screen that will tell us exactly what the car is doing in which mode it's in and we'll start off with the log mountain it's all pretty dry so it shouldn't be too much of a drama getting up here i've got everything just in the standard sort of drive mode so it's managing it all on its own but you can change gears manually if you need to we are on highway terrain tyres so if you are planning on doing any off-roading the first thing i'd probably change is the tyres to give you just a little bit more latitude while you're off-road you can see just their highway terrain tyres will sometimes get a little bit stuck because they don't have a great deal of grip available in comparison to an all-terrain tyre all right we've crested the top here i'm going to kill that parking sensor we'll pop the hill descent control on and we can see how that goes on the way down okay here we go so we've got some deepish ruts here and i want to see how fast the hill descent control goes on the way down yeah look it's probably a little quick for my liking because it's kind of throwing us about a touch no it's not terrible like it could just be a touch slower with some of these cars i just wish there was a way to adjust the speed of the descent instead of having just the one set speed that the manufacturer decides so yeah it is okay it's just not not ideal in terms of speed adjustment okay next up we have our offset mogul and our seesaw now and i do this in most youths because it gives us a really good chance to see how the traction control system works when it is limited in two wheel drive and we have a wheel off the ground but before we do that we've got our center section here
where the car is at full flex there it is just there i can feel it sort of teetering let's see if we can open and close these doors easily yeah no problems there so the weaker utes with weaker chassis you won't be able to close the door properly that is the big difference \ there this seems fine though whip through to the other side on the another side here is where we're going to get that rear wheel in the air and we want to see how well the traction control deals with that wheel being in the air before you have to lock a diff lock so there it is just there that wheel is off the ground just going to lean onto the throttle now so traction control is biting and you can see the revs dip there as the traction control bites i'm going to just gradually put more and more throttle on and eventually it's going to pull us out of there just using traction control alone so yeah look not a bad setup we'll go through that once more just in four wheel drive high range and we'll see if that helps that situation as well because in full drive high range it's sending 50 of torque to the front 50 of torque to the rear and in that situation where you do have two wheels kind of teetering off the ground it has to figure out how to do its thing involving traction control as well okay take two this time i have it in four wheel drive high range we'll get it set up in that condition again with the wheel off the ground which is just there and then i'll do the same thing i'll just ease off the brake and onto the throttle we'll see what happens so remember no diff is locked at the moment we just have it in four-wheelI'll drive high range so it's any 50 talk to the front 50 to the rear it's kind of doing the exact same thing which is a little disappointing i would have hoped that in this mode it will actually utilize the front axle a whole lot more to pull the car out but it's just spinning that wheel and waiting for the traction control to intervene so yeah look it's not the most the intelligent four-wheel drive system in the world i would have hoped it would just pull through that without me having to really sort of get onto the throttle right oh next up we have a test um it's kind of just a little bit further than the basic off-road stuff that we do and now that it's dry i can safely do this it's basically a concrete hill it doesn't look all that technical but what it does have is offset divots and as the the car gets closer to the top it's forced to use the rear wheels to drive it up the hill when the front lifts off the ground so it does rely on the traction control systems working really well and it also relies on our rear diff lock too so what i'm going to do is go into low range you achieve that by popping it into neutral going into four low and all of these light up so basically here it's saying that traction control is off stability control is off we're in four wheel drive low range i'm gonna set myself up the hill engage the rear diff lock and we'll see what happens okay here we go so we climb pick our line through here we'll drop off a little off the side there and as we get closer to the top is where it starts grappling for grip there's that front wheel lifting as we put a little bit of throttle so i got up there without any dramas um what we find is that as it's climbing it has to use that rear diff lock because some of the holes that it falls into forces it to to send all of that torque to the rear axle and that means that it's really just driving the car up the hill because the the front wheel is off the ground so it is good that it got up there without too many dramas and all you do is just lean into the throttle so the full drive system in this is pretty good once you switch the traction control off because that seems to be the weak link of the four-wheel drive system
so the 2022 d-max it's kind of the same as the last d-max it really hasn't changed all that much but that's not a bad thing they've added the features that it was missing to start with and when this car launched it actually really set a benchmark for the segment but it is let down by the engine ever so slightly i think it could do with just a tiny bit more punch and i was hoping that now when this launch they would maybe take this opportunity to wind the wick up a little bit on that and give it 500-newtona meters it's not the end of the world but it could just do with a tiny little bit more I'm interested to see what you guys think so you've seen the new ford ranger and if you haven't seen our detailed blog that do you think that that should be cause for concern for all the other manufacturers especially with the interior in the new ranger and the v6 diesel do you think that the rest of these guys need to start doing some catching up let me know what you reckon down in the comments section and if you have bought a d-max let me know how it's going what's it like as a longer-term proposition and have you enjoyed it so far now if you did enjoy this Blog please make sure you hit like and share it with your mates and until next time take it easy #isuzupakistan #gandharamotors #dmaxvcross
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