Lexus Reviews

The Lexus ES has come a long way and the latest eighth-generation version is the most advanced and diverse yet. Lexus launched the electric version a few months back and now the petrol-electric hybrid has arrived. A favourite of airport limo operators, the 2026 ES hybrid is expected to attract a similar clientele while also appealing to private buyers that aren’t ready for full electric power. My esteemed colleague Byron Mathioudakis already covered the ES EV in detail in July so check out the review for his deep dive on design, ownership and safety. I’m focusing on the ES300h for this review. One quick note on design - the new ES is a stunner. Easily the best looking Lexus sedan in years, it gets a lot of attention from curious admirers. The ES EV is offered in Sports Luxury spec with either front- or all-wheel drive, but the hybrid is offered solely in front-wheel drive Luxury guise. It’s $75,000, before on-road costs, which is only $2000 less than a FWD Sports Luxury EV. Given the extra spec and smooth electric powertrain, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just pay the extra $2.0K and opt for the EV. Unless you have a serious aversion to battery electric vehicles. The new hybrid is $9460 pricier than the previous-generation ES300h Luxury ($65,540), which is a significant jump, however it is a vastly different car with next-gen tech and an uptick in luxury and standard features. There are few direct rivals for the big hybrid Lexus, but as an alternative you could look at a plug-in hybrid like the Audi A5 e-hybrid ($89,900) or Mercedes-Benz C350e (from $98,200) but nothing else in its class has the rear-seat space (more on that later) or standard gear. A size up is the Genesis G80 2.5T but that’s $104,128. That $75,000 starts to look pretty good against its premium rivals. Standard gear in the ES300h Luxury includes: 19-inch alloy wheels Auto-levelling LED headlights Acoustic windscreen glass Synthetic leather upholstery (in black, white or hazel) Panoramic roof with power sunshade Auto-dimming rear-view mirror Heated front seats and steering wheel Eight-way power front seat adjustment 14-inch multimedia touchscreen with embedded sat-nav Apple CarPlay and Android Auto 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster Five USB-C ports 10-speaker audio The example I’m testing comes with the $7000 Enhancement Pack, bringing the price to $82,000. That pack includes: Auto-dimming driver’s side exterior mirror Electronic rear-view mirror Ambient lighting Head-up display Ventilated front seats Power adjust lumbar on passenger seat Driver’s seat slide with memory function Panoramic view monitor Intelligent park assist 17-speaker Mark Levinson audio system Wireless charging Digital key Again, I won’t go into too much detail on cabin design, but there is no doubt this is a premium car. The intricate Japanese-inspired pattern of the door inserts is a highlight. The steering wheel is another highlight. It’s sporty, not overly thick, smallish, beautiful material. One of the best I’ve seen in years. The front seats are comfortable, as you’d expect from a Lexus ES. They’re not overly supportive but offer enough bolstering for a car like this. Byron isn’t a fan of the ‘hidden’ controls for cruise and phone functions on the steering wheel or climate under the screen that appear illuminated when you hover near them, but I don’t mind it. You can turn them on all the time in settings. For details on multimedia, storage and more, check out Byron’s review. That extra ride height makes getting in and out of the Lexus ES easy, which is a positive, especially given the more mature average age of a Lexus buyer. Slotting into the second row behind my 183cm (six-foot) driving position, it’s clear what the Lexus ES is built for. There is so much legroom it’s almost ridiculous. This is the sort of space you’d get in a BMW 7 Series or Mercedes S-Class. It is the ideal business class airport transfer car. Headroom is also ample and there’s plenty of space across the bench. There is a smaller transmission tunnel, but because the two outboard seats are bucketed, the middle seat is set higher up and feels like an afterthought. Use only in emergencies. Those rear seats with high-grade synthetic leather are incredibly comfortable and easy to sink into, while still offering support. This really would be a lovely place to spend a few hours. A wide centre fold-down armrest oddly doesn’t have cupholders, instead it includes a rubber pad for holding your phone. The rear-row seatback is fixed so you can’t fold it down for extra storage in the incredibly long boot, which swallows 493 litres. No spare wheel is offered, just a useless tyre repair kit. The new Lexus rides on Toyota Motor Corporation’s TNGA-K architecture, albeit a heavily revised version compared to the old ES. The hybrid powertrain is a 2.5-litre Atkinson cycle four-cylinder petrol engine with a front permanent magnet synchronous motor, driving the front wheels via an electronic continuously variable transmission (CVT). The Atkinson combustion cycle effectively shortens the engine's compression stroke relative to the expansion stroke in the name of optimal fuel efficiency. Power is rated at 144kW - up from 131kW in the old car - but Lexus doesn’t provide torque figures for its hybrids. Fuel use is 4.5 litres per 100km on the combined cycle and CO2 emissions are 103g/km. I saw urban figures ranging roughly from the official claim to the low fives across the week. Full disclosure - I haven’t driven the electric ES, but Byron spoke highly of the EV’s on-road performance in his review. He briefly drove this hybrid and for his money, he’d pick the EV. I spent a bit of time behind the wheel of the previous generation ES and it was perfectly fine to drive - pleasant, quiet, inoffensive but somewhat forgettable. Lexus has upped the ante with the new ES when it comes to how it drives, but it’s not all sunshine and roses. Firstly, it sits quite high on the road for a sedan. I was sitting as high up as the drivers of some mid-size SUVs I passed. So, if you’re considering an SUV over a sedan because of ride height, the ES has you covered. The ES hybrid is responsive enough without being blisteringly fast in Normal mode. When you floor the accelerator, the petrol engine feels like it’s working hard. It doesn’t sound too unpleasant, but drones a little. Sport mode gives it a bit more bark and it feels quicker. At lower speeds the brakes have that hybrid sponginess to them but an 80km/h emergency brake test proved they’re strong when needed. Steering lacks a bit of engagement but it’s still direct. The ride is a little floaty, particularly on undulating roads. The hybrid lacks the adaptive dampers of the EV. It handles potholes well, and there are a lot around Melbourne right now. The Michelin 235/55 R19 tyres with high sidewalls help to soak up those bumps. Tyre noise creeps in only on the coarsest of road surfaces, but otherwise it's a well insulated, hushed cabin experience. The ES shines in urban settings and on freeways. I suspect it would be a dream on a long-distance road trip. But it’s no performance sedan. Sadly Lexus doesn’t have one of those after the demise of the IS. The ES undoubtedly feels like a premium car on the road, but it’s less convincing when pushed on twistier roads at higher speeds. But arguably, that’s not the point of this car. It has a big turning circle, not surprising given the 5145mm length and near three-metre wheelbase. You will notice its size in tighter urban streets. When it comes to safety and driver aids, the driver distraction warning is the only slightly annoying feature, but can be turned off in settings. All other functions like lane keeping only intervene when necessary. It’s a smooth and unobtrusive set-up.

Lexus launched its first fully-electric car in Australia back in 2023, but it’s fair to say the RZ has hardly made an impact on the electric car scene. Cursed at the time by high pricing, low driving range and a lack of features many EV adopters were looking for, the RZ seemed destined to sit at the bottom of the electric pecking order. Determined to turn its fortunes around, Lexus has refreshed the RZ for 2026 with drastically lower pricing and tweaked specs which it hopes will grant it a second look in the eyes of buyers. Does it have what it takes? I took a top-spec RZ 550e F-Sport for a week to find out. First things first, pricing. Lexus has slashed prices from the RZ range for its latest update to the point where this sporty top-spec one at $105,000, before on-road costs, is now more affordable than the base variant (which cost over $123,000!) when it first arrived in 2023. As a dedicated EV which shares its underpinnings with the Toyota bZ4X, the RZ’s closest rival is the Genesis GV60 from Korea, although comparisons are now difficult, because the GV60 in rear-drive form is $88,000. To get AWD like this RZ 550e you need to splash for the higher-performance GV60 Magma ($130,000). It also needs to face-off against the Audi Q4 e-tron (AWD from $99,818), BMW iX3 ($109,900 in AWD guise) and most problematically for Lexus, the smash-hit Zeekr 7X from China which costs from just $72,900 in Performance AWD trim. While the price-cut is welcome, and this top-spec car gets a bigger battery than before, it still feels like a let-down on range which remains a key consideration for many electric car buyers. Officially this higher-performance 550 e F-Sport version has 437km of driving range according to the WLTP measuring standard, on the back of an official 18.9kWh/100km energy consumption and a slightly larger 77kWh battery pack. My real-world test had the car’s computer reporting 410km of range, with the trip computer showing my most efficient trip being 18.8kWh/100km. It’s within a reasonable margin of error to the claim, but still disappointing in a market where many rival EVs will do 460km+ in the real world. There are other improvements. While the RZ maintains its somewhat middling 150kW DC charging capability for a half hour (10-80 per cent) charge on a compatible station, AC charging capacity has doubled from 11kW to 22kW. Power has also taken a jump, with total outputs now hovering at 300kW combined power for this 550e F-Sport. Unfortunately, though, all RZs are all-wheel drive, so range is a persistent issue no matter which variant you pick. On the styling front, the changes are also subtle, with this luxury mid-sizer maintaining a similar futuristic look to the pre-update version, complete with a grille-free face, and spiky aero coupe rear with twin protrusions on the roof and an interesting split spoiler atop the tailgate. The elephant in the interior is of course the 550 e F Sport’s yoke steering wheel. It’s strange to look at and bizarre to use. We’ll get to that in a moment, but the rest of the interior continues the futuristic theme with the asymmetrical stepped dash design, high beltline for the doors and weird little button door handles. The multimedia screen is a good size at 14 inches, and there’s a 7.0-inch digital instrument cluster sunken into the dash complemented by a holographic head-up display for the driver. Despite its tech overload in the interior one advantage this Lexus maintains is physical dials for the dual-zone climate control and even an audio volume dial, with a handful of shortcut buttons, too. The steering wheel also features an array of initially very confusing buttons and controls which you get used to. Software in the RZ is pretty basic. While it isn’t burdened by some of the gimmicks of Chinese rivals, it’s also a bit too simple for a modern EV, not featuring some of the genuinely useful innovations of some of its rivals like pet mode or detailed energy consumption data screens. The back seat, while offering plenty of space behind my own (182cm) driving position, feels devoid of specific luxuries. The dark trim makes it feel small, but there are air vents and USB ports on the back of the centre console along with rear seat heating. The boot is a decent but not stellar 522 litres and there’s no spare wheel. Nor is there a vehicle-to-load system. Where this 550e variant shines, though, is behind the wheel, but it will take some getting used to. The yoke steering can’t turn a full 360-degrees, so the steer-by-wire control makes the wheels turn to full lock after just half a rotation. This, combined with almost zero feedback from the front wheels, is a confusing feeling. Even after a week, I couldn’t get used to the steering ratio. I found myself constantly having to correct after steering too far or too little. Take it on a bendy back road though and you’re in for a treat. The all-wheel drive system and brilliant torque management on offer in the RZ give this swoopy EV cat-like reflexes, mind-bending amounts of grip and healthy dollops of power despite relatively modest on-paper figures. This car highlights where Japanese automakers still maintain an advantage over their Chinese rivals. It’s brilliant to drive in unexpected and delightful ways. Like other Lexus products, the supple suspension and gentle cabin ambiance makes for a serene place to be and the safety tech proved refreshingly non-invasive. An important consideration is the Lexus ownership piece which is pretty good. A five-year, unlimited kilometre warranty is middling these days, but Lexus’ Encore ownership club, which you get five years' membership to as part of your service also includes things like loan cars at service time, as well as invites to events and track days and a range of deals with partner organisations. Service for the RZ is required once a year or every 15,000km and for the first five years it's fixed at $395. This is good for any car, but great for a luxury brand.

The Lexus ES has never been regarded as a blue-blooded Lexus, being so clearly Toyota Camry-based. But that changes with the eighth-generation ES, ushering in a redesigned body and interior, fresh tech, a stronger platform, sharper steering, new suspension and adaptive dampers for the electric version as tested here in ES350e guise. Collectively, do they transform the Japanese luxury sedan?

The Lexus RZ, the brand’s first dedicated EV, disappointed with very low sales and arguably very high prices. Now, a big update and massive price drop could mean broader appeal for Lexus’ electric SUV.

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