2023 INFINITI QX80

The second-generation Infiniti QX80—formerly called the QX56—has been kicking around since 2011, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Luxury marques are leaning hard into newer technology, whipping out flashy, screen-focused interiors that aren’t always intuitive to use. The QX80 still feels old-school in a good way, and for a buyer who doesn’t need or isn’t interested in the latest, greatest infotainment tech, it can be a great value for a full-size, body-on-frame SUV. 

The QX80’s last significant refresh in 2022 brought a 12.3-inch high definition touchscreen, a standard wireless smartphone charger, wireless Apple CarPlay and USB-connected Android Auto. Not much has changed for 2023, but some updates to the QX80’s tried-and-true tech are there to keep the driver’s eyes on the road. The QX80 now features an integrated Amazon Alexa voice assistant and delivers haptic feedback for its lane departure warning through the steering wheel. Streamlined trims continue this year with the the base Luxe, mid-grade Premium Select and top-of-the-line Sensory.

At this point, the QX80 is long-in-the-tooth compared to the other full-size, body-on-frame, luxury SUVs on the market. Its closest competitor, the Lexus LX, was completely redesigned last year. The “too fancy for Jeep badges” Grand Wagoneer revival started in 2021. Then there’s the Lincoln Navigator and Cadillac Escalade, both of which had new generations in 2018 and 2021, respectively. Most of these have doubled down on extravagant, cutting-edge tech, featuring options like the latest hands-free driver assistance systems, improvements to platform design that improve their on-road manners, and interiors that rely more on larger, flashier touchscreen-based controls.

The QX80 is a great bargain with a $74,395 base price that undercuts its luxury SUV competitors by thousands. It may not ride as smoothly on the road or be as nimble around curves as some of its newer-platform competitors, but it’s still plenty comfy. Its 5.6-liter V8 delivers 400 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque smoothly through a seven-speed automatic transmission. Rear-wheel drive is standard, but a competent, easy-to-engage four-wheel drive system is optional on all trims. 

Inside you’ll find a comfortable and spacious interior, and you can option the second row with two luxurious captain’s chairs paired with a center console, or with a bench to accommodate one more passenger. An optional dual 8-inch screen rear entertainment system is a nice touch for longer trips, and even the third row is less cramped than you might expect from a non-Suburban-length luxury SUV. Unfortunately, rear cargo space suffers with the third row up, making this an SUV that’s best suited for smaller families with less stuff on longer trips—or larger ones that are down to use a roof box. 

The Infiniti QX80 is also a solid value for safety features, including many items such as adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assist as standard that cost extra from other luxury brands. Its NHTSA rating suffers slightly from being both a tall SUV as well as an older platform, as it received three out of five stars for rollover risk in 2023. If you’re aiming to get maximum value from a full-size luxury SUV, the Infiniti QX80 is worth a look.

Performance: 12/15

Where the Infiniti QX80 shines is exactly where you want an SUV to shine: off the pavement. A combination of 9.2 inches of ground clearance, a slow steering rack and an available, easy-to-engage four-wheel drive system makes exploring off the paved path easy and enjoyable. Both drive modes and the four-wheel drive system are controlled with tactile dials right on the center console. Shifts from the seven-speed transmission are smooth. It’s capable of towing up to 8,500 pounds, and features trailer sway control to keep loads under control. 

Taking the QX80 out to one of my favorite gravel bars to shoot some photos was a genuine joy. With 400 hp and 413 lb-ft of torque on tap from a big naturally aspirated V8, it never felt like I had too little power for large ruts and rocks. Feedback through the steering wheel feels fairly muted as this is a luxury vehicle at heart, and being able to navigate around big boulders with minimal effort took precedence in its design over the maximum feedback you’d expect from, say, a track-oriented sports car. 

A sports car is the last thing anyone will mistake the QX80 for, with its lumbering on-road manners. The QX80 is floaty, but predictable on the pavement, and you really feel its weight in turns. This is one area where the QX80 feels like it’s a generation behind its competition, as its handling on pavement isn’t quite as sharp as other high-end SUVs that are built on the newer body-on-frame platforms offered by the likes of Toyota, Ford or GM.

Our top-trim Sensory tester even featured Nissan’s proprietary Hydraulic Body Motion Control that’s designed to limit body roll in turns or on rough surfaces, and while it helped, there’s no denying that the QX80 drives like the older vehicle that it is compared to its peers. 

Fuel Economy: 8/15

The QX80 is as thirsty as you’d expect a V8-powered, full-size luxury SUV to be, with both versions running on premium-grade gasoline to boot. The two-wheel drive version gets a combined 16 mpg, with 14 mpg in the city and 20 mpg on the highway, per the EPA. Adding four-wheel drive docks that just a tiny bit, with the EPA rating its fuel economy at 15 mph combined, 13 mpg in the city and 19 mpg on the highway. This rating was pretty accurate across my week spent in a highly optioned Sensory four-wheel-drive trim of the QX80. 

This middling fuel economy is pretty average for the segment of full-size luxury SUVs, particularly those with a V8 up front. The Escalade, LX and Navigator all offer less thirsty V6 drivetrains, with the Escalade’s V6 in particular getting a combined EPA rating of 22 mpg, 20 mpg in the city and 26 mpg on the highway. Yet some of us just want a big, easy-driving V8 up front, and on that front, the QX80 fares slightly better in EPA mileage tests than the V8-powered Escalade and Grand Wagoneer, most noticeably on the open highway. 

Safety & Driver Assistance Tech: 10/15

Part of the Infiniti QX80’s value is the amount of safety tech that’s included as standard, even on the base Luxe trim. Every QX80 comes equipped with blind spot monitoring and intervention, forward emergency braking with pedestrian detection, lane departure prevention and backup collision intervention. A standard 360-degree camera and parking sensors make navigating tight parking spots a breeze, and come complete with on-screen guide lines that accurately predict where the big SUV will go. There’s also a standard camera-based rear-view mirror, but I found it to be easily blinded by headlights behind me at night. Fortunately, you can simply turn it off to have it function as a normal (albeit slightly tinted) mirror. 

That being said, QX80 lags behind its competition in safety tests due to its older platform and equipment. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has not yet rated the SUV for 2023, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) only updated the QX80’s score for rollover risk, rating it three out of five stars. Likewise, while Infiniti includes a forward collision braking system as standard on the QX80, the NHTSA claims the system does not meet its current standards for crash imminent braking and dynamic braking support. Its last full NHTSA crash test was in 2020, when it achieved four out of five stars as an overall safety rating, with five-star ratings for side crash protection and three-star ratings for front crash protection. 

Comfort & Room: 12/15

The QX80 is nicely appointed and comfortable inside, featuring a Nappa leather interior with heated front seats, tri-zone (for driver, passenger and rear) automatic climate control and a leather-wrapped heated steering wheel as standard. Upgrading to the top Sensory trim adds quilted semi-aniline leather interior, a more advanced climate control system with automatic recirculation and extra environmental filtering, heated and ventilated front seats, heated outboard second-row seats and the ability to fold the second row away with the press of a button. 

Space is adequate up front, with 39.6 inches of front-row leg room and 41 inches of legroom in the second row. The third row can be cramped for taller folks, with just 28.8 inches of legroom, but an average height woman will be comfortable enough back there, while taller folks might disagree. The button-operated second-row seats folded far enough out of the way to make entry and exit relatively easy. 

Most of the full-size luxury SUVs the QX80 competes with offer much more leg room because they’re simply larger vehicles, with the Lexus LX being the closest to the QX80’s more compact size. Even then, the current LX trades center space for a little more room up front and out back, with legroom measuring 41.1 inches in front, 36.6 inches in the center row and 31.1 inches in the rear row—and you’ll have to upgrade from the $90,660 base-model LX to get that third row at all. Meanwhile, the rear rows of the Navigator, Jeep Grand Wagoneer and Escalade offer 36.1 inches, 36.6 inches and 34.9 inches of third-row legroom, respectively. 

Infotainment: 12/15

Depending on your attitude towards touchscreens, you’ll either find the QX80’s interior woefully behind the curve or one of the best, but one thing’s for certain: It’s definitely old-school in here. Thankfully, between the 12.3-inch center touchscreen and a fair number of physical buttons, most of it is intuitively laid out and easy to use. The lone exception is the buttons on the steering wheel for stereo, display and cruise control functions, which is laid out confusingly in two vertical columns. As a driver with smaller hands, I found it easy to accidentally press the wrong button on the steering wheel. 

The QX80 is well-appointed, even if it isn’t cutting-edge. It includes wireless Apple CarPlay and wired Android Auto, four USB ports and a new Amazon Alexa-powered voice assistant that actually recognized what I was saying more often than not—all as standard equipment. There’s a wireless smartphone charger neatly tucked under a panel in the center console, giving you a convenient place to keep your phone out of sight and out of mind as you drive. Powering larger devices, tools or camping equipment is pretty easy with 12-volt power outlets in both the cargo area as well as on the back of the main center console. 

It also comes with a 13-speaker Bose sound system with SiriusXM digital radio standard, which gets upgraded to a 17-speaker Bose system on the top Sensory trim. The QX80 also includes a five-year subscription to TomTom Weather, enabling you to view weather forecasts from the infotainment screen itself. 

The top Sensory trim adds an HDMI port and a rear entertainment system with dual 8-inch screens on the backs of the front headrests. This, too, felt a bit behind the curve and clunky after testing out the flashy connected TV-style experience in the latest Chrysler Pacifica, but as long as you’ve queued up something to watch on an external device or memory stick, it should work fine.

Cargo Space & Storage: 9/15

Unless you’re down to utilize roof box, trailer and/or footwell storage, the QX80 feels best suited for families that only occasionally need to pop up the third row. Having the third row up leaves precious little cargo space behind it, cutting the cargo space down from 49.6 cubic-feet behind the second row to just 16.6 cubic-feet. Between the position of the third row and the rake of the rear door, a tall package of toilet paper could just barely fit after it was laid on its side.

With both rear rows down, the QX80 packs an impressive 95.1 cubic-feet of storage space. All in all, it offers more cargo space than the similarly sized Lexus LX—even behind the third row, surprisingly (with only a meager 11 cubic-feet)—but of course, far less than the substantially larger full-size luxury SUVs on offer from Cadillac, Lincoln and Jeep where 20 cubic-feet on the Lincoln is the smallest. 

Getting your stuff into the cargo area if you have to lift something heavy up from the floor may be tough thanks to the QX80 being a big body-on-frame SUV. Notably, the floor of the cargo space sat roughly as tall as my shopping cart when I took the QX80 grocery shopping. Fortunately, a standard power liftgate makes it easy to open and shut even if you’re short. 

The center console is cleverly designed to allow access to the deep bin from the second row, and four cupholders plus eight bottle holders ensure that everyone has plenty of space to store drinks. QX80 buyers who opt for dual second-row captain’s chairs get an additional center console in the second row. 

Style & Design: 7/10

One thing Infiniti has improved over the QX80’s long life is how it looks. The QX80 ditched its original awkward, lumpy roofline in favor of a sleeker, more streamlined look trimmed with just enough chrome to keep it classy without feeling gaudy. It’s a much more understated luxury SUV now—perfect for buyers who feel that the current “all grille” Lexus LX is a tad much. Also gone is its antiquated dual-screen infotainment unit, ditched in favor of one well-integrated central screen. 

The interior continues this theme of “just enough glam,” with chrome and burl wood touches that help controls and trim pop amidst a sea of comfortable, soft leather. There isn’t a hard seat in the house, and the two power-folding rear rows make it easy to move around passengers and cargo as needed. Build quality feels and looks solid. 

Is the 2023 Infiniti QX80 Worth it? Which QX80 is the Best Value? 

With a base price of $74,395, the 2023 Infiniti QX80 is a fantastic value for a full-size luxury SUV on a rugged body-on-frame platform. If you’re not concerned with having the latest technology, or if you enjoy having more tactile controls in an interior, the QX80 is a solid option. Larger families who utilize the third row on longer trips may want to opt for one of the larger SUVs in the segment such as the Cadillac Escalade or Lincoln Navigator, but for a family of four or five, the QX80 should have plenty of space for school runs and overland adventures alike. 

Of the QX80 trims, the top-of-the-line Sensory trim stands out as an exceptional bargain when you consider the segment as a whole. A QX80 Sensory starts at $86,045 (including destination fee) in two-wheel drive trim or $89,145 with four-wheel drive. That four-wheel drive version—complete with three rows of seating, an upgraded interior, a second-row infotainment system and the extra hydraulic roll-stabilization system—undercuts the $90,660 starting price of the base-model, two-row Lexus LX. 

Meanwhile, four-wheel drive isn’t even available for under six figures on the Escalade, as it’s a treat saved for the top-of-the-line Escalade V. The base-model, four-wheel drive Lincoln Navigator undercuts the QX80 Sensory at $85,265, but again—that’s a base model versus a top trim, with fewer features included accordingly, such as no second-row infotainment system. Likewise, the base-model but exclusively four-wheel-drive Jeep Grand Wagoneer starts at $89,995—more than the top QX80 trim. 

How Much Does it Cost to Insure the 2023 Infiniti QX80? 

The Infiniti QX80’s insurance costs are lower than many of its competitors. According to our data, a typical 30-year-old female driver with a clean record can expect an average annual premium of $2,760, though this averages all 50 states. That compares to $3,226 for the Lexus LX, $3,004 to start for the Cadillac Escalade and $2,854 for the Lincoln Navigator. To get a more accurate picture of your potential insurance expenses, visit our car insurance calculator.