2025 Chevrolet Suburban Reviews, Pricing & Specs

In the full-size SUV space, General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis all sell vehicles with two lengths. There’s the GMC Yukon and Yukon XL, Ford Expedition and Expedition Max, and the Jeep Wagoneer and Wagoneer L. From a naming convention, Chevrolet is a bit different: the long one came first, with the Suburban nameplate now passing its ninetieth birthday, while the shorter Tahoe arrived only in 1995. So, even though they have different names, it’s not unfair for Chevrolet to lump the two models together when boasting accolades like, “the best-selling full-size SUV.”

And, sure enough, that’s precisely what Chevy has with the Suburban and Tahoe. The Suburban, in particular, has enormous brand equity. It’s quite possibly going to be the mental image conjured by most shoppers when the topic of big, capable SUVs comes around.

Restyling a vehicle with that much consumer recognition can be a delicate endeavour. Too little, and shoppers may not notice the updates. Go too far, however, and you run the risk of turning off your otherwise loyal shoppers. With the restyled 2025 Suburban, Chevrolet seems to have walked the tightrope. The profile view remains largely unchanged, but a new front fascia and rear end look more modern, and new front and rear lighting signatures add a much more dramatic element.

Otherwise, the Suburban looks largely unchanged from 2024, at least on the outside. The trim lineup remains the same: the LS sets the bar at the bottom of the range, with the LT adding a few extra features. The RST and Z71 are more fully equipped, lifestyle-oriented trims, with the RST focused on street-performance style and the Z71 taking an off-road approach. On the luxury end of the spectrum are the Premier and top-tier High Country. RST and High Country trims can now be equipped with giant 24-inch wheels (more on those later), but otherwise the Suburban is following the same exterior playbook in 2025 as it was in 2024. There are few objective improvements, but Chevrolet’s new styling choices don’t detract, either.

On the inside, however, the 2025 Chevrolet Suburban is a significant upgrade over the 2024 model. The lower dash loses the old, rudimentary-feeling HVAC controls and the air vents scattered around the cabin look and feel more sophisticated than before. Cheap electronic shifter buttons are replaced with a Mercedes-esque column shifter. The steering wheel is also more modern, albeit slightly less user-friendly. Most notable, Chevrolet has installed a gorgeous 17.7-inch touchscreen display on every Suburban. The old 10.2-inch touchscreen found on the majority of 2024 Suburbans was functional but outdated and appeared small in a cavernous cabin.

The Suburban has been an expensive vehicle for many years now, but before this year even the most expensive versions had bits that would have looked at home in a rental car. In 2025, even the least-expensive Suburban delights.

A 5.3-litre V8 delivering 355 horsepower and 383 pound-feet of torque returns as the Suburban’s base engine in 2025, with a 6.2-litre V8 operating as the upgrade choice in the RST, Z71, and Premier trims and the standard engine in the High Country. The 6.2-litre delivers a more satisfying 420 hp and 460 lb-ft of torque and would be our pick between the two V8s.

The Jeep Wagoneer waved goodbye to its Hemi V8 in 2024, embracing the company’s twin-turbo inline-six as its sole option. Ford has eschewed V8 power for a twin-turbo V6 in the Expedition since 2015. So, it’s interesting that the Suburban continues to embrace the V8.

Chevy also offers a third choice. The turbocharged 3.0-litre inline-six Duramax diesel engine remains our favourite of the bunch, and it gets a major upgrade for 2025. Horsepower jumps more than 10%, from 277 to 305, while torque climbs from 460 lb-ft to 495 lb-ft. Best yet, the diesel remains impressively quiet and smooth; if you’re used to big diesels of the ‘90s and earlier, this one will feel like a revelation. If your driving tends to span the 40 to 100 km/h range, it’s a no-brainer.

In the 2025 Suburban, Chevrolet now offers the turbodiesel on the LT, RST, Z71, Premier, and Suburban High Country trim levels. It’s less expensive than the 6.2-litre V8 upgrade on most trims, too, but on High Country it comes at a $500 premium in Canada.

A 10-speed automatic transmission pairs with each engine and handles all of them easily. We’re also happy to see the electronic button-style shifter leave. The column-mounted shifter is more intuitive and saves additional space on the dashboard.

In Canada, rear-wheel drive (RWD) comes standard on the base LS trim only, while on all other Suburban trim levels, four-wheel-drive (4WD) is the default. Given the vehicle’s weight and size, we found the steering to be surprisingly light, and while the accelerator’s pedal feel was relatively neutral, we found it challenging to get the hang of the brake pedal, as it demonstrated an uncomfortable combination of heavy pedal feel and quite a bit of rebound.

Chevrolet promised big changes to the 2025 Suburban’s available magnetorheological suspension (which General Motors refers to as “Magnetic Ride Control”). The recalibrated suspension is standard on the Premier and High Country trims and available on the Z71 and RST. The LS and LT trim levels receive a passive suspension system with no noticeable improvements for 2025. Given the Suburban’s size and weight, shoppers will appreciate the more sophisticated Magnetic Ride Control system. It feels softer in the 2025 model than it did when we tested a 2024 High Country, and it does a commendable job reducing some of the bounciness noted when we tested a 2025 LS trim. To make the most of the suspension system, Chevy also offers an adjustable air suspension in conjunction with Magnetic Ride Control, available on the upper trims.

Finally, there are the wheels. Chevrolet now offers 24-inch wheels on the Suburban, but we recommend skipping them. Yes, they look impressive, but even with Magnetic Ride Control (which is mandatory when you select the big wheels), we found them to be far too harsh on rough pavement. Plus, it’s a shockingly expensive option. You need to add multiple packages to equip them, which increases the price substantially. For example, to equip these on a Suburban High Country in Canada, you’re looking at an extra $7,545. Replacement tires will cost a lot more, too.

Families with multiple children or pets and hobbies that involve a trailer should strongly consider the Chevrolet Suburban. Yes, it is large, but with its size comes enormous passenger space in all three rows, plus a truly massive amount of cargo capacity. Specifically, the Suburban can accommodate 1,175 litres of luggage behind its third row. Fold the third row down, and that trunk space jumps to 2,656 litres of cargo space. That figure is already larger than the vast majority of vehicles on sale today, and if you pick the three-across front row option in addition to a second-row bench, it preserves seating for up to six passengers! With all seats folded, the Suburban maxes out at 4,092 litres. No new, non-commercial vehicle on the road today can match that figure. Not the Expedition or the Wagoneer, not even any minivan.

Beyond the Suburban’s capacious interior, it offers excellent towing capacity, too. When equipped with the 5.3-litre V8, RWD, and the available Max Trailering Package, the Suburban can pull up to 3,765 kilograms (8,300 pounds) of trailer.

The diesel has a special advantage over the V8s, though. With a Natural Resources Canada-rated fuel economy estimate of 11.5 litres per 100 kilometres in the city, 9.7 on the highway, and 10.7 combined, plus the Suburban’s standard 106-litre fuel tank, the diesel should deliver nearly 1,000 kilometres of highway driving on a single tank of fuel. In short: you’ll be stopping more frequently to empty your tank than to fill the Suburban’s.

The one area where the 2024 Suburban was in dire need of improvement was its in-vehicle technology. The outgoing SUV came standard with an unimpressive 8-inch touchscreen display, and even its available 10.2-inch touchscreen felt underwhelming.

The new Suburban features a stunning 17.7-inch touchscreen for its infotainment system. Although not an OLED unit like the one found in the Cadillac Escalade, the screen is nonetheless crisp and bright. Combined with an 11-inch driver information display and an available 15-inch head-up display (HUD), the new Suburban’s total screen real estate spans more than 40 inches.

Wireless Apple CarPlay and wireless Android Auto are included as standard features, but many owners may not feel the need to use either of them. That’s because Google Built-in is also included, natively integrating Google Maps, Google Assistant, and the Play Store into the software. With a connected account and a 5G subscription plan, you can also access apps like Spotify directly from the touchscreen, no phone connection required.

The new tech’s user interface is lovely but the user experience does lead to some frustrations. The touchscreen is simple enough, but we found customizing the driver information display’s layout to be incredibly unintuitive. Further, while the old steering wheel was ugly, it was simple and self-explanatory. The new wheel features an array of buttons and toggles that are significantly harder to understand.

Own a new Suburban for more than a month and we suspect these issues will sort themselves out. However, there is a learning curve. We’re happy to see that some vestiges of the old Suburban’s user-friendly, low-tech UX remain: physical buttons to the left of the steering wheel for headlights, drive modes, and air-suspension ride height, for instance.

The top-range Bose stereo still leaves plenty of room for improvement, too, especially when compared with the premium offerings in the Wagoneer and Expedition. Criticisms aside, the 2025 Suburban remains a massive improvement over the 2024 model. If tech was one area steering you away from this big Chevrolet, the new model deserves a look.

At the time of this review, neither the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) nor the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) had crash-tested the 2025 Chevrolet Suburban. The IIHS, in fact, has not evaluated a Suburban since 2020, when it looked only at the ease of use for the SUV’s LATCH child-seat anchors (they received a Marginal rating). The NHTSA did evaluate the 2024 Suburban and Tahoe, awarding each four out of five stars in overall crash safety.

These aren’t overwhelmingly reassuring statistics, but neither the Ford Expedition or the Jeep Wagoneer fare much better. Also, Chevrolet includes a healthy list of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) on every Suburban. Automatic emergency braking, lane-keeping assist with lane-departure warning, pedestrian and bicycle braking, automatic parking assist, blind zone monitoring and steering assist (optionally with a trailering extension), rear cross-traffic alert, a surround-view camera, and a teen driver monitoring system are all standard fare.

GM’s Super Cruise hands-free driving technology is available on most Suburban trims in Canada, but it will not launch with the first wave of 2025 models coming in late 2024. Super Cruise vehicles are expected to arrive at dealerships sometime in 2025.

Given the improved cabin and technology, it’s not surprising to see the 2025 model arriving with a small price bump over the 2024 Suburban. The base-tier LS trim starts in Canada at $83,233 (including a $2,400 destination charge plus other fees), which is $2,900 more than last year’s LS. Moving up the trim ladder, the LT opens at $90,733, the Z71 trim starts at $95,733, the RST at $96,733, the Premier at $105,680, and the top-trim High Country starts at $113,480. Note the highest trims will be subject to the federal luxury tax, which applies on vehicles priced above $100,000.

Certainly, these are not insubstantial figures. Even the base trim costs much more than the most expensive minivan and many large crossovers, meaning shoppers should be sure they truly need the Suburban’s superlative capability and cargo space before deciding on this massive and expensive option. If the cargo space and towing capability are needed, however, few vehicles on the market offer a more compelling value than the 2025 Suburban.

Note: Images and video show a US model.