2023 Lexus RX 500h F Sport Performance Review: A Good Car Hamstrung by Annoying Tech

I couldn’t believe it. Never in my years have I had a car do what the 2023 Lexus RX 500h F Sport Performance did to me, and I’ve owned dozens of inconvenient shitpiles. It told me to sit up. 

OK, you can turn that particular feature off. But it took a good while of menu hunting, frustration, and mostly dealing with it for a few days before I could crack the code. Even with that disabled, this became something of a theme in the RX 500h. That theme is becoming a classic modern luxury trope: pretty nice but held back by annoying technology. Even more strange were the aberrations within simple systems like door handles, which made my time with the RX 500h frustrating.

There is good within the RX 500h, though. It’s sumptuously comfortable, supremely well-built, quiet, actually quick, and a (mostly) wonderful place to spend time. But it doesn’t nail everything, especially for the $72,105 as-tested price.

The Basics

The RX 500h F Sport Performance is the second Lexus to get the mouthful “F Sport Performance” moniker after the 5.0-liter V8-powered IS 500. Built off the latest generation of RX, this midsize SUV doesn’t get the V8 but instead gets a fairly powerful two-motor hybrid system to differentiate itself from lesser RX models. Most importantly, though, it gets the sans-trackpad newest generation of Lexus infotainment, a heavily updated interior that is genuinely gorgeous, and an exterior that’s frankly the opposite of gorgeous.

Forehead. That’s all I can see above the modified spindle grill of the new RX. It simultaneously has a massive forehead and a wide underbite that isn’t cohesive with the rest of the car. From the A-pillar back, swallowing the porcupine quills of the front gets a little easier, with a reasonably nice rear, floating D-pillar, and heavily surfaced rear door surfaces that are overstyled but decent-looking.

Inside, the situation gets a lot better. You know how some cars tend to elicit that joke about not having to look at the outside while you’re driving it? The RX, to me, is 100% one of those cars. Interior surfaces are wrought beautifully, with three-dimensionality and material work that always inspires a random touch or two during short drives. There’s a clear theme of concavity versus convexity, making it feel like the interior was carved out for me. It’s spacious, with plenty of room to stretch on long trips, and the seating position is almost infinitely adjustable for any body type. The comfort and support of the seats are a real highlight, too.

But the RX giveth and the RX taketh, in a big way. Lexus’ new 14-inch infotainment is a colossal improvement over the previous trackpad-bound system and works decently well. The HVAC knobs are welcomed, but the system falls into the trap of over-reliance on touchscreens. The vast majority of functions are done via the screen and it isn’t always clear how to find what you need. For example, a drive mode change takes two touches and knowledge of the menus. The cooled and heated seats, heated steering wheel, fan speed, and recirculation are all on a permanent section of the screen, wasting screen space. There is a volume knob, though, thankfully.

But there are bigger crimes here. I’ll start with the minor one—the interior door handles are now electronic and push to open, instead of the long-accepted pull to open. There’s still a physical door release that lets you pull, but it's awkward and takes two pulls. Pulling the handle twice is honestly what I accidentally did until I figured out that the same door handle works as a button. The wheel did not need to be reinvented here, though I'll grant that getting used to the push-button doors was easy and they made sense after the initial epiphany.

The bigger, much more irritating crime exists on the steering wheel. Even with that swanky interior, excellent 12-speaker Mark Levinson stereo, and comfy seats, the RX 500h fails to understand a core tenet of luxury: ease of use.

Getting to grips with the RX 500h on Brooklyn roads as my first test with it was trial by fire. And almost immediately, beyond the instantly annoying driver monitor that I eventually disabled, something that normally exists peacefully in the background forced its way into my consciousness: steering wheel buttons.

As part of the new infotainment setup, Lexus has replaced the fixed steering wheel buttons most folks have come to accept with buttons that are blank and use both haptic touch and a traditional, physical click. Instead of having one assigned function for every button, Lexus decided that the steering wheel buttons should be configurable, which would be fine if the functions were permanently assigned until you made a change in a menu.

The problem is that you can change the button assignments on the fly to two predetermined settings. This means that there is an extra step every time you want to raise the volume, skip track, or set cruise control because the RX does the most annoying possible thing: you first have to rest your finger on the button to summon the button assignments in the head-up display before you do a full click to get your desired function.

This is borderline unacceptable. No, really. You cannot just click once to skip track, or maybe it was another menu setting like the driver monitor that I just couldn’t find. It is distracting and only works 75% of the time, meaning you have to shift your eyes toward the HUD to make sure the button is ready to be pushed. This is the opposite of convenience or luxury.

Driving the Lexus RX 500h F Sport Performance