2025 Audi Q7 and SQ7 Nail the Basics

If you’re on the hunt for a German luxury SUV that seats more than five, the Audi Q7 makes quite the compelling offer. Fellow full-time three-rows such as the BMW X7 and Mercedes-Benz GLS-class are a fair bit larger and carry price tags some $20,000 higher. The Q7’s footprint and price tag align more closely with the Mercedes GLE-class, which only offers an optional third row of seats. (The BMW X5 no longer offers a third row at all.) Speed freaks will undoubtedly look toward the uppers-gobbling SQ7, which positions itself between the GLE’s two hopped-up AMG powertrains in terms of both power and price.

For 2025, Audi has given both the Q7 and SQ7 a mild refresh in hopes of boosting the SUV’s appeal. There’s a bit more tech, and a bit more style, but the underlying points remain the same: The Q7 and SQ7 offer a solid value with the driving dynamics to match.

Incremental Changes

Since the Q7 and SQ7 are only refreshed for 2025, the changes aren’t very prominent. The most obvious update can be seen at a distance: A new front fascia offers reshaped headlights and larger air intakes, while a reworked rear end updates the taillights and ditches the old fake tailpipe outlets in favor of honest-to-goodness functional ones. SQ7 buyers get an extra available lighting trick—folks can swap between four different daytime-running-light signatures for a little extra personalization. Otherwise, you get the usual mid-cycle addition of new wheel designs and paint colors.

The interior changes are even more minor. There are new upholstery and trim options, and the MMI infotainment software now offers built-in support for popular third-party apps including Spotify and Amazon Music. The infotainment software offers Audi Themes as well, pairing specific ambient-light combinations with unique center-screen wallpaper—we’ll leave it up to you to determine whether $13 (for starters) is an appropriate cost for a single JPEG.

Driving the Q7

The Q7’s base 45 powertrain utilizes a 261-hp turbocharged four-cylinder, but our time was spent in the peppier 55 variant, which wields a turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6 making 335 horsepower and 369 pound-feet of torque. It’s factory-estimated at 5.5 seconds to 60 mph, but in our test of a mechanically identical 2020 model, it managed five seconds flat. There’s enough get-up-and-go for the average family, which will come in handy when the vehicle is filled to the brim with kids and sports equipment. The Q7 55 and SQ7 can tow up to 7700 pounds, too, same as the GLE-class, although the Q7 45 is limited to just 4400.

The Q7 55’s six-pot doesn’t exactly make dulcet tones, but our car was equipped with optional dual-pane acoustic glass on the first two rows, which did an impressive job of keeping the trio of wind, road, and engine noise at bay. Combined with the Prestige trim’s comfort-oriented air-spring suspension, we journeyed the mountainous back roads of Utah in smooth near-silence—and that’s with the optional 21-inch wheels underfoot; sticking with the base 19s or the Premium Plus trim’s 20s should make for even smoother cruising.

Serenity isn’t the only driving feel on offer, though. Swapping modes from Comfort to Dynamic, the Q7 55 does a reasonable impression of a sportier thing. The suspension and steering firm up, body motions are better kept in check, and the eight-speed transmission does a much better job of holding gears and keeping the engine in the powerband. But it never really becomes uncomfortable; even after completing the twistiest bits of our drive route, we left everything in Dynamic and found barely any detriment in ride quality. This is some gourmet air-spring tuning.

Sliding into the Q7 feels like saying hello to an old friend. Even after some mild tweaks, the interior is very much a known quantity. The center touchscreen and the climate panel below are easy to learn and use at a glance, while the Virtual Cockpit gauge display remains as versatile and informative as ever. The standard vinyl dash topper doesn’t exactly feel premium, though, and we do not like the relative lack of front-row storage—aside from the door cubbies, there’s a wallet-sized tray ahead of the center armrest, a small depression within, and not much else.

The third row might be standard, but it’s tight for adults; your author is six feet tall, and while his hair only lightly grazed the headliner, his knees were nearly up against his chest. Keep those seats for children, animals, or short trips. If you don’t need ’em, they’ll fold down with the press of a button. The second-row bench offers a unique 35/30/35 split, and that lets Audi offer five LATCH points across the rear two rows. That’s a lot of child seats.

Driving the SQ7

Our fully loaded Prestige-trim Q7 55 pushed the $61,795 base price north of $80,000 with options. But why stop there? For an additional $10,000 or so, you can step up to the SQ7, which brings more cylinders, more power, and a whole lot more fun into the equation.

The SQ7 still has an eight-speed automatic transmission and standard all-wheel drive, but under the hood lies a much angrier twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8, which produces a solid 500 horsepower and 568 pound-feet of torque. The sandbaggers in Ingolstadt reckon a 60-mph sprint of four seconds flat, but again looking back to a mechanically identical 2020 model, we recorded a blistering 3.5-second run. Even with the dual-pane acoustic glass, there’s no getting around that V-8’s song, especially at wide-open throttle, and that is plenty fine by us.

The roads snaking through Utah’s Uinta National Forest aren’t as tight as those we experienced in the Q7, replacing hairpins with loads of fast sweepers, but no matter the radius of the curve, the SQ7 eats it for lunch and asks for seconds. Its sport-tuned air-spring suspension offers Q7-adjacent cushion in Comfort, but there’s even less body motion in Dynamic. Some of that comes from our test car’s optional S Sport Package, which adds a sportier rear differential and a trick anti-roll-bar setup that uses an electric motor to change roll stiffness on the fly. But the whole kit and caboodle jells together so well that all you’ll focus on is how much speed you’re about to carry into the next hairpin.

Even with Pirelli Scorpion all-season tires wrapped around 21-inch alloy wheels (summer tires are available on the optional 22s), there was plenty of grip on offer, and the all-seasons were very good at communicating their stress levels before things got squirrelly. But you might need to turn down the radio to hear them wailing because of how well insulated the cabin is.

Summing It Up

Audi’s always kind of occupied an interesting spot in the Teutonic triumvirate. Mercedes-Benz usually offers the cushiest, most outright opulent offerings, while BMW has chosen to focus more on all-the-time driver-centric performance. Audi takes a slightly different approach with its Vorsprung durch Technik (“progress through technology”) tagline. And yet, because of its age, the Q7 lacks some of the more advanced tech found in its competitors; there’s no “Hey, Audi” voice assistant lurking in the background, no over-the-air update capability, and its suite of standard driver-assistance features is as generic as any other. No AR, no AI.

But if flashiness isn’t your forte and you don’t want to pilot a four-wheeled TikTok app, the 2025 Audi Q7 and SQ7 execute the basics with just as much competence as their fellow compatriots. They’re just a bit more low-key about it.

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com