Best SUVs to Buy in 2024 (2024)

How good is the Volvo EX30? So good that it was crowned Carwow Car of the Year 2024. It's a small, affordable electric SUV with all the style you'd expect of a Volvo with a cool, minimalist interior. It's also really good to drive, being comfortable over bumps and quiet on the motorway. If you go for the most powerful model, it's hilariously quick, too. Its size means it's not the most practical SUV out there, and the infotainment system isn't very intuitive to use, but overall the EX30 is an easy car to love.

Another Carwow award winner in 2024, the Citroen C5 Aircross is our favourite family car, because it's just such good value. It's spacious inside and has a massive boot, with a sliding rear bench that lets you open up a massive boot space – all for the price of cars half the size. It also helps that the C5 Aircross is really comfortable to drive. There are a few areas inside where it feels a bit cheap, but it's hard to complain at the price.

The other cars on this list are SUVs, but the Defender is not. It’s a proper off-roader, a 4x4, capable of climbing every mountain and fording every stream. Other SUVs tackle the school run. The Defender can tackle the school run when the school is on the other side of the Kalahari. Rugged and tough, but also comfy and refined on the road, with an excellent but expensive plug-in hybrid option that’s surprisingly frugal on long journeys. The three-door 90 is the stylish option, while the long-wheelbase 130 has the most space. The 110 sits between the two and is the sweet spot in the range for most buyers.

If you're looking for a luxury SUV, look no further than the Range Rover. It's suitably posh-looking on the outside, but when you step inside it's like opening the door to a stately home. The seats are incredibly comfortable and everything you touch feels as expensive as the price tag suggests. The infotainment isn't the easiest to use but the displays are crisp. It's almost better in the back, where there's loads of space and you can recline the seats to make long journeys as relaxing as possible.

The Kia EV9 is a massive electric SUV that's available with seven seats, or a six-seat layout with a pair of swivelling chairs in the second row. The interior is really spacious wherever you sit and the look and feel is generally top notch, minus a few cheaper materials here and there. The big battery version's official range is a useful 349 miles, and it has super-fast charge speeds if you do need to top up while out on a trip. It's very expensive for a Kia though, and while the EV9 is more spacious, a BMW iX feels a bit more special inside.

The BMW X5 is one of the best all-round SUVs you can buy. Sure it ticks all the practicality boxes, but it also gets a high quality interior, so even though it's certainly not cheap, you feel like your money has been well spent. If you're a keen driver, the X5 is also more fun to drive than any SUV of this size should be – and if this really appeals there are high-performance 'M' versions to go for, too.

The Audi Q7 is starting to show its age a bit inside, but that doesn't take away from the fact it's still a stylish, upmarket SUV – and it costs less than a BMW X5 and Mercedes GLE. The interior is really spacious, you get loads of kit as standard, and it's really comfortable to drive – everything you want from a big family car. It's not much fun on a twisty road though, somewhere the X5 is definitely better.

Let's get this out of the way: Yes, the BMW iX isn't much of a looker. However, inside this electric SUV you're treated to one of the coolest interiors of any car on sale today. You get all the usual stuff like big screens and high quality materials, but the design is just different enough from the norm to feel futuristic and a bit special. The iX is also great to drive, quiet and refined, and we've seen over 300 miles from a charge in the big battery version.

The Karoq might just be the most sensible car you can buy. It’s massive inside — there’s a whopping 588-litre boot back there, and you can get Varioflex rear seats that come out altogether to make even more space. It’s well-built and given Skoda’s reputation, should be reliable, too. You can even get it with a frugal 1.0-litre engine that sounds way too small to shift something like a Karoq around, but proves to be anything but. Exciting? not really. Refined, comfortable and all the car you'll likely ever need? We'd say so.

If you've been scrolling through this list thinking everything looks dull and samey, may we introduce the Toyota C-HR. The design is borderline wacky, with sharp creases in the bodywork that make it look like it was designed in origami. As well as standing out from the crowd the C-HR is really comfortable over bumps and you get an economical hybrid engine, though it's not the most practical thanks to its tiny boot.