The 2020 Genesis G90 Ultimate Is a Bargain Luxury Sedan

this is the

2020

genesis

g90 and it is the new full size flagship

luxury

sedan

of

genesis

which is the

luxury

brand of hyundai it is meant to compete with other full size luxury

sedan

s like the lexus ls or mercedes-benz s-class with a big difference this is much cheaper today i'm going to review the new g90 and see how it compares first a little overview now as i mentioned genesis is hyundai's relatively new luxury brand something like toyota has lexus and honda has acura genesis currently has three models all sedans the g70 the g80 and the g90 with the g90 being the flagship full size sedan at the top of the model range now the g90 originally came out ago A few years and I already reviewed the previous model that I found. to be pretty good but genesis just redesigned the g90 for the

2020

model year so this is the all new model and that means new styling new interior new practically new features everything under the hood the g90 delivers a choice between two engines, the base model.

It has a 3.3 liter turbocharged v6 that makes 365 horsepower or it can move up to the 5 liter v8 like this car with 420 horsepower now as of this shooting genesis has yet to announce pricing for the new 2020 g90 but the old one started around 70k compared to a base price of around 95k for the mercedes s-class now that makes the g90 a steal at least on paper but the question is how does it compare so Today I'm going to review the new G90 and I'm going to find out first, I'm going to take you on a tour of the G90 and show you all the cool quirks and features of the Genesis flagship sedan, then I'm going to bring it out on the road and drive it and then tell you i'll give an excellent score ok i'll start with the g90 quirks and features with the styling now the first full size luxury sedan hyundai ever sold here was called equus and it came out seven or eight years ago the styling was very subdued very understated very simple but over the years and with the coming of genesis they have become quirkier riskier bolder in their designs and the g90 is a good example of that for example take a look at the wheels these wheels are not subtle anymore and they blend in with the wheels they have all these spokes and cuts and diamonds and I think they look amazingly high end luxurious and luxurious and give this car a real full size luxury sedan look love them and another example of the boldest and most daring design and the latest generation of this car comes with the grill you can see it's huge this is the genesis grill shape they're putting on all their models but this is definitely the biggest yet for emphasis truly that this is the full size flagship on genesis but to me the best example of bolder designs trying to stand out more comes with the lighting and on this car starting with the front the turn signals you can see they are huge this strip that goes through the headlights and wraps around the side of the car this front turn signal is larger than the actual headlight on this vehicle and continues on the side look at the size of this side turn signal most car manufacturers cars put a little light bulb in the mirror housing this thing has like 12 inches of LED turn signal light strip on the side to emphasize its opulence but the added opulence of the lighting on this car is especially noticeable on back where it has a whole new look marked by this new tail light look which is very distinctive probably the most noticeable part is once again the turn signals it has these two big strips of LED lights you can see it is glow orange and turn on. on the trunk lid when you turn on the turn signals, interestingly if you press the brake pedal to turn on the brake lights you can see that the brake lights don't go to the trunk lid so just like on the front the brake lights are actually smaller than the turn signals here for some reason genesis really wants to emphasize when this vehicle is turning of course it also has a big light bar that goes all the way across the trunk and when Turn on headlights, taillights light up all the way down. from the light bar and then we move on to the best place to be in the new genesis and that would be the back seats actually the best place to be is this back seat not the one i'm sitting in and i'll show you why in a second but either way the back seats are a pretty nice place because this is the

ultimate

genesis and that means you have a lot of features here now, the most obvious, the most immediately noticeable feature on the back of the g90 is the screens mounted in the front seat backs you can see they're sitting there waiting patiently for the rear passengers to turn them on to do that press a little button this giant rear center console that says pwrl for the left screen or r for the right screen and the screens will come on now once the screens are on you can do quite a bit back here they basically mirror the functionality of the front infotainment screen which means you can set a navigation destination from the back seats and then it will go to the screen in front of you otherwise also on the front center display so the driver knows where to navigate you don't even have to talk to your driver just set a destination and the driver knows to go there and the next one it's the same with the stereo back here it has controls of stereo on the backseat display so you go into those controls and you can select a new satellite radio station or music whatever and it'll play throughout the car that way again you're being driven in your g90 , you don't have to ask the driver to adjust the music, you just adjust it and then the driver hears what they want and then here's a pretty awesome feature of these displays, there's a blue light filter that allows you to adjust the amount of blue light they emit to reduce the strain on your eyes and you don't just turn the blue light filter on or off you can program it so if you want less blue light from the screens at night to really reduce the strain on your eyes at night , you can have a timer that just turns off the blue light from the screens at night and that way you don't have to go into this menu and constantly turn this filter on or off which is really an amazing attention to detail but there's more luxury to it rear seat of the g90 than those screens for example has power seats back here are controls on the side of this rear center console you can move them forward and down whatever you want to do now those controls are pretty nice but the best part is this button marked rest, you press it and it will put the seat in the quietest position and for this seat that means moving the front seat forward as much as possible to give the rear occupant as much leg room as possible, so when you press the rest you can see the front seat slide forward as far as it will go and the rear seat go into a lounge position for maximum comfort while they're being chauffeured that's pretty nice and speaking of the controls of the seats back here it even has an electric automatic control for the rear headrests you can push this little button and the headrest will move up or down some luxury cars have this for the front this one even has it for the back rear and even more amazingly you can also move the headrest forward or backward with this control, flip the switch forward and the headrest will move back and forth so you can even adjust the headrest to your perfect position without having to touch no lever or latch.

Just one button and speaking of seat controls, we move to this rear center control area where you can see that you have controls for the heated and ventilated rear seats. Press these buttons to turn on both heated and ventilated sides. That is a luxury. You also have controls here. for the climate control system in the back, you can use these dials and buttons to adjust the climate control, location, temperature, fan speed, all your typical climate control stuff, and then as well in this rear center control area push this button near the middle and that will raise your rear sunshade so if you want to get out of the sun just push to make the sunshade go up of course that rear sunshade enhances your luxury experience back here , but you can go even further if you pull up on the power rear. window switch when the window is already open, a power sunshade will automatically extend from the rear door to cover the rear window to give you even more shade from the sun here and there's even a power sunshade for the small rear quarter window to make sure you no part of your cocoon in the back of this car is affected by sunlight and then another awesome luxury feature back here i already showed you they have power seats but here's a crazy thing they have seats too with memory there are two separate memory positions on the door panel that you can reposition here so that depending on which chauffeured passenger gets into the car you just push a button and it will have the seat return to its position next to you too The memory seat buttons have a button marked door, you may be wondering what this is, unfortunately it is not an automatic door opener; instead, if you press that and turn it on, it automatically sets the seat to move out of the way when you open the door to allow you as much room as possible. to get up then when you get in and close the door the seat automatically returns to the desired position and then some other g90 luxury touches back here one is the headliner includes vanity mirrors push this little alcantara surface back here and it will unfold revealing a mirror and a light will illuminate luxuriously so you can take a look at yourself and make sure you look your best before the big business meeting your chauffeur will take you to and another luxury feature that most of people probably wouldn't see. even notice but it's important you can see there is a little silver thing like a circle on the b pillar what is that?

Well, it's a coat hook if you're being driven and you want to put your coat back here. want it to squash or crumple when it's on you or just toss it you can hang it on your clothes hook so it stays nice for when you have to go out and need it next and then another touch of luxury What I really like Back here is in the rear center console armrest area with all the controls. It also has a storage area. Now if you close the lid of that storage area, you can see the Genesis logo beautifully embossed into the leather. as you'd expect from a true luxury car and by the way speaking of this rear center console with all the controls in this storage area you can fold it down it's not locked in place you can fold it down stow it away and then you have a third seat back here so you can have three people ride in the rear if you need it most of the time although you'll probably want to lower it so you can play with all its rear quirks and features but all the luxury features on the g90 it's not confined to the back seat no there's quite a few quirks and features up here my favorite is the turn signal camera check this out you're driving you turn your turn signal on and then a camera pops up on your gauge cluster to show you what there's in the blind spot that you just flagged for that's an awesome feature so you're driving down the road you put your lane change signal on and it shows you what's there which is really really awesome much better than wondering turn around and try to see what's there check your blind spot but can't because there are pillars and then your eyes wander off the road this camera accurately shows what's next to you and works for both sides set your turn signal on the other hand it shows you what's in the other blind spot, a brilliant feature i showed you on the new kia k900 which shares a lot of its underpinnings with the genesis g90 and i'm delighted to see this feature making its way into more new vehicles and then speaking of some innovative new features on the door panel next to the seat memory controls there is a button marked smart so what does it do right?

You can adjust your seat position however you like or you can push smart and then a screen pops up on the infotainment system telling you to enter your details, your height, your weight, your inseam and then it will adjust the seat position to what you want. you think it's optimal for your body size and type, that's absolutely crazy. You're not even adjusting your own anymoreseat the car tells you where you should sit based on your size and next i want to talk about the materials this car is positioned as sort of a budget s class mercedes so you're probably wondering how the materials here compare to the ones in the s class and the answer is they are pretty good but not quite at that level as a good example take a look at the steering wheel you can see the leather on the steering wheel does not mismatch the plastic around the buttons on the steering wheel steering wheel the color is a bit off but it's not just that all the buttons and switches here don't have the same S class feel and frankly these buttons and switches are what you'd get on some high end hyundai and kia models low for example the buttons in the center control area come pretty much straight from the kia stinger the stock turn signal wiper isn't amazingly upscale like exactly what you'd find on the s class with that said there's some stuff in here which I really like for example I love the textured wood you can see it on the center console it looks so much better than the ugly glossy wood you got it on the dash as well this nice piece of textured wood that goes basically on one side to another and on the door panel it has more textured wood it looks great beyond that I also like the look of the seats you can see they have this nice padded leather it's a very soft seat and the seat gives a lot Supportive as you'd expect from a luxury car it's a very good looking seat but while those are some nice touches again it just isn't up to par with the best in class so Again this car is much cheaper than the Best in class so for most people who buy this they get a budget car with the same equipment and most of the same luxury. move on to the glove box where the biggest quirk here is literally big this is an owner's manual that comes with the car it's absolutely huge an amazing thing i can't remember the last time i saw an owner's manual this big apparently this is a very complicated car that It's further demonstrated by the fact that this car also includes a quick reference guide in the glove box, it's usually a booklet of like four different panels that fold out for this car, the quick reference guide is 53 pages long, I don't know how quick the reference guide will really be and then we move on to the infotainment system on the g90 which is significantly updated from the old one for one thing it's now a touch screen but that's a bit unusual because it's quite a way from the driver and passenger it's deep into the dash so you have to reach quite a bit to touch it but you can also control it using the joystick on the center console so basically you can choose how you want to adjust your screen and then There are a couple of interesting elements in the infotainment system that are worth mentioning. you can check your idle time here to see how much time you wasted sitting at traffic lights which is an interesting thing to show and the next cool thing in the infotainment system is the voice memos tab that you click on which you can record voice notes while driving you have a brilliant thought why don't you record it, then you can save your voice notes to a usb so you can listen to your brilliant thoughts at another time, here's one of my brilliant thoughts, doug is the kind of person who records a voice memo and then listens to it Doug is the type of person who records a voice message and then listens to it and finally our last cool interior quirk on this car is what happens when you turn it off, it plays a nice song to say goodbye here take a listen and then we move under the hood in the g90 and you can see the v8 down here as i mentioned this is a 5 liter v8 420 horsepower only about 60 horsepower more than the v6 , but this is a very smooth naturally aspirated V8. one of the last remaining naturally aspirated V8s so people won't necessarily buy it for the much better acceleration but maybe for the smoothness I will say this engine is amazingly quiet just sitting here with the car running barely you can tell it's on without a doubt this is one of the quietest engines I've ever owned very impressive and next up as I'm up front I mentioned the grill earlier and the fact that this is the big bold expressive grill from the new genesis but there's something more noticeable about it which would be the radar sensor built into the grill you can see it's this little rectangle in the middle most car manufacturers try to hide these radar sensors in the front of their cars with varying degrees of success and I'd say Genesis has done well, usually car manufacturers put on their emblem but since Genesis doesn't put an emblem on the grill this is the best they could do it's a decent job of hiding it considering it's supposed to mimic that crosshatch pattern on the grill and then we move on to the trunk on the g90 but before we get into the trunk i want to talk about how to open it which is a bit unusual Most car manufacturers embed their trunk opener up here on the license plate on this edge where it can be hidden, but not the G90 instead.

It's got a button right there on the trunk lid which is kind of weird since it's in a pretty obvious place and right above the trunk release button it's got a rear view camera that's also out there in a pretty obvious place , I'm surprised that hyundai didn't try to hide them somewhere to give the rear of the car a cleaner look, but they didn't anyway, you want to get in the trunk, you push the button and then it opens and you can see that this is pretty much a standard trunk a big one like you would expect from a full size luxury sedan but a standard trunk nonetheless one thing i like about this trunk is that the g90 has a traditional carpeted floor like most trunks but this g90 has a nice carpeted trunk mat over the carpeted floor to add luxury to the trunk and those are the quirks and features of the new genesis g90 now its time to take it out on the road and see how it handles well drive the g90 voy to hit here it feels nice nice and quick but i will say the thing i noticed the most when i was driving this car a little earlier is how smooth it is um i dont notice a huge difference in acceleration between the v8 and v6 i have to say maybe in the midrange like now when you're already going to 60 and you put your foot down but notice it's a lot smoother from a stop that's what I like about v8s I have a lot of v8 cars myself and I really like like that low end smoothness that turbocharged engines don't have so if you want the smoothest, plushest version of this car you'll want the v8 now drive this car is very smooth and very luxurious um and i'm sure that's true even if you got the v6 but you definitely don't get the kind of overall stable planted feel you get in the s class very nice over bumps very plush but to me it feels more like a really nice e class or something of that variety um just not its about as stable as a german bank vault feel that being said i dont feel any hyundai here this car certainly doesnt have a sonata type feel its definitely closer to a mercedes-benz a nice than it is to a hyundai or something of that variety but still not quite at the level of the best germans now, that being said it's cheaper so it's not necessarily intended to be at that level if it was the same price and you didn't have the same driving experience so you call it a question in terms of the handling i was driving a little bit earlier in the corners and such and it sounds like you would expect it to be a full size sedan huh and this car is definitely more designed for luxury and comfort than anything else.

There are drive modes here and you can put it in sport mode and that seems to adjust the throttle response a bit and maybe tighten the steering a bit but we're not talking about a sports car no matter what we do it's not an amg class s or anything of that variety mostly this car is built for highway driving and its really good at it overall i like this car its a lot of money to not get a brand name mercedes bmw audi uh and So you have to agree with that now i should mention that genesis has a self driving feature on this car uh you put it in cruise control with that self driving feature on and then it will come on.

I'm going to try it right now. The system works quite well. It will virtually run for you without requiring your intervention. I found that it doesn't work as well when the road starts to curve. it seems like it doesn't trust itself and often requires you to take charge which is definitely disappointing but otherwise it's great and it's perfect for stop and go traffic and oh my gosh look at this it's so cool i can't believe. This and that is the 2020 Genesis G90 this is an excellent car and while it doesn't quite match the S class in terms of interior materials or driving experience it's not that far off given the price difference if you want everything it takes.

Along with a full-size luxury sedan save the cost and if you don't mind not having a Mercedes-Benz star or Audi four rings on your grill, this might be the car for you and now is the time to hit the G90. a double score starting with the weekend and styling categories the g90 is good looking i liked the first of these a lot and gets a 6 out of 10 acceleration does 0 to 60 in 5.2 seconds and gets a 5 out of 10 .handling is more or less average for this segment and gets a 5 out of 10. Fun factor is ok its a v8 and reasonably quick but not fun and gets a 4 out of 10.

Cool factor is ok any great luxury sedan is great but genesis is not. exactly the best cool brand and scores a 4 out of 10 for an overall weekend score of 24 out of 50. Next up are the daily categories and features. The g90 is well equipped but it lags behind the best in this segment and scores an 8 out of 10. comfort is very good not perfect but excellent and scores an 8 out of 10. quality is good not standard but not so far and it gets an 8 out of 10. practicality is average for a car like this and it gets a 5 out of 10. finally value and this is a good value but not entirely amazing i think its price is in line with its quality and its team and scores a 7 out of 10 for an overall daily score of 36 out of 50.

Added in the dug score is 60 out of 100, which puts it here against other cars in this segment. The G90 is tied with the Cadillac CT6, which is more technologically advanced with the supercruise and trails the true segment leaders except the G90. it's a good car and it's probably the best genesis so far