2022 Nissan Armada Review and Test Drive

March 1, 2022

Join Nik Miles as he goes over the ins and outs of the new 2022 Nissan Armada. Nik takes us on a test drive and tells us about all the newest upgrades, how the car feels while driving, and gives us an honest review of the vehicle.

Transcript

I’m Nik Miles and welcome to Dick Hannah Nissan on McLoughlin. Today we want to show you this, the 2022 Nissan Armada, the perfect vehicle for eight passengers who want to be hauled in style with the latest technology and the latest innovations. We’re going to show you the outside, the inside, put it on the road, and see if this should be in your driveway.

The Armada is one of my favorite large passenger vehicles that seats eight people. It’s so easy to drive. It positions itself very well on the road. A lot of times it feels when you’re driving big vehicles, they’re often like trying to steer a cruise liner, not with the Armada. It positions itself well on the road, it’s easy to guide wherever you want it to go, the steering is fairly tight, and it also responds well at speed. It’s not hard to see out of the vehicle, in fact, Nissan has made it so you can see easily over the fenders and the mirrors are large enough to see all the way around the vehicle. That supplied with the camera view on the inside of the vehicle makes the vehicle very easy to park and also allows you to be able to see everywhere that you’re going and everywhere that you want to place the vehicle on the road. A V8 engine under the hood outputting 400 horsepower means that you can tow 8,500 pounds. It also means that when you want to put your foot down you get great acceleration out of this vehicle even when it’s fully laden with eight passengers.

Now let’s talk about the interior. Nissan has done a great job of making the interior look very luxurious. It has double-stitching throughout the interior of this, some nice wood-style materials on the inside, you’ll find a good choice of materials when you head to the dealership to equip your Armada as you want it to look. And then there are good color choices on the inside as well. I find the materials including the piano black and the color choices to be a much more upper echelon. These materials look like it’s more of a luxury vehicle than a family vehicle. The buttons on the inside are plentiful and high quality. You’ll find everything on the inside as well. Well laid out, they’re well labeled, the HVAC controls are very accessible, and you’ll also find a nice dial-wheel so you can have access to this 12.3-inch screen which has things like Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and a good navigation system that is very obvious where you need to go. Everything is laid out, so it’s simple to navigate around the inside. You’ll also find your off-road settings, your menu, and your voice controls in the center console, as well as your map and camera buttons, so you can find your way around what you need to inside the vehicle. Now it does have large control buttons. It’s easy to find your things like volume controls, and your tuning controls, so everything is simple and easily laid out. I haven’t had a hard time finding any buttons on the inside of this vehicle as well as being able to operate everything simply and straightforwardly.

Intelligent Lane Intervention and Nissan Safety Shield 360 are two of the features with which this vehicle comes with and are very important. Now the Safety Shield 360 of course looks 360 degrees and protects you from anything around the vehicle. You’ll also find that bird’s eye camera and that is extremely helpful when you’re trying to back the vehicle up into a space or pull into parallel parking. And it’s harder to do with a vehicle of this size but Nissan makes it much simpler. Intelligent Forward Collision Warning is part of the package as well as Blind Spot and Nissan have done a good job with including very standard safety equipment on this vehicle. And then you are able to option up with more safety packages as you want to increase the safety packages with your vehicle.

The gauges behind the steering wheel include the seven-inch thin TFT which also includes a selectable information screen and therefore you can put the information up there that you desire. You can toggle through it using your switch and I find that very useful to be able to select the information that I find interesting or informative as I’m driving.

The Armada is a big, rugged, vehicle and looks big and rugged on the outside with a V-motion grille up front and a large Nissan badge. But the Nissan badge also has white on the inside which makes it look more luxurious and nicer. A multi-slatted grille here which is monochromatic, the same color as the exterior of the vehicle in this case, and then a lower gray valance with a small air intake at the bottom. As we move around the vehicle, you’ll notice these headlights are LEDs and they have 50 LEDs on the inside of the headlights. Large, very square fenders, big wheels with multi-spoke, and then you come along to the outside of the vehicle you’ll see the top of the mirror here has silver with the indicator in the middle and then monochromatic at the bottom. A nice piece of trim along the top gives this a very elegant feel, a chrome feel, chrome-style door handles, a step to get in the vehicle. These are large doors for entry and exit of the vehicle. A very square body shape, and when we get along to the back these taillights also have LEDs, 70 of them to be exact.

Now being the largest member of the Nissan family it’s all about space in the 2022 Armada. Behind the third row you will find 16 cubic feet of space, behind the second row it is around 45 cubic feet of space, and then 95 behind the first row. That’s a lot of space inside this vehicle. And to make it easier, the third row flips down electronically with two switches at the back here. If you want to flip the second row down, you can do that with an easy handle at the second row itself. So, you can open up all that space to carry all your gear.

A lot going on here in the back seats, diamond stitching to make it super comfortable. Of course, Nissan is famous for its zero-gravity seats developed with NASA. There are temperature controls back here, heated second-row seats, cup holders here in the center console of the second row, as well as a large storage bin container. And the infotainment which is embedded into the headrests of the first row also has input including an HDMI port as well. Now we’ll show you this, the action of folding up the second-row seats is an easy pull of a lever and the switch which allows them to tip and fold that’s kind of cool. But at the same time, once you get into that third row there is also a tip and fold button in the third row which allows those seats to fold up so you can exit the third row getting out of the vehicle. And the third row, of course, has its amenities too, including cup holders. Now another cool thing about this vehicle is getting in and out of it, there are plenty of grab handles on the second row so you can climb into the vehicle by using these large opening doors. Super comfortable for every passenger in every row. And don’t forget the second row 41 inches of leg room which is absolutely huge.

As you can see, the perfect combination of style, elegance, and Nissan reliability. If you’d like to test drive the brand new 2022 Nissan Armada, come down to Dick Hannah Nissan on McLoughlin and they’d love to let you test drive one today.