BMW X7 Review 2024

There are relatively few seven-seat luxury SUVs available in the UK. These cars prove you don’t have to sacrifice true comfort and cutting-edge technology if you need a car that can be crammed full with people and stuff. The BMW X7 is one of the best of the breed.

It isn’t the most stylish, though. The BMW X7’s enormous interpretation of BMW’s kidney-shaped front grille was always challenging, while the latest (facelifted) version has ultra-slim two-piece headlights that are perhaps even more divisive. The car’s back end looks more conventional in comparison. However, style is a very personal thing and the popularity of the BMW X7 would suggest that plenty of people like how it looks.

The X7 is BMW’s rival to the legion of luxury SUVs out there, taking on big names like the Audi Q7, the Mercedes GLS, the Volvo XC90 and, of course, the all-conquering Range Rover. Taking the fight to them, the minimalist interior is fantastic and made from very high-quality, tactile materials. The seats are fabulously comfortable, too. Everything feels built to last.

The on-board tech is deeply impressive. There’s a two-foot-long slab of display screen on top of the dashboard, one for the driver and one for the infotainment system. The latter is among the very best available in any car right now. There are several intuitive ways to control the system and it’s packed full of features that can make life on the road easier.

There’s a vast amount of room inside the BMW X7 making it a brilliant seven-seater. Seven tall adults can fit comfortably and the boot is massive. The sliding second-row seats and folding third-row chairs allow you to configure the amount of passenger space and boot volume to suit your needs. The BMW X7 can tow 3.5 tonnes, too.

There are three BMW X7 models to choose from: Excellence, M Sport and M60i. You can tell them apart by their differing packages of styling details, but they all come with the same standard features.

These include the aforementioned infotainment system with sat-nav and Apple CarPlay/Android Auto connectivity, four-zone climate control, leather upholstery, electrically-adjustable seats front and rear, heated front seats, adaptive cruise control and a glass sunroof – to name but a few things on a very long list.

There are several engines available as well. The petrol 40i and diesel 40d are powerful, smooth and quiet. They can potter around town happily, but accelerate really rapidly when you need to get a move on. If you want to go really fast, check out the high performance M60i, which can sprint from 0-62mph in less than five seconds. The diesel is the best all-rounder, thanks to its blend of performance and 30mpg-plus efficiency.

From behind the wheel, the BMW X7 feels remarkably nimble and engaging for such a large car, which makes it easy to travel cross-country at high speeds. The car’s size can be an issue in town, but there are all sorts of sensors, cameras and even automatic parking systems. It’s completely effortless to drive on motorways – there are many driver assistance systems to help out there – and the ride is never less than deeply comfortable.

At the time of writing, prices for the BMW X7 start at around £86,000 and top out at £110,000 – about what you’d pay for its main rivals. Running costs can be quite high, but not exceptionally so by large luxury SUV standards.

The BMW X7 is a top-notch family-friendly people carrier and a very talented luxury car. If that’s what you’re looking for, it should be near the top of your shopping list.

Get behind the wheel of a BMW X7 and you may be surprised to discover it has a similar feeling of agility and sportiness to BMW’s smaller saloon cars. If you need to get a shift on driving along a winding country road, the BMW X7 is able to oblige. You do still have to take the car’s size and weight into account, but it’s remarkably easy and rewarding to maintain a brisk cross-country pace. Certainly more so than in most of its rivals.

Indeed, the BMW X7 makes driving as easy as possible, generally, although its sheer size can take some getting used to. The steering is light, you have a near-panoramic view out and the ride is smooth. It’s a brilliant long-distance cruiser, feeling resolutely solid and stable on the motorway. You can also take advantage of the many driver assistance systems to help take the strain out of long journeys. The BMW X7 is reasonably capable off-road as well.

It’s worth specifying the optional four-wheel steering system. It turns the rear wheels by up to three degrees as you turn the steering wheel, which makes the car significantly more manoeuvrable when parking, more nimble in corners and more stable when changing motorway lanes.  

There are three engines available in the BMW X7, badged xDrive40i, xDrive40d and M60i. The ‘i’ indicates a petrol engine, while ‘d’ denotes a diesel. All three have a very smooth and responsive eight-speed automatic gearbox and xDrive four-wheel drive.

The 40i engine is a 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbocharged petrol that develops 381PS and 540Nm of torque. Acceleration is very rapid, even without flooring the throttle. The 0-62mph sprint takes 5.8 seconds and top speed is 151mph.

The diesel 40d also has a 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbocharged engine. It’s less powerful than the 40i, with 340PS, but it has a muscular 720Nm of torque. Acceleration is very nearly as quick, with the 40d taking 5.9 seconds to get from 0-62mph. But it’s actually quicker when accelerating from, say, 40mph to 70mph. Top speed is 152mph.

Lastly, there’s the high-performance M60i. It has a 4.4-litre turbocharged V8 that generates 530PS and 750Nm of torque. It’s very quick for such a big and heavy car. The 0-62mph dash takes just 4.7 seconds before it reaches a top speed of 155mph.

We should note that the BMW X7 is perfectly easy to drive at a more relaxed pace with any of these engines. Still, it’s good to know they can get a shift on when necessary.

The experts at Euro NCAP haven’t assessed the BMW X7 yet. However, there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t receive one of their coveted five-star safety ratings. Every other car in BMW’s current line-up has one, after all.

The BMW X7 is stuffed with safety features, including many airbags, automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning, lane-keeping assist, blind-spot monitoring, driver attention monitor and many more besides. These are designed to make driving as easy and safe as possible.

The BMW X7 can tow 3500kg, the same capacity as rivals like the Range Rover and Toyota Land Cruiser. It’s also the maximum that can legally be pulled behind a private car. However, given the X7 itself weighs 2.5 tonnes, you’ll have to be careful the car/trailer combination doesn’t breach maximum train weight limits.

Towing heavier trailers, such as a two-axle caravan is no issue for the BMW X7. There is plenty of power from the engines and it’s a very stable car, so you will barely notice there’s anything behind it.

You expect a car like the 5.2-metre-long, 2.0-metre-wide BMW X7 to have a vast amount of space and you won’t be disappointed. It’s one of the few SUVs that can comfortably seat seven six-foot adults, with loads of legroom, headroom and shoulder width in each of the three rows of seats. For comparison, the Volvo XC90 has a similar amount of space, while the Audi Q7 has less.

The second row slides backwards and forwards electrically, so you can vary the amount of space in the back seats and boot to your needs. Access to row three is a bit tight for adults, but kids should be able to clamber in easily. Both row two and three have Isofix child seat mounts.

The BMW X7 is optionally available with a six-seat layout, featuring two luxurious captain’s chairs in row two.

The boot is massive as well. With all seven seats in place, there is 326 litres of space, big enough for a family’s weekly food shopping. Fold row three into the boot floor and you’ll find 750 litres, which will do for a camping holiday or a couple of St. Bernard dogs. Drop row two as well and there’s a van-like 2120 litres – you might get a small sofa in there.

The boot lid opens in two parts, both of them electric. The lower section folds down and can be used as a seat. There’s also a button that lowers the rear suspension by 4cm to make loading a bit easier.

The latest, facelifted version of the BMW X7 has an elegantly clean and simple dashboard layout that is dominated by the curving sweep of screens on top. The simplicity is possible because the heating and ventilation controls have moved to the central touchscreen. It’s not as user-friendly as having knobs and buttons, but the icons are permanently available on the screen and not buried within a menu.

The dashboard’s aesthetic continues throughout the rest of the interior. There’s something interesting to look at from every seat. Second-row passengers have their own climate controls that are very easy to use.

High-quality and very tactile materials are used throughout the interior, and the build quality is faultless. It’s certainly as good as the interior of the Mercedes-Benz GLS, if not quite as special as the more expensive Range Rover.

The infotainment system fitted to the BMW X7 is one of the very best in the business. It’s centred in a vast 14.9-inch touchscreen display that curves towards the driver. It can also be controlled via a clickwheel on the centre console, voice commands or gestures. All are really intuitive to use.

The screen has high-definition graphics that look pin-sharp. There are a lot of menus to navigate around, but you’ll soon learn where the things you use most often are.

Features in the system include the usual sat-nav, DAB radio, Bluetooth and Apple CarPlay/Android Auto phone connectivity. There’s also a huge suite of online and mobile app-based services to make life on the road as easy as possible.

The system has far too many capabilities to list here, but highlights include finding nearby parking spaces and restaurants. It can even connect your calendar to the sat-nav and automatically enter your destination.

There’s a 12.3-inch digital driver’s display that can be configured to show whatever information you want. The standard Harman Kardon stereo sounds fantastic, the optional Bowers & Wilkins system even more so. A rear-seat entertainment system is also optional.

At the time of writing, prices for the BMW X7 start at £86,405 and go up to £110,675. That’s the same sort of money you’d pay for rivals such as the Mercedes-Benz GLS and Land Rover Defender 130. On that basis, it’s reasonable value for money.

The BMW X7 is actually quite fuel-efficient for an SUV of its size. BMW quotes average fuel economy of between 23.3mph and 29.4mpg for the petrol engines, while the diesel achieves as much as 36.7mpg. Those numbers are reportedly pretty accurate, too.

The BMW X7’s 80-litre fuel tank will cost quite a lot to fill, but the diesel in particular has a usefully long range – potentially more than 600 miles. So you won’t need to stop for fuel that often.

First-year vehicle excise duty (VED, or road tax) charges on a new BMW X7 will be pretty hefty. Thereafter it costs £180 per year, plus the extra £390 charge levied on luxury cars for their second through sixth years of service.

The lack of a low-emissions plug-in hybrid powertrain means the BMW X7 may not be the best choice for company car drivers. CO2 emissions of 204g/km to 292g/km translate to expensive benefit-in-kind (BiK) tax rates.

Servicing shouldn’t cost too much relative to the car’s cost, and BMW provides a three-year, unlimited mileage warranty.

There are three models of BMW X7 available: the luxury-focused Excellence, sporty-looking M Sport and high-performance M60i.

All three come with the same package of standard features. The very long list starts with BMW’s top-of-the-line Live Cockpit Professional infotainment system. This lives in a 14.9-inch touchscreen display and features sat-nav, DAB radio, Bluetooth and a whole host of online services that can make travelling much easier.

The driver also has a 12.3-inch digital screen and a head-up display, plus there’s a wireless phone charging pad and a fabulous Harman Kardon audio system.

Comfort features include Merino leather seat upholstery, four-zone climate control, electrically-adjustable and heated seats, driving position memory, an opening panoramic glass sunroof, keyless entry and start, and a power-opening tailgate.

Among the driver assistance features are adaptive cruise control, adaptive LED headlights, air suspension, parking sensors and cameras. The car can also change lanes automatically when the cruise control is engaged. You can even teach the car to manoeuvre into a tricky parking space and it will automatically replicate that manoeuvre on return visits.

You tell the difference between the three models by theirstyling details. The Excellence has 21-inch Y-spoke alloy wheels, aluminium trim on the outside and Fineline Stripe brown detailing on the inside.

The M Sport has 21-inch M double-spoke alloy wheels, sporty-looking bumpers and gloss black Shadowline exterior trim. Inside, there’s Fineline black wood and metal trim, an M Sport steering wheel and Alcantara headlining.

The M60i looks similar to M Sport, but has bigger 22-inch M double-spoke wheels, a matt black front grille, aerodynamic M door mirrors and striped M seat belts. Underneath, there is a more tuneful M Sport exhaust and an M Sport differential to enhance the car’s handling.