Mercedes-Benz GLS Review 2024

The GLS is so enormous that it can’t fail to get you noticed, while there’s enough space in the passenger compartment and boot to deal with the needs of any family, and the generous luxury kit and clever infotainment tech on board will keep everyone entertained. In principle, a very similar car to the BMW X7, which is better on comfort and quality, but still very appealing.

Few companies have embraced the SUV revolution with quite so much enthusiasm as Mercedes-Benz. The company offers no fewer than eight varieties: small ones, big ones, middle-sized ones, cheap ones, pricey ones, hardcore ones, lifestyle ones, coupe ones, you name it.

The GLS, though, is the flagship of them all. Labelled as ‘the S-Class of SUVs’, it’s job is to deliver limousine levels of class, quality, technology and luxury, but with all the desirability, image, practicality and versatility that you’d expect from an SUV.

Good job, then, that it’s absolutely massive. Any car that can make a Volvo XC90 look puny has to be on the chunky side.

Good job, too, that it has a huge seven-seat cabin that's crafted from expensive-feeling materials, and stuffed with luxury equipment and a variety of interesting infotainment technology. Good job, also, that it has a strong, muscular diesel engine that delivers superb mechanical refinement and competitive efficiency. That’s plenty of those boxes checked already.

Unfortunately, the GLS has got one big problem, and it’s called the BMW X7. Both cars are a bang-on match for each other in terms of size, price, appeal, and a whole host of other factors. And although the X7’s nostril-heavy looks might not be to everyone’s taste, anyone who’s experienced the car will know that it’s very, very good. And crucially, it’s better - in a number of ways - than the GLS.

Cabin quality is one of them. Yes, the big Merc feels very posh and lustrous inside, but the BMW’s greater solidity and attention-to-detail means it feels appreciably more dense and substantial. The Merc can’t match the Beemer on the road, either.

It doesn’t ride as comfortably, regardless of your surroundings or speeds, and it feels a good deal more cumbersome in the bends. And in a luxury car, that dynamic polish is essential in creating the right impression of civility and sophistication, and if it’s not there, all the swanky touchscreens in the world can’t make up for it.

There’s also the challenge posed by smaller, cheaper seven-seat SUV choices such as the Audi Q7 and Volvo XC90, both of which are excellent, the Audi especially. Ask yourself: do I really need a car as big as a GLS? For most, the answer will be no.

If you do, then - don’t get us wrong - the GLS is a very strong contender in a lot of ways. Tech-heads, in particular, will love it. However, the X7 is just a better all-rounder, while other excellent cars like the Audi Q7 do a very similar job for considerably less money.

Whatever mode you select for the air suspension, it thuds and shudders over bumps and potholes that you’d hardly feel in most rivals. What’s more, the body bobs around rather a lot when you hit a big bump, and on an undulating road, those prone to travel sickness may well go a bit green around the gills.

The handling is also pretty untidy. There’s lots of grip and traction thanks to the standard four-wheel drive, but the body leans unsettlingly as you change direction, even at gentle speeds. The steering is slow, too, and all that means that most rivals feel a good bit more eager to turn than the GLS does.

The four-wheel drive and lofty ground clearance should allow the GLS to cope with muddy tracks easily enough, but don’t expect the GLS to delve as far into the countryside as a Range Rover can.

There’s only one engine available in the GLS, and it’s a 3.0-litre, six-cylinder unit with 330PS. Considering the car weighs almost two and a half tonnes, it really has its work cut out, but it actually copes really well.

The 0-62mph time of 6.3 seconds even sounds pretty racy, but in reality, the car builds speed in a brisk, effortless way. Picking up speed on the move isn’t a problem, either, although if you bury the right-hand pedal to ask for a sudden surge of acceleration, the nine-speed automatic gearbox needs a second or two to decide which gear to give you.

In fairness, this is something that also afflicts pretty much all the GLS’s rivals, and it’s nowhere near as bad in the big Merc as it is in some. Otherwise, the gearbox behaves impeccably, switching ratios smoothly and cleanly and mostly getting its choice of gear right first time.

The GLS hasn’t been crash-tested by Euro NCAP yet, but every Mercedes tested since 2014 has received the full five stars and there’s little reason to suspect that the GLS would be any different. Besides, you can take solace in the fact that if you crashed into a building in the GLS, you’d probably knock it over.

You can also take solace in an absolutely heaving list of standard safety kit. All cars get a suite of clever safety measures that includes automatic emergency braking, blind spot monitoring, active speed limit assistance and active lane keeping, along with at least seven airbags.

AMG Line Premium Plus trim adds active stop and go (the car will automatically follow in line during traffic jams), while AMG Line Premium Plus Executive trim ups the airbag count to nine.

Parking a car as enormous as this could be a challenge, so there are sensors and cameras all around the car, along with a parking assistant.

You'd expect a car as huge and as heavy as the GLS to excel in this area, and it truly does. It’ll pull a braked trailer of up to 3500kg, which is about as much as you can expect from a road car.

There’s absolutely loads of space up front, and those in the middle row also get a vast amount of head- and legroom, allowing even tall passengers to stretch out. The GLS is more comfortable than most when seating three across the middle bench, too, thanks to the sheer width of the cabin and a transmission tunnel that’s flat and low so you can comfortably sit with your feet on top of it.

The middle-row chairs slide, recline and fold electrically, and they move far enough out of the way to allow pretty good access to the third row. 

If they’re much over six foot, those in the very back might want to ask those in front to use their electric seat sliders to donate a little bit of legroom, but there’s still a shade more than you get in the Audi Q7 and Volvo XC90, although the BMW X7’s third row is roomier still.

The boot is still a really impressive size even with all the seats in place, and if you fold the third row down (electrically, of course), and you get an absolutely vast luggage space

All the materials in your eyeline are sumptuously textured and thoughtfully finished, while even most of those that are more hidden away feel of a similarly high grade.

The build quality is very solid, too, although there are one or two places - like the window switches, for example - where things feel a little more lightweight and hollow than the do in an Audi Q7 or BMW X7, and as a result, the GLS doesn’t feel quite as dense or substantial overall.

Aside from the quality on show, the cabin’s wow-factor is provided by the two glass-fronted 12.3-inch screens that are mounted side-by-side  in front of the driver. The system is controlled either by tapping and swiping the left-hand screen, or via a touchpad and shortcut buttons located on the partition between the front seats.

The graphics are sharp and the menus have a logical layout, but the touchpad controller isn’t a patch on the iDrive rotary dial you get in the BMW X7 because it's more distracting.

That said, you can also operate the system via a sophisticated voice control system that’s designed to recognise natural speech rather than specific commands, and it works very well.

The infotainment functionality you get includes DAB radio, sat-nav, Bluetooth, Apple Carplay and Android Auto, a wireless phone charging plate and a Burmester surround sound system. The navigation has augmented reality, which overlays instruction graphics over a camera image of the road ahead of you, pointing out precisely where you should be going.

If you were to buy this car new then, at the time of writing, you’d have paid a minimum of £75,000 for the entry-level car, rising to around £92,000 for the range-topper. Not cheap, then.

Compare the GLS to the BMW X7 - it’s most direct rival - and there’s virtually nothing to separate them. They cost the same, they depreciate at the same rate and they cost pretty much the same to own overall. Your choice will probably come down to which one you like the look of more.

However, both these cars are much more expensive than (admittedly considerably smaller) rivals like the Audi Q7 and Volvo XC90, but you can take solace in that both look like a bargain compared with the five-seat-only Range Rover.

If you’re planning to buy on finance, which most buyers will, then it’s always worth checking the manufacturer’s website for deals and promotions.

At the time of writing, we found an entry-level model being offered for a discount of around £5000, leaving you to pay just over £760 per month on a four-year PCP deal following an initial deposit of around £12,500.

In reality, it’s likely to be a bit less in the real world than suggested by these laboratory-gleaned figures, especially if you drive with a heavy right foot on a regular basis.

However, we’ve found from experience that cars like these, if driven sensibly, are capable of getting reasonably close to their target figures. That said, if you’re spending this much on a car, then small fluctuations in how much motion lotion you’re getting through are unlikely to make much difference to your coffers.

It’ll come as no shock that a car as expensive to buy as the Mercedes GLS will also be expensive to insure. The car sits in either group 48 or 49 according to which trim you choose, and group 50 is the most expensive group there is.

Still, if you’re wealthy enough to even consider a GLS as your family charabanc, then shipping a few extra quid to the underwriters is unlikely to bother you too much.

In terms of reliability, premium German brands don’t tend to do as well in the various reliability surveys as many would expect, usually figuring towards the bottom end of the standings. That’s also true of Mercedes, although it should be noted that it usually outperforms bitter rivals Audi and BMW.

AMG Line Premium trim comes with pretty much anything you could ever want, even in a luxury car. Five-zone climate control, keyless go, a sliding panoramic roof, soft-close doors, a powered tailgate, heated front- and rear seats and an electrically deploying towbar are all included as standard.

Upgrading to AMG Line Premium Plus trim adds massaging front seats and a heated cupholder, along with the rear-seat entertainment system, while AMG Line Premium Plus Executive gives you a heated steering wheel and heating for the third-row seats, while the middle row gets massaging seats, electric sunblinds and a heated cupholder.