2024 Hyundai Kona Review: Is It Better Than the Honda HR-V?

Hyundai’s compact crossover is revamped with a bold new look.

Published October 15, 2023

If you’re in the market for a compact crossover these days, you’ll find yourself in something of a golden era for the category. From Acura to Volkswagen, there are small car-based SUVs available for all sorts of tastes; mild to wild, slow to sporty, frugal to fancy, it’s easy to find something for you.

Since 2017, the Kona — named, in traditional Hyundai SUV fashion, after a place your parents would probably go on vacation — has served as the starter crossover for the company’s American shoppers. (Technically, the Hyundai Venue is the most affordable option, but as it lacks AWD and is more in line with a typical hatchback in size and height, calling it an SUV is a bit of a stretch. Besides, if it were an SUV, it’d be named after a destination.) It made a solid splash in the marketplace, racking up hundreds of thousands of sales since it arrived in 2017 and even spawning a tire-shredding Kona N performance variant.

Now, for the 2024 model year, there’s a whole new Kona in town — one meant to better compete against the latest and greatest compact crossovers with added features and refinement and a very new face. To find out if it’s worth your hard-earned cash, I took it for a drive around the urban, suburban and rural roads leading out from Baltimore into the Maryland countryside. Here’s what I learned.

2024 Hyundai Kona: What We Think

Unlike the 2024 Kia Seltos, The ’24 Kona is more than a facelift; it’s a whole new car, with expanded wheelbase and new features found under the skin. Still, it’s the new design that’s most likely to draw attention; it’s thoroughly polarizing and almost alien, making it stand out in a category filled with many a milquetoast design.

If the styling works for you, you’ll find the rest of the package to be a pleasant enough experience. The driving experience won’t inspire sonnets, but it’ll move you from A to B in peace and relative quiet. The car comes laden with technology and ideas designed to streamline its owner’s life, from ample active safety features to ventilated seats, at a far lower price point than many vehicles. It’s ultimately more appliance than enthusiast machine, but if that’s what you — like many buyers — are looking for, it sells itself well based on its features.

To learn more about our testing methodology and how we evaluate products, head here.

The 2024 Kona’s design is, well, a lot

Credit to Hyundai for taking some big swings with their designs lately, but it works better for some cars than others. The Ioniq 5 is a bona fide retro-future vision, and the new Santa Fe brings old-school Land Rover looks to the affordable crossover realm. On the flip side, the Ioniq 6 looks like a first-gen Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class that was left in the microwave too long, and the new Kona is … well, let’s just say a lot.

The design is as polarizing in person as it is in pictures, too. The wide, thin LED strip across the hood looks almost too sci-fi, bringing to mind Geordi LaForge or Scott Summers. Surprisingly, the additional body-colored trim of the Limited does little to even out the looks; I found the N Line to be a bit more pleasant to eyeball, as its extra gray body cladding gives it a little more angry edge that suits the design well. Still, regardless of trim, it looks oddly faceless and even a bit off-putting, at least to my eyes. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

If you want the good powertrain, you’ll need to pay up

During my day of driving the Kona, I had little reason to complain about the powertrain. While it suffers from a small dash of kickdown lag — blame the combination of an eight-speed automatic that’s happy to seek high gear for efficiency’s sake and the small turbocharged motor that needs the snail to be spinning to generate decent oomph — it’s peppy enough for mainstream use once it’s going.

That said, Hyundai only gave us a chance to drive vehicles with the 1.6-liter turbo four, which comes connected to an eight-speed automatic. Hyundai price-locks this setup into the top two trims, the $31,985 N Line and the $32,985 Limited; lower-tier versions — the base $25,435 SE and the $26,785 SEL that seems likely to be the value leader — will be stuck with the naturally aspirated 2.0-liter inline four that makes 147 horses and 132 lb-ft, connected to a CVT.

While, as stated, I haven’t had the chance to try the base motor, given its specs, it seems unlikely to thrill — and might even be borderline unpleasant. If the Honda HR-V suffers from a groaning engine, I’d imagine a similar vehicle with even less power (and from a brand hardly known for mellifluous motors) would be even less fun to deal with.

The Limited is the pick of the litter, at least for now

The reason Hyundai only let journalists test the N-Line and Limited trims is, well, those are the ones the brand is launching with. The N Line version certainly looks better; its body-colored fenders, blacked-out grille treatment and rear spoiler all play into the Kona’s extroverted design cues. But the extra $1,000 for the Limited scores enough extra features to make it the better play, offering surprisingly supple faux leather upholstery, ventilated front seats, an auto-opening rear hatch gate, surround view cameras for parking and passing, and more.

Still, in typical Hyundai fashion, the Kona comes well-equipped no matter how you slice it. A comprehensive suite of ADAS systems — forward collision prevention against cars, cyclists and pedestrians, blind spot warning, rear cross traffic warning, lane keeping and following assist, speed limit assist, auto high beams, safe exit warnings — all come standard on every one. Opting for the N Line still gets you heated front seats, a Bose stereo, active cruise control (with thoroughly annoying “curve control” that aggressively slows down for turns) and ample other features.

The interior is stylish, and still packs plenty of physical controls

Both N Line or Limited will get you an interior with Hyundai’s new shift-by-wire shifter, a Norelco-like protuberance sticking out from behind the wheel on the steering column. It’s basically a simplified version of the shifter found in the VW ID.4; twist one way for Drive, twist the other for Reverse. It’s certainly more intuitive than push buttons or whatever the hell Tesla is up to these days — and, as a bonus, it frees up space in the center console where the conventional shifter lies on lesser models.

And every Kona comes packing a 12.3-inch touchscreen on the dash for the infotainment system. The system works fine — it’s fairly standard Hyundai stuff, which is to say, on the top half of the pile for such things in terms of usability, if a little lacking in charm. (Think “generic Android OS.”) Luckily, you won’t have to use it much, as Hyundai still offers ample physical buttons for everything from climate controls to the audio system to many other secondary tasks. Between the hard buttons, your presets and Siri, you might go weeks without touching the screen. Oh, and speaking of Siri and its ilk: at last, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto comes standard on lesser models, and is expected to arrive as a software update down the road for upper-tier ones.