I Drove the 2025 Honda Odyssey, Here's My Honest Review

The Honda Odyssey is like a Swiss Army knife that uncorks family fun

The Honda Odyssey is a well-established American household name, renowned for its versatility, durability, respectable resale value, and reliability. It’s like a dependable multi-tool that meets the needs of almost every family, and is capable of handling enough abuse to be passed down to the very children they help to raise. Odysseys have served loyally as the mechanical backbone of countless families and have competed rigorously with heavy-hitting competition from a vast array of alternative automakers. Nowadays, however, the Odyssey represents an aging offering in a segment with dwindling rivals, all competing to win over buyers who haven’t already converted to crossover SUV life.

While contemporary rivals like the Toyota Sienna and Chrysler Pacifica offer advanced hybrid and plug-in hybrid technology, the Honda Odyssey sticks to its old-school guns with a naturally aspirated V6 and front-wheel drive. After spending a week driving Honda’s latest iteration of the Odyssey, I can’t honestly say whether one school of minivan thought is objectively better than the other – that is, old-school versus new-school – but I can say that if you’re someone who prefers the old-school minivan philosophy, then it doesn’t get much better than the 2025 Honda Odyssey. That being said, it’s still far from perfect, so I’ll explain the many pros and cons that I noticed over the course of seven days.

At first glance, the 2025 Honda Odyssey looks edgy and agile, but should minivans really chase that vibe?

From a design standpoint, the modern Odyssey admittedly lacks much of the warmth and charm of its formidable predecessors, such as the 2003 Honda Odyssey (which, by the way, still holds the record for the Odyssey’s best sales year), replacing light, airy cabins with black plastics and unnecessarily complicated controls, such as its gear selector, which has separate buttons for park, reverse, neutral, and drive. Outside, that sentiment remains, and the Odyssey has given up its understated elegance in favor of meaner, more aggressive lines and fixtures in an attempt to appear sportier and more youthful. Underneath it all, the Odyssey is fundamentally not that different from its previous generations, but its outer wrapper screams “identity crisis” more than it exudes the softness and elegance it once did.

It’s not that the contemporary Odyssey looks unattractive – in fact, its newly updated wheels offer plenty of road presence, and my particular test car’s candy red paint looked dazzling drenched in sunlight – it just lacks the stateliness that once made it a prime candidate in its segment. This complaint, however, is not unique to the Odyssey and is, in fact, true of most family minivans on the market today, as they attempt to position themselves competitively in a market flooded with more aggressive-looking crossovers that many people somehow don’t find to be as embarassing to drive (although I’d beg to differ that owning a minivan is far more tasteful than most crossovers). Maybe I’m a bit of a traditionalist. I admit I’d even love to see Chrysler bring back wooden side panelling on their Pacifica as an ode to Town & Country vans of the past. Still, while the 2025 Honda Odyssey still looks fresh despite its current generation having begun way back in 2017, I do wish it still possessed the tasteful charm it once exemplified.

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Styling aside, the 2025 Honda Odyssey is a massive step up from its predecessors

Perhaps I long for the days of more elegant, restrained yet intentional design language of the 2003 Honda Odyssey because I spent much of my childhood seated in the passenger-side third row of one – my designated seat amongst my three siblings – watching Shrek 2 on its overhead DVD player, and staring out the window listening to Mazzy Star on my headphones longing for the day where I’d be old enough to receive my driver’s license. When that day finally came, the then eleven-year-old Odyssey served as my training jet, and I used it to learn how to drive, how to park, and eventually, how to make tires spin. I loved driving that Odyssey, and I was never embarrassed to be seen in it, despite its wholesome family-friendly nature and my potent teenage angst, because I pushed it so hard no one could ever make fun of me for driving a minivan.

I loved its 240-horsepower J35 V6 and that, if you pressed the throttle hard enough from a standstill, would burn so much rubber that any 16-year-old would believe they were driving a Charger Hellcat. My mom loved it, too, appreciating its impressive visibility, and the fact that it was comfortable to keep my siblings and me quiet – at least some of the time. In fact, she still remembers it fondly to this day and was excited to go for a ride in the shiny, bright, red, brand-new one. She also appreciated the fact that she knew, no matter how stupidly I would inevitably drive it, if anything were to happen, it would ensure my safety thanks to its many airbags and impressive safety rating

That Odyssey became part of our family in 2003 and left us sometime in the mid-2010s (shortly after I received my driver’s license, oops) when its transmission exploded. Still, by then, it had far exceeded our expectations, having taken us on countless trips and journeys, kept us entertained with its DVD player and many large windows, and served honorably like a loyal family dog.

For its 2025 model year, the Honda Odyssey retains its proven standard formula, but it also feels more dialed-in than ever before

As soon as I planted myself behind the wheel of the 2025 Odyssey and got to driving, I felt an immediate sense of familiarity. Like riding a bike, the feeling came right back to me, and memories of driving my mom’s old Odyssey came flooding back into my consciousness, and it felt like home. That’s what Odysseys begin to feel like for any family that’s lived with one for a while – like a second home, because, well, they kind of are. For those familiar with this sensation, rest assured that the 2025 Honda Odyssey still feels like home, and it drives just like it always has – except that it’s been massively refined.

The 2025 Odyssey’s driving position feels almost entirely unchanged from its predecessors, and you sit high and mighty, with plenty of visibility and La-Z-Boy-like comfort. Its driving dynamics have the same spirit and characteristics the Odyssey has always had, only much more dialled-in. It still packs the legendary J35 3.5-liter naturally-aspirated V6, except now it produces more power – 280 horsepower and 262 lb-ft of torque to be exact – and benefits from slightly improved fuel economy, with an EPA-rated 19 mpg in the city, 28 mpg on the highway, and 22 mpg combined – a realistic figure, as I achieved an average of 20 mpg over the course of a week with both city and highway driving and a heavy right foot – and pairs its durable powertrain with a sharp-shifting ten-speed automatic gearbox, which can be shifted manually using paddle shifters.

The Odyssey accelerates comfortably and with ease, and makes a nice throaty sound as it does so. Rev it high enough and VTEC kicks in, which offers just enough thrill that you momentarily forget you’re driving a minivan. Thankfully, its brakes bite hard, but the pedal isn’t overly sensitive, and its suspension can handle hard cornering – to a point beyond what you’d expect from a minivan, but obviously not one that rivals any dedicated sports car – without sacrificing ride comfort. As with any memorable Honda product, balance is generally a key tenet in all aspects, and it’s not lost on the Odyssey.

Although the contemporary Honda Odyssey’s powertrain improvements had my inner sixteen-year-old in a trance, winning me over with the fact that I now had 40 extra horsepower, the ability to select my own gears with paddle shifters manually, and that it had both a DVD player and a power sunroof somehow which seemed like witchcraft to me, there were some new features I discovered that I’m glad my family’s ’03 never had. Truthfully, I’m eternally grateful that my mom’s minivan never had the new Odyssey’s CabinWatch or CabinTalk features, which allow the driver to pull up a live feed of every rear occupant on the central infotainment screen from a camera mounted near the DVD player’s screen and to speak to occupants from the driver’s seat over a PA system. I genuinely pity the children out there who will grow up to resent their family Odyssey for being a tattle-taler.

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My relationship with the 2025 Honda Odyssey’s interior is one of both love and hate

Honda’s philosophy of balance extends into the cabin in the 2025 Odyssey, but less so in a way that describes a seamless blend of positive attributes, and more so an equal number of pros as there are cons. I’m glad there are still plenty of physical buttons. I was happy to see a rear occupant entertainment screen. I was pleased that it could be connected using an HDMI cord rather than a disc, and I was impressed with its comfort and spaciousness, even if that wasn’t especially surprising to me. The Odyssey’s cabin ticks all the necessary boxes, and my complaints aren’t significant enough that they’d ever stop me from purchasing one should I be in the market for a minivan, but they are still worth mentioning.

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For starters, I found the central infotainment screen’s orientation frustrating, as it is mounted perfectly flat onto the dashboard, giving the rear middle seat occupant a better angle of the Apple CarPlay screen than the driver. As previously mentioned, the black plastics and bland design suck a lot of soul out of the cabin’s environment, and if it weren’t such a comfortable place to be, I wouldn’t want to spend too much of my time there. These were all concerns I had, but not necessarily things I hated about the Odyssey’s interior.

Hate is a strong word, but there was something that I did truly hate: the gear selector, if you can even call it that. Each selection requiring its very own button is annoying at best. Still, if you look closely at the photo above, you’ll notice that “reverse” gets its own convoluted, easy-to-miss position facing upwards rather than outwards. I had to look down and carefully select my desired gear every time, never becoming familiar enough with it to switch between them purely out of muscle memory, as is possible with a more traditional shifter or steering-column-mounted stalk. This setup seemed totally pointless to me, and I wish Honda would give the Odyssey a regular gear selector again, or, at the very least, reposition the button for “reverse.”

The real verdict

The 2025 Honda Odyssey, like Coca-Cola or Kentucky Fried Chicken, has adhered to a recipe for generations that has proven itself a winner with families who trust its dependability, above-par resale value, and, most importantly, its impeccable safety. Although its current generation is nearly seven years old and has traded the minivan’s traditional understated elegance for an edgier appearance and stiffer, sportier driving dynamics, the 2025 Honda Odyssey retains the model’s timeless ethos. It is still a worthy and potent competitor in its segment.

If the Toyota Sienna is like Diet Coke and the Chrysler Pacifica is like Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero, then the Honda Odyssey is good old-fashioned standard formula Coca-Cola. Everyone has their own preference, and one style is not necessarily better than any of the others. Still, if you’re someone who knows what they like and likes what they know, the Honda Odyssey is, as it always has been, a safe bet if you’re in the market for a new family minivan, and one that you certainly won’t regret.