- 14 minutes ago
The 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado 250 gets put through its paces in the Dubai desert, mountain roads, city traffic, and even a fish-market lunch stop on the way back. What starts with a stuck-in-the-sand mistake turns into a full test drive and review of Toyota’s smaller Land Cruiser, with real off-road lessons, crawl mode, MTS sand settings, hill descent control, and plenty of everyday usability checks.
The review breaks down the confusing Land Cruiser naming, explains where the Prado J250 sits in Toyota’s lineup, and compares its size to rivals like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Volkswagen Touareg, and Land Rover Defender 110. Inside, there’s a look at the cockpit, wireless charging, Android Auto, 360 camera, rear-seat comfort, third-row access, boot space, and the practical compromises of a body-on-frame off-roader.
It’s a grounded automotive review with off-road driving, SUV interior tour, desert driving, and real-world road impressions, all delivered with dry humor and first-hand experience in the United Arab Emirates. If you search for Toyota Land Cruiser Prado 250 review, Land Cruiser J250 test drive, Dubai off-road SUV, 4x4 review, or Prado interior and boot space, this detailed drive covers the key search angles. Ideal for viewers interested in automotive reviews, off-road SUVs, desert driving, and practical Land Cruiser comparisons.
The review breaks down the confusing Land Cruiser naming, explains where the Prado J250 sits in Toyota’s lineup, and compares its size to rivals like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Volkswagen Touareg, and Land Rover Defender 110. Inside, there’s a look at the cockpit, wireless charging, Android Auto, 360 camera, rear-seat comfort, third-row access, boot space, and the practical compromises of a body-on-frame off-roader.
It’s a grounded automotive review with off-road driving, SUV interior tour, desert driving, and real-world road impressions, all delivered with dry humor and first-hand experience in the United Arab Emirates. If you search for Toyota Land Cruiser Prado 250 review, Land Cruiser J250 test drive, Dubai off-road SUV, 4x4 review, or Prado interior and boot space, this detailed drive covers the key search angles. Ideal for viewers interested in automotive reviews, off-road SUVs, desert driving, and practical Land Cruiser comparisons.
Category
🚗
MotorTranscript
00:01Somewhere behind me is Dubai and this is a Dubai half-desert road and this here
00:06is the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado J250 or the combination of all these names
00:12depending on where you live. Here in the United Arab Emirates this is called the
00:17Toyota Prado and is there a better place to review it? I don't think so. Let's go!
00:39full disclosure I'm here on vacation for which I'm paying myself I did approach
00:43Toyota to help me arrange a press car in Dubai in exchange for which I am
00:47recording this review however this does not cloud my judgment about this model
00:52or other Toyota models
01:22what you see here is driver error it's been 25 years since I drove in the
01:26desert first I should have turned on MTS or multi-terrain select and selected sand
01:32and only then drive in the sand optionally I could have aired down before getting
01:38stuck and if you get stuck you can call for help or wait for a friendly
01:42policeman who told me to air down to about 1 bar or 15 psi and then he just
01:49drove out from the sand trap later on you'll see in some cases it's better to
01:54air down even more
02:42I picked the car up yesterday from Toyota Dubai I came here to the half desert
02:49road to take some Instagram pictures and the first thing I did was get stuck
02:53fortunately there was a nice policeman who came along he kicked the tires
02:57saw that the pressure was too high even though I aired down a little bit but
03:02clearly not enough and he helped us get out I was able to reverse in crawl mode
03:09but that's about it and then the ground clearance ended I didn't have a
03:14sufficient departure or in this case approach angle to go up a small incline
03:20to get out of this sand pit today I just put the car into MTS sand and it
03:28pretty much drives itself and I didn't even air down of course if I would get
03:32stuck I probably would air down and get out no problem but right now this is a
03:40piece of cake this oh by the way the press office told me to go for it so I'm going
03:53for it no jumping briefly about the name and positioning Toyota Land Cruiser is an
04:01umbrella name for three different models there is the light duty series the heavy
04:06duty series and the station wagon series light duty is the Prado currently J 250
04:12previous generation was called J 150 the station wagon is the J 300 previous
04:19generation was called J 200 and that's what is known as the Land Cruiser in some
04:25markets so when Toyota launched the Prado in the States and called it the Land
04:30Cruiser it left some journalists and customers scratching their heads and then
04:35there is the heavy duty series like the J 70 which you can still buy brand new in
04:40some markets as far as size goes the J 250 Prado is slightly bigger than the J 150
04:47it replaces it's about the size of the current Jeep Grand Cherokee or the
04:51Volkswagen Touareg it's also a bit smaller than the Land Rover Defender 110 at
04:58first the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado cockpit seems very well laid out very well
05:03pointed we've got buttons on the steering wheel we've got buttons for the AC
05:08we've got buttons and knobs for all the multi-terrain system for crawl for drive
05:14modes for four-wheel drive diff locks etc etc so we've got all of this and that's
05:20good however we also don't get much space we have a wireless charger for one phone
05:28and by the way my phone has this thick case which some of you say in the
05:35comments when I complain about wireless chargers that it obstructs charging no it
05:41doesn't in a Toyota the wireless charger works and it works even with my thick case
05:48if in some car it doesn't work it's not because of the phone it's because of the
05:53charger anyway here it works but I don't seem to have much space I have some space
05:59here maybe to put my sunglasses but the cable is running through here why the cable
06:06we'll talk about it in a minute so there is no storage compartment up here and this
06:13here is well it's a luxury feature it's a chilled compartment here but it's not very
06:21big if I take my bottle and trying to put it here
06:28it won't close so this is maybe for four of these thin energy drink cans but nothing bigger
06:39so there isn't much storage for a car this big there are some door pockets but it's very
06:46tight down there and that's about it there's also a glove box this one is filled with manuals which
06:53maybe I should have read before I got stuck in the desert but now I know everything I'm a professional
06:59idiot so yeah I just try to wing it now about this cable here this cable is needed for android
07:13auto
07:13because depending on the spec you either get wired android auto or wireless android auto this is the
07:18wired spec although this is some kind of adventure mid trim here for the middle east I'm not sure what
07:25it's like in Europe we've got a digital screen in front of the driver and we've got a infotainment
07:33display here which you're going to use mainly for android auto anyway because this is useless
07:41what is good but could be improved is the 360 camera the 360 camera goes on even when you're
07:49doing some parking maneuvers going forwards but as soon as you hit about five or ten kilometers per hour
07:56the screen goes off and then you have to press a button thank god for the button to get the
08:03camera
08:03back on to complete the maneuver however it's it's a decent camera and this car is very good at at
08:12maneuvering
08:12also you get this sort of fake view from the back which is cool you get camera washers and all
08:21that jazz
08:22so that's um quite uh quite a good system so i like that the seats are comfortable visibility is good
08:33if you're wondering about the window tint which is partial on the front it's a uae thing
08:40in the past you would have to have a car registered to a woman to get as much tint all
08:47around
08:49nowadays it seems to be legal or at least nobody questions it because this is a toyota press car
08:54and it's covered like this maybe their rationale is that there are also female journalists who drive
09:02these cars and that's why it's tinted all the way down here i've also seen cars which are tinted all
09:08the
09:08way in the front but that's probably totally legal and if you want to know i have this exactly in
09:15my line
09:15of sight so it's absolute crap and when it gets dark i really can't see anything so
09:24go easy on the tint but i understand it's a hot country sunny country so that's why it's here
09:33when you hear the united arab emirates you probably think dubai shopping malls glitter and gold and
09:38supercars but there's so much more to this country today i took a trip up the mountains we're probably in
09:53the emirate of sharjah more or less and we are driving in the wadi shauka wadi is a stream river
10:06bed
10:07we're just driving into it right now so if there are rainfalls this becomes a stream and you're
10:15obviously not allowed to to drive in here but the rains are less and less frequent so um you know
10:22it's
10:22a great place to um to have a weekend trip now it's not very challenging for a car like that
10:29i've seen
10:30some sedans along the way which i think their drivers are very brave but yeah also i got to test
10:38the hill descent control which you moderate the speed of with a knob here a dial so that's very useful
10:47and i mean it's not very challenging but uh you know it's a fun thing to do when you have
10:54a land
10:55cruiser at your disposal right the camera may not show it but i'm driving about 10 15 kilometers per
11:06hour on these roads and riverbeds this means even a relatively short trail can take a couple of hours
11:12hours to drive through the mountains and there are routes that can take a whole day or include overnight
11:17camping on high plains or down in the valleys by water pools which fill up during the winter
11:47so
11:48so how's the land cruiser prado j250 on the road
11:53as i said land cruiser prado j250 this is not what we in europe knew as the large land cruiser
12:03what the americans knew as the land cruiser this is what in the middle east and far east is known
12:12as the prado so it's the smaller of the land cruiser lineup hence it doesn't get the big engine anymore
12:23as far as i know it gets the 2.4 liter turbo petrol hybrid in the states which seems to
12:32be the same
12:32engine as you get in the lexus rx 500h here it gets a 2.4 liter turbo non-hybrid and
12:44in europe we get a
12:452.8 liter diesel and that's it because of the hybrid system in the states as far as i understand
12:58you lose
12:59the third row of seats in europe the diesel gets third row of seats as an option and here in
13:08the
13:08emirates the 2.4 petrol non-hybrid gets the third row of seats as standard as far as the driving
13:17experience goes regardless of which engine you go for it's pretty much agricultural and this is what
13:24is to be expected of a small medium size off-roader this car was never meant to be particularly sporty
13:35and i get it u.s journalists are used to what we know as the land large land cruiser which
13:42i think is
13:42now the 300 series which got a v6 or v8 and it was a powerful car this here is much
13:51less powerful and
13:53and it also sounds strained when you floor it and i can't floor it because i'm in relatively dense
14:00traffic speaking of which sorry for the beeps the beeps are for the speed traps which are all along
14:07the way here so it's going to beep every now and then because i'm in dense traffic i'm using the
14:16adaptive cruise control and the active lane keep assist it's okay because the traffic may be dense
14:24but it's not very complicated there are just long straights with a few bends however if i want to be
14:32in control i have to switch everything off because the lane keep assist without adaptive cruise control
14:38is a bit too aggressive and the adaptive cruise control if i'm on the highway doing whatever 120
14:46which is the top speed around here and there is a truck going slower way on the horizon this thing
14:55starts breaking too abruptly so you have to mind that and you have to change lane appropriately early
15:02to avoid that other than that this car uses about 13 liters per 100 kilometers and i would call it
15:12combined with my off-roading so we've been to the desert we've been to the wadi for rock crawling
15:19we've been doing some motorway driving and we've been doing some city driving and 13 liters per 100
15:27kilometers is what you get out of the 2.4 liter non-hybrid turbo petrol
15:35it's very maneuverable this car it's easy to park in a tight parking spot we have a very small garage
15:45under the hotel and the basement of the hotel and i managed just fine to park it there is a
15:52good 360
15:52camera so that helps i do wish the camera did not turn off above whatever 10 kilometers per hour when
15:59i'm going forwards because some maneuvers i would like to see longer but there is a camera button
16:06physical button so i can always get it back up on the screen so that's good okay so that's my
16:13report of
16:14driving the prado or land cruiser j250 in everyday traffic
16:36in the back of the land cruiser prado i have a lot of leg room and sufficient headroom let's say
16:45now i noticed or rather one of my viewers my followers on instagram noticed also follow me at
16:52marek underscore drives that there isn't a lot of space in here so you're sitting quite high your
17:01thighs are in the air and the seat doesn't move back and forth to which i say well this is
17:08a body
17:09on frame off-roader so you have to accept some compromises and this is one of them you're sitting
17:18well the floor is too high compared to the to the seat if we wanted to move the seat up
17:25you'd be
17:26sitting with your head on the roof which isn't ideal now what do we have here in the back we've
17:32got
17:32third zone climate control we've got side heated seats and ventilated seats also the seats in the front
17:38are heated and ventilated of course depending on the on the spec and we have two usbc ports there's a
17:45tunnel running through the middle so the middle seat is um well you can but you're gonna have to do
17:52something about your knees not very comfortable for the middle person we have a an armrest in which
18:02i shall store my water bottle which i took from the door pockets which are just big enough but there
18:09is
18:09no pass through to the boot because the rear seat splits 40 60 the backrest angle is adjustable from
18:18this almost or pretty much vertical position to something which is quite relaxed if that's
18:26your sort of thing i i like it to have it about about this much but you know to each
18:35their own
18:35there are good grab handles which make it easier to get in and out of the car so that's always
18:43a good
18:43thing to see okay now let's go into the third row and see if it's uh worth anything for adults
18:50or at least
18:51for your kids so the third row of seats
19:00in the toyota land cruiser easy access so that's good now you're sitting with thighs up in the air
19:10maybe if you're a teenager that's cool if you're not you may not want to spend more time here but
19:18there is a decent amount of leg room for me who's 175 centimeters tall
19:24there is a grab handle there is uh air vents two cup holders on each side and the seat
19:34or rather backrest angle is adjustable to make a bit more space in the back there isn't much but
19:39there is some two usbc ports as well so i can charge things and uh yeah you know when i
19:49was a kid
19:50i really liked it back in cars like this i had fun now as a 40 something adult i'd survive
20:01the windows are
20:02big so uh you know hopefully you get some horizon view so you don't puke and uh yeah it's it's
20:12it's fine
20:13as a sort of jump seat situation speaking of jump seats i remember when cars used to have those
20:20sideways oh and that was cool okay so as you've seen access is easy let's see how easy it is
20:28to exit
20:31really easy as long as you don't have a child seat mounted there because then it's
20:38not as easy but uh yeah
20:55okay so let's check out the boot situation in the landcruiser prado you can open just the hatch
21:02which i found useful when i parked too close to the wall in the basement car park but this is
21:09just
21:10to sort of reach some stuff which is lying around here if you want the full access there's going to
21:14be a lot of beeping okay here we are now there isn't a lot of space behind the third row
21:28of seats
21:30so these go down and down we go as you can see two of these bags this is the medium
21:40-sized medium-sized
21:42yeti carryall or whatever they want to call it this is what fits here now i will just slide it
21:49over there
21:50ah so that we get a bit more space here there is a 220 volt outlet buttons to fold the
21:58seats in the second row
22:00there is um some tools a tool kit down here if we raise this this is where the seats live
22:09we also have
22:11these uh seat belt secure catches here at least on one side on the other side it got torn out
22:19by the vigorous representatives of the media what else do we have here we have anchor points down here
22:30and another two down there to attach some luggage no shopping bag hooks let's see uh what's the uh what's
22:39the size here so the length of the boot to the second row is about 110 centimeters
22:47and across here in the in the narrowest part is 110 112 maybe the height
22:59to the bottom of the cargo cover is about 35 34 centimeters and about 44 45 to the window line
23:08now
23:08if we fold the back seat which you have to climb in to do okay let's see how that goes
23:19this is uh all the way to the driver's seat which is set to my driving position i'm 175 centimeters
23:27tall
23:28and it's just under two meters 197 198 centimeters if you're taller there's gonna be less if you're shorter
23:37there's gonna be more and now i shall try and close the boot which will result in more
23:44bing bong beep sorry about that but this is toyota also it takes ages for the tailgate to close
24:00i graduated from high school in the uae more than 25 years ago since then i try to visit dubai
24:05every
24:06couple of years a friend asked me recently what's so special about this place one day you can ski swim
24:13in the sea hike in the mountains and finish the day with a bit of dune bashing once we crossed
24:19the mountain
24:19trail we ended up in kalba on the gulf of amman coast in a local fish market we had great
24:26fish for
24:26lunch you just buy it they clean it for you and a restaurant grills it to your liking and on
24:32the way
24:32back to dubai we turned into the desert next to a huge fossil rock sticking out of the sand here
24:39i aired
24:40down to about one bar or 15 psi which proved insufficient and i was minding my own business until i
24:46met some
24:47other off-road drivers and unfortunately i felt compelled to follow them
25:22this is where i made a mistake of following the leader too closely and slowing down in the wrong
25:28place from here the only way was downhill in reverse but first i needed to get unstuck help
25:35arrived in a nissan patrol a friendly local ordered airing down to 0.7 bar or 10 psi and drove
25:42the prado
25:43backwards downhill while i followed in his patrol while it may not look difficult the goal is not
25:50to slide sideways as this may end in a rollover and there's a long way down now i know i
25:57was irresponsible
25:58but i'm like brian adams and everything i do i do it for you also it reminded me of how
26:06much i miss
26:07desert driving the muddy stuff we do in poland is just not my cup of tea prices of the toyota
26:14land
26:14cruiser prado start at around 80 000 euro in germany and it's 97 000 in poland the german car seems
26:22to
26:23be a base spec and not many options can be added in the online configurator in the uae this is
26:29an adventure
26:30trim for around 68 000 euro well these were several very adventurous days the toyota prado land cruiser
26:41j250 call it whatever you want it's a great car if you do weekend adventures or hell why not everyday
26:49adventures and you need to carry kids to school in the meanwhile if you need to carry kids to school
26:55all the time do your groceries be stuck in traffic this is not the car for you get a lexus
27:00get a bmw
27:01anything but that but uh i enjoyed myself thoroughly and now i have to um find civilization again so
27:11if i post this video i found it and if i don't then i'm talking to myself i'll see you
27:18in the next one
27:18yeah inshallah
27:24if you like my sarcastic down-to-earth and possibly mildly amusing car reviews join me every friday at 3
27:30p.m central european time and don't forget to subscribe and like this video as it helps me
27:36with the youtube algorithm thanks for watching and i will see you in the next one
27:49um
27:49you
27:49you
27:49you
Comments