2021 Mercedes GLS 450 – BETTER than X7 or Escalade??

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 –  So, while the mercedes g-wagon is the most expensive suv in the mercedes lineup this right here, this gls 450 is the flagship three row and owns the largest suv and the mercedes lineup. This is the s-class of suvs as mercedes calls it and it’s packing even more luxury and equipment for 2021. But with tons of rivals is this the luxury three-row crossover: you should buy, let’s, go ahead and find out.

What You Have to Get From 2021 Mercedes GLS 450

So this gls was just fully redesigned last year. So, as you’d, expect for 2021 Mercedes GLS 450, the design is going to carry over pretty much the same way. So up here on the front you’ve got that very familiar looking mercedes face.

Exterior

We have our two silver bars that run through the grill and a very large mercedes emblem right. There featured prominently, of course down here at the bottom. You also have a nice chrome accent as well. Now, as we slide over to the headlights again, you have a very advanced full led setup as standard equipment, mercedes actually brags – that this is the brightest, led that’s available or allowable in the us by law.

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Configuration

So you’re definitely going to have plenty of brightness. Obviously all this is fully led, like i said, and you do have adaptive abilities as well. Now, next up we have our wheels where we have a ton of different options, as you would expect now new for 2021, we have a standard 20-inch contrast alloy instead of the previous silver 19-inch alloys, but you do still have eight other options.

You can pick between going all the way up to a inch alloy if you choose that gls 580 now heading up here to our mirrors. Of course, they’re, going to come with every single feature, so you have power, folding, auto dimming, blind, spot monitoring and heating.

Now walking at the side. Here you can obviously tell this is a very long vehicle and it’s coming in at 205 inches in length, but making our way around to the rear. You’re, going to see that this is not once again the most flashy option in the segment, obviously like an escalade or maybe a bmw, x7 has a more classy or flashy design.

This is straying on the elegant side. So, as far as what you’re going to get, you have a chrome piece that intersects between the two tail lights and then as far as the taillights themselves, as you would expect, they are going to be fully led, including the brake light and Turn signal and reverse light, and then, if we drop down further below that, we have this really nice chrome accent in between the two exposed exhaust outlets.

Now, even though this is a flagship level, mercedes-benz, you’re, not going to get the safety system standard. So you will get ford emergency braking standard, but you will have to add the driving assistance plus package to get all the other systems, but they have added new features for 2021 Mercedes GLS 450.

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Safety Feature

So if you get that you’re, going to get active lane, keeping assist active blind spot monitoring and their semi-autonomous adaptive cruise control system. Well guys that’s, going to sum up the classy exterior design of this 2021 Mercedes GLS 450.

Interior

Of course, you will find a standard, smart entry system with the latest mercedes key fob and you can remove start via the mercedes me application and then to get inside the vehicle just grab behind the handle.

When you do, your mirrors will fold out.. All right and taking a look inside of this cabin, of course, as you expect for a very high-end mercedes suv, you’re gonna have a very high-end interior, with a lot of nice materials on board.

Now, speaking of materials, let’s, go ahead and talk about that. You do have some new color and material options this year. So you’re, going to start out with mb texas standard on this gls 450.. We have the optional real leather on this example and that’s, going to come in black macchiato espresso or tartufo color options.

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Interior

You can even further upgrade to nappa leather. However, if you want something even a little bit nicer now turning over here to your door trim, you’re, going to see the same materials up here. So we have the machiato leather, with the double color contrast stitching all through here.

Top part is going to be finished in a soft touch plastic and, of course, we have extensive use of wood on this model. This is a blackened ash wood. Now you notice your seat controls up here. They’re, going to be 14 wave power.

Adjusting and standard equipment, including your headrest, and your power thigh extension – you do also have three person memory seating as well. Now over here you’re, going to notice your heating and ventilated seats.

This is new for 2021 seat ventilation is now standard equipment. So you don’t have to pay extra for that. As far as your windows, of course, they’re, going to be one touch auto for all four now taking a look over here at the seat itself.

Like i already mentioned, this is a real leather. I do like the design of it. You have got a lot of different stitching details and nice perforation inside now, even though this is not a very tall vehicle on this specific example, we do have the illuminated running boards, so they do help a little bit now, like with any mercedes.

You can customize the interior pretty much any way you want to, but let’s look at the materials for this particular model across our upper dashboard. This is going to be a leatherette material with the color contrast stitching detail.

It goes all down through here then right through the middle. You have a really large piece of that open, pour wood trim that runs all through here. That’s, going to continue down here as well, which looks really nice, and then you also have the leatherette continuing over top of the big signature handlebars with the aluminum trim and of course this is a 2021 Mercedes GLS 450. After all, everything fits together absolutely seamlessly.

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Entertainment

Despite a kind of complex design, now start it up, put your foot on the brake and press the standard button. So, of course, after you start the vehicle up, you’re, going to be greeted with that signature. Dual 12.3 inch display that mercedes is known for over here on the gauge cluster side. Of course, you have very vivid graphics.

It is fully customizable, via this touch sensitive pad here on the steering wheel, so you can just swipe to the different panels and change. Each of these to have their own unique types of information, depending on whatever you are looking for.

There is also an optional head-on display, but we don’t, have it on this specific example. Now, coming back to the steering wheel, we ‘ Ve got the signature, mercedes design. Of course it is going to be leather wrapped.

You have the piano black accents throughout as far as the wheel itself, it is going to be power. Adjusting. We also have the optional heating and you have standard rain sensing wipers, but anyways. Let’s, go ahead and check the interior storage, because this is a family suv.

After all, so we’ll start out underneath our center console here opens up in that typical split way and as you can see, it is a pretty nicely sized bin. Nice felt lining in it as well, and you do have a usb port. But we got to put it to the test, so let’s, get out our thick stack of coupons.

I don’t know if you really need that in a vehicle like this, but you know if you don’t, you can pretend like this is just a big stack of cash or something like that, as you can see, fits perfectly Fine, now up in front of that, you have got this big surface here and if you pull back this lid, this is where you will, be greeted with another storage area. So we have got our two cup holders. As you can see, we do have the optional heating and cooling for the cup holder, so that’s.

A really interesting and luxurious touch. This part here doubles as a wireless phone charging pad you have got two usb type-c ports, as well as a 12 volt out now, of course, in typical mercedes fashion.

There is no shifter down here that’s because it’s mounted up here on the steering wheel so for drive just push down on the shifter. You do have paddle shifters on the back of the steering wheel and if we’ll reverse press up when you do you’re gonna come over here and be greeted with the standard.

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Transmission

360 degree surround view camera system. Obviously, as you can see, you have active trajectory, you have front and rear parking sensors and then off there on the side, you can swipe between a large number of different views for your corners.

Your side make sure you don’t scrape your nice rims all that stuff. You also have automatic, parallel and perpendicular parking abilities as well and then for park, just press the end of the stock. Now, as we come down here to our center console, you’ll, be greeted with the mbux controller.

You also have buttons that are surrounding it as well, including for your drive modes. You have different uh things regarding your camera systems and then over here on this side you have your controls for the audio system.

So with this model we have a standard, 590 watt, 13 speaker burmister surround sound system. That is already a pretty nice sound system, like, i said, a standard equipment, but you can get a 1600 watt, 26 speaker high-end 3d, sound system for the small price of $5,400.

Nice and full sound plus, as always, definitely love the beautiful detailing in these burmester metal. Speaker grills now, returning back over here to our climate controls for 2021, we now have a standard four zone, automatic climate control setup.

You can also get a five zone automatic climate control setup if you want to be or have a lot of extra adjustability, but as far as this one is concerned, very simple to use, you just have your metal toggles for your temperature adjustment, which displays up there In the screen, and then you have physical controls for all the adjustments, including for the fan speeds, and you can do the back as well.

Now i do want to mention something that i didn’t point out earlier and that’s. The fact that we do have heated arm rest as well as optional in the warmth and comfort package. Okay and now let’s, jump up here to our mb ux system.

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Redesign

We do have standard navigation system on board, and this does also come with the augmented reality: navigation, where it displays uh instructions on to a live camera, feed of the road and front view, and then, of course, as you would expect, we do have android, auto and Apple car play abilities as well now, moving on from that we have an auto dimming, mirror frameless design and your homework universal remotes built into the bottom of it and then up here at the very top.

This is our panoramic sunroof, so this is available as an option for 1 000 on the 2021 Mercedes GLS 450. As you can see, we do have a kind of opaque sunscreen, which opens up very quietly. I will add – and this is a huge piece of glass alrighty guys, so i’m in the gls’s rear scene.

Obviously, when you get into this segment, the large luxury three rows, these rear seats get really really luxurious and spacious as well. So let’s. Talk about the space. First, we have 42 inches of rear leg, room 40 inches of your headroom.

Obviously, that’s, a ton of space that is right on par with that of the bmw x7, as well as the cadillac escalade, and behind your seating position. I have an incredible amount of space. I mean it is just like i’d, say at least a foot, if not more space, and my feet can slide up underneath the seat.

It is worth knowing, though, that this seat is slid all the way back and talking about sliding it is going to be power adjusting and that’s actually standard on all gls models, so, as you can see over here on the door trim just Like the front, i have my own rear seat controls, i can adjust the back.

Now let’s, go ahead and get back into the third row of the gls now. I do also want to point out one little thing, so this is going to be a full power setup. You just locate this little toggle right here, but it is only on this passenger side.

It’s, not on that side, so you’re gonna have to come over here to enter the seat, but you just kind of hold it. Like a window switch and it just folds out of the way, as you can see, i mean this is pretty fancy, so that’s, pretty neat how to get back here.

It honestly takes longer than some of the other ways, but it’s, cooler that way so anyway, getting back into the third row. This is a very nice space to spend time. We have 35 inches of rear leg room, and you know that’s, a lot of space, as you can see, i’ll slide over here with the seat all the way back with it all the way.

Back i don’t have a lot of room, but if you slid the seat forward, i have plenty of space. Mercedes does say this can fit a six foot, six foot four person, so i think it’s, plenty spacious. We do have optional rear seat heating available and we also have two charging usb ports on each side, and it is worth noting, though i’m, not seeing any vents back here, which is very interesting for a vehicle that cost as much as this.

Now walking up to the gls’s tailgate, as you would expect, you are going to have a hands-free power, one standard across the lineup, so just wave your foot under the bumper to open it up. As you can see it’s. Really fast and works really well now, as far as the space itself is going to be concerned, we’re, going to have 15 cubic feet of space behind the third row seats that expands all the way up to 49 cubic feet.

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Specification

This thing really feels very stout when you first get on the accelerator, it’s, pretty fast yeah red light’s, running the fun a little bit, but yeah really nice. So what we have on board. This is the the base engine for this 2021 Mercedes GLS 450. So this is a three liter inline six cylinder, but it comes with mercedes eq boost system, which is a mild hybrid system, and all that together is going to work out to 362 horsepower 369 pound-feet of torque, which are a good number.

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Specification

So i believe that’s more than what you get on the equivalent bmw x7 yeah. It is it’s, more standard power for sure and um, as you’ll hear us talk about throughout this test. Drive this powertrain is one of our absolute favorites. It is so incredibly smooth. They might be the smoothest powertrain that you can get in any vehicle.

It’s, incredible um, and you can of course get the gls 580, which has more power. It’s, a four liter twin turbo v8, with 483 horsepower. I’m sure it sounds incredible and is great, but there is nothing wrong with this engine at all yeah. This is plenty of power to even move this large three row around, but one of the things that i’m just noticing taking off here, is that obviously the main focus of a large luxury three row is to be luxurious and the gls does.

An exceptional job with this um it’s, been a while, since we’ve been in a bmw x7, but this seems like it may be a little bit more comfortable than that. It just really soaks up the bumps with an incredible incredible smoothness to it that combined with the power train, the air suspension it all just works together to give you a extremely extremely comfortable, um, driving and riding experience.

The kind of things that that throws, in mainly it’s like an advanced, auto start stop system. So, as we kind of come to a stop here, um. Well, it’s not happening right now, because it doesn’t happen every single time, but most of the time, without the climate, control and stuff on it’s, going to turn the engine off before you come to a Stop so that’s going to, of course, you know, be saving you fuel, then you can also take off using the eq boost system, and then the engine begins once you’re kind of underway, all that’s.

Just going to be smoothing things to make it to the point you basically can’t feel it. I mean you really have to be looking at the tachometer to tell when the engine is on and off and, of course, if you customize this gauge cluster to get rid of that tachometer.

I really think you’re gonna have a hard time figuring out, which uh thing you’re in right. Now i mean it’s that smooth. It really is. I we’ve said it in past reviews and i’ll say it again: we review hundreds of cars every year.

Fuel Efficiency

This is the smoothest. Auto start stop money can buy for sure, and since that system is pretty aggressive, that is going to be saving you and fuel cost in owning this vehicle. So for the 450 model it’s gon na be 20 24 21 combined um. If you go for the 580, it’s, going to drop down to 18 miles. A gallon combined, but 21 is a pretty respectable figure, especially for a vehicle as large as this is and powerful, and speaking of smooth the 9-speed automatic transmission on board.

2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Price

Here super smooth, as you would expect, just seamlessly blends into the background you don’t, really notice it or anything like that. That’s. All you really want in a luxury minded suv like this and 4matic all-wheel drive is going to be senior equipment on the gls all right.

How much the 2021 Mercedes GLS 450 Price?

This does not look like an escalade. This is a lot less flashy than an x7. You know it just could probably have a little bit more style injected in it. Let’s. Talk about the price! So if you go for the 2021 Mercedes GLS 450, you’re, going to start at $76,900. The 580 is a touch under 100 grand, but you do have more standard equipment this one as equipped we did a. I guess a pretty reasonably equipped one. We have about twelve thousand options, plus the destination charge of a thousand.