My wife and I have been car shopping for a couple of weeks now and have narrowed it down to these two. We liked the Highlander & Ascent but my wife didn't like the lack of features in the Highlander. We recently took a cross country trip with a rented '21 Explorer and enjoyed our time in it over those two weeks. I'm sure part of why my wife likes the Explorer is that familiarity she got during the trip.

We then saw the new Pathfinders and liked the design. We test drove one and it felt good overall (not as smooth as the Ascent). The interior in the Pathfinder SL Premium was nice but having to make an after market adjustment on the front passenger seat due to its low sit kind of threw my wife off.

We've found that a lot of Nissan dealerships around here and even within a reasonable drive are adding on their dealer package with random things for an extra 3k. We'll try to negotiate that out but if not the cars will end up being close to the same price, Nissan maybe $2/3k less OTD.

I know both of these aren't as reliable as a Toyota or Honda so they lose that battle but these are the two my wife liked most. We keep our cars for a long time and this is our first brand new purchase. Regularly maintain our vehicles and typically Mobil 1 oil changes.

Just looking for general advice between these two. We've watched YouTube videos on both ad nauseam already but still love hearing other people's thoughts. I know the choice is ours.