2026 Hyundai Palisade Hybrid Interior Review: Stylish, Luxe … But Is It Great?

• What's new: We've been living with a 2026 Hyundai Palisade Hybrid for a few months.
• Why it matters: We've given the Palisade oodles of awards, but have mostly spent time with the loaded Calligraphy trim. Is our one-step-down Limited version still as nice?
• Edmunds says: Oh yes, this one's a winner. Just about everything inside the Palisade is really top-notch.

Loads of luxe features, but …

Part of Hyundai's secret sauce the past several years has been its laundry list of standard features, not all of which are tucked away on the highest trim. This Palisade Hybrid Limited has cooled seats in the first and second rows and heated seats in every single row, even the way-back. That's insane! 

It also has a 360-degree camera system that gives you a top-down view of the Palisade, making parking a snap. But activating this feature isn't my favorite. If you pop the Palisade into reverse, you of course get a rearview shot that provides some nice cover for reversing out of spaces. However, to get the 360-degree camera to show up when you're pulling into a space, you've got to reach all the way across the cabin to hit the camera button. On some vehicles (like the Honda Passport), there's a button at the end of a stalk on the steering wheel that's a lot more natural to access when parking. 

And I'm not crazy about the little touch buttons you need to use to turn on the cooled or heated seats. It's not a huge deal, but it's hard to activate them while driving without taking your eyes off the road. That strikes me as a downgrade from the previous-generation Palisade, which had some nice little buttons within easy reach. 

Good for moving, but … 

"The Palisade is spacious enough for a bunch of moving boxes, and the small-item storage was handy for fragile stuff or small things I didn’t want to lose," wrote senior features editor Duncan Brady. "But there were definitely downsides. If this has the kick sensor liftgate or the stand-behind-it liftgate, it didn’t work for me. [Editor's note: It has a proximity-based 'smart liftgate' that is supposed to open when you stand behind it with the fob for a few seconds.] That would have been real handy when I had arms full of boxes."

Brady added: "I wish it had a rearview mirror camera. I had it loaded to the roof, and could see as much through that mirror as I could in the box truck, which … doesn’t have one."

The Toyota Grand Highlander does have a digital rearview camera on its top trim, which is priced competitively with the Palisade. 

This is a substantial effort from Hyundai

The previous Hyundai Palisade was one of our favorite SUVs when it debuted back in 2020. To top that was going to take quite a bit of doing and, to Hyundai's credit, it's worked. I'll leave it to Kaufman to close us out here. 

"It's kind of annoying when something lives up to the hype," Kaufman wrote. "We gave the Palisade a bunch of awards, but I never got to drive it myself until just now. And it's really, really good. Like, just fantastic. Sigh."