The 2025 Subaru Forester Is a Right-Sized Snow Slayer

It’s safe to say that many people think about Subaru when the conversation turns to cold-climate cars. Good all-wheel drive plus decent ground clearance makes a great combo for ski season. This winter, I got to drive the 2025 Subaru Forester through some particularly frosty weather on all-season tires and got some insight into what the car’s like in serious snow.

My colleagues have tested and reviewed both the 2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid and gas model, but neither had quite as quintessential of a Subaru experience as I did. With a Forester for a few days in Denver, I took the car up I-70 to ski (at Subaru’s Winterfest), took my sister’s dog to the park, loaded the trunk with a thrift store haul, and drove a group of girls to roller derby.

It did all these things quite well. Before we get into snow performance specifically, let’s run through some high and low points I noticed during my time with it.

The Highs and Lows

Subaru’s interior parts quality impresses me at this price point. The plastics feel tough, the seats are pretty comfortable, and Subaru does a good job using textures and soft materials to give flat areas some visual definition. I love that the gauge cluster still uses physical dials instead of a Temu screen like so many other new cars.

Cabin space in general is well-utilized. The Forester’s relatively high roof and generous rear-seat room make the interior feel big and breezy. The cargo bay behind the second row is similarly impressive; camping gear for a family of four would tuck in no problem.

The infotainment system is generally OK, with some caveats. I really like the portrait-mode orientation of the main middle screen but hate that climate controls are part of it, forcing you to deal with screen taps and clicks to adjust the temperature settings. Subaru also does some strange font treatments in its menus—to fit certain information, it changes the size of displayed letters in some instances that’s aesthetically janky.

The real bummer about this car, though, is how slow it is.

I mean, I wasn’t expecting Porsche performance off a stoplight, but the non-hybrid Forester Sport I drove groans its way up to the speed limit like a grandpa getting off the couch. The continuously variable automatic transmission theoretically optimizes gear ratios for however much acceleration you call for with the throttle, but it sounds miserable and does not provide any real sensation of speed at any point.

I won’t call it dangerously slow, which is how I felt about the first-generation Crosstrek, but the Forester will definitely qualify as annoyingly slow to some drivers.

Torpid acceleration is not much of a downside in the snow, though. In fact, the somewhat muted throttle response makes it easier to get going on slippery terrain than what you might experience in something like a turbo WRX.

This brings me to what I really set out to discuss: How the Forester handles snow on all-season tires.

Snow Driving the Subaru Forester

No matter what you drive, winter tires are and always will be your best ticket to good performance at low ambient temps. Quality winter tires use a combination of compounds that stay softer in the cold and treads that are deep enough to evacuate snow to keep you moving through the white stuff even as it builds up. This Subie showed up on all-seasons, so the Forester and I had to work a little harder in our blizzard drive.

As a side note, the Forester cannot accept tire chains, according to its owner’s manual. So if you’re planning to drive one in one of the few places that still gets seasonal snow accumulation, you’ll want to grab a dedicated set of winter wheels and tires. That said, even in heavy snowfall on all-seasons, the only times I really felt the car slide out of control were when I purposefully stood on the throttle to try and make it skid on purpose.

It didn’t really want to do parking lot donuts, but with the CVT held in a simulated low gear (you can toggle this with paddle shifters) and way too much throttle in a turn, you can make the car yaw in a mildly amusing way for a few meters until the car’s computer cuts power and reels you in.

At 18 mph and below, the Forester’s X-Mode setting can be activated, which is essentially a suite of settings that optimize the car for low-speed low-traction situations. The transmission is held at the ratio of a lower gear, throttle response is somewhat dulled, the AWD system splits power more evenly between the front and rear axles, and wheelspin is actively managed at each corner with the brakes.

Prowling suburban Denver’s pre-plowed streets at about 15 mph with X-Mode on, I felt very minimal slipping and sliding even on tires without deep treads. I drove carefully and gingerly, as appropriate for the conditions, but the vehicle felt competent and composed in a couple of inches of fresh powder in the wee hours of the morning. Gentle inputs to the steering wheel, throttle, and brakes are key in such a situation.

Standing snow on the highway was a little scarier; most traffic was moving at about 40 or 50 where I usually see people doing north of 80 mph. The car felt OK—a few lane changes were a little hairy but forcing the left and rear tires onto disparate surfaces (one in a rut, one in standing snow) is asking a lot. We got some wiggles, but the car didn’t feel like a handful or eager for the back tires to pass the fronts (a sensation you can experience in a rear-drive car on the wrong rubber in winter).

On crowded roads in bad weather, I appreciated the Forester’s somewhat tall seating position which affords you pretty good visibility. This vehicle still does a nice job splitting the difference between station wagon and sport utility vehicle in terms of size and stance. It’s definitely a car, not a truck, but it feels tall and has enough clearance to get through quite a bit of snow.

When we got off the highway and onto Eagle County backroads, the car felt great at around 30 mph in a little under an inch of snow even without X-Mode. There were no abrupt or unsettling traction control interventions—the car’s stability control just worked diligently in the background to keep us moving ahead.

An Excellent Ski Machine

A set of snow tires would make this thing almost unstoppable. But if you live somewhere that only sees powder a day or two a year, you can get away with high-quality all seasons under a Forester. Between the big windshield, even bigger panoramic roof, and fairly abundant cargo room inside, it’s an excellent ski machine.

And while a Forester might not keep up with a 4Runner off-road, it sure as heck gets better fuel economy everywhere else. It’s a great SUV alternative if you don’t need the rock-crawling robustness or high towing capacity of a truck built on a big steel frame.

Quick Winter Take

Splitting the difference between a wagon and SUV nicely, the new Forester is bad-weather capable without burning too much gas.

2025 Subaru Forester Image Gallery

Got any story tips? Drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com.