We have been lucky enough to have a 2020 Lexus UX 250h F Sport for the better part of a week. And while it does do well as the luxury hybrid crossover that it’s meant to be, there are some parts of it we don’t like. Don’t get us wrong; it’s a good car with a smooth powertrain and a comfortable interior. However, it has its downsides. Here are a few annoying features that we found.

An annoying infotainment system

Our test car came with the standard 7-inch Lexus Multimedia system, which was pleasant to look at but a pain to use. The screen is controlled via the center console-mounted touchpad, which acts as a mouse. And while it is much better than the “joystick” control that Lexus models used to have, it wasn’t that much better. While it was simple enough to move our fingers around the touchpad and navigate through the screens, the most annoying part was that it would overcorrect at times, so it would take multiple tries to get to the menu selection we were looking for.

As you can imagine, this could be very dangerous trying to switch through screens or menus on the fly while driving. Although, maybe it’s not supposed to be used while driving, which would mean that the driver would have to use the buttons on the steering wheel and take more time to navigate the menus. Why couldn’t they just use a touchscreen?

Also, we couldn’t get Apple Carplay to work either, no matter how hard we tried. We figured it was due to the phone being connected to Bluetooth, or maybe it required downloading an app, but alas, we gave up. Just like every other car with Apple Carplay compatibility, it’s supposed to work when you plug in a phone, but it definitely did not. Apparently, it’s a common issue among Lexus UX owners.

The annoyingly small cargo area

Due to the location of the hybrid battery, the cargo floor is actually more like a cargo shelf. It has a really high load-in height and proves to be very shallow, which is indicative of its 17.1 cubic-feet of space. While we were able to get a decent load of groceries in the car, we wouldn’t recommend it for large Costco-sized items, which is annoying because it’s supposed to be a crossover.

Even the brake pedal response is annoying

We know, it’s a hybrid, so it’s going to have a weird brake pedal feel by design, however, on the Lexus UX 250h, it’s especially annoying. It’s not so much that the brake pedal is really sensitive or “grabby” like it has racing brake pads, but it’s hard to gauge the pressure needed to brake smoothly. As the Kelley Blue Book review stated, “coming to a seamless stop is really more luck than skill.” After spending a good amount of time with the car, we couldn’t agree more.

Annoying issues aside

While we found these three issues to be annoying, the good news is that these are the only three negative features we could really find. However, the infotainment one is pretty bad considering it’s something that will be used by drivers of all ages, which means that the learning curve in order to comfortably use it could prove challenging to some occupants. Otherwise, we would still recommend the UX 250h, although it would better if Lexus could fix those issues in the future.