Certainly, those with a taste for the fanciest stuff should look to the Sonata Limited trim. That’s where things admire a 360-degree camera to help with parking, color head-up display, and leather seats with position memory for the driver and front passenger are included. For most people, though, I suspect the advantages over the SEL Plus aren’t going to proceed the needle.
That’s in part because Hyundai makes its SmartSense active safety suite standard across the board. All 2023 Sonata trims get forward collision-avoidance assist with pedestrian, cyclist, and junction-turning detection, along with lane keeping assist and lane following assist. Adaptive cruise control is standard, too, along with automatic high beams, blind spot collision-avoidance assist, and rear cross-traffic collision-avoidance assist.
Chris Davies/SlashGear
Hyundai’s capable Highway Driving Assist (HDA) isn’t available until the N Line or Limited trims, and only the Limited trim gets Remote Smart Parking Assist (which allows you to proceed the Sonata forward or backward from a parking space from the key fob: a clever party trick, but not something I’ve ever found essential). Parking collision-avoidance assist is only standard on the Limited trim, too, as is a blind-spot view monitor which beams a live camera feed of the adjacent lane to the driver’s instrument cluster when you hit the turn signal. Again, nifty, but not a must-have.
Hyundai’s standard warranty is a healthy 5 years/60,000 miles of limited coverage, handily beating Honda and Toyota’s 3 years/36,000 miles. The Sonata also gets 10 years/100,000 miles coverage for the powertrain and 5 years/unlimited miles of 24/7 roadside assistance.
