FAMILY CAR REVIEW: HYUNDAI SANTA FE HIGHLANDER

In the front of the Santa Fe, there are two cup-holders in the central console that will hold a disposable or reusable coffee cup or my large refillable water bottle fits in there too. There is a little storage well behind them too that I found useful for putting the key in.

In front of the gear lever is a good size wireless charging area for your phone, there is a 12V socket, a USB and AUX in there as well.

There is a small glovebox in the Santa Fe, it will hold my wallet with the manual but an iPad would not fit. It does have a cooling vent inside it which is a good feature and above the glovebox is a rubber lined shelf which gives you a bit of extra storage but may just become a dumping ground for children's bits and pieces … it did with us!!!

There is a lined glasses case in the ceiling and lit vanity mirrors on both sides in the front.

The door bins are shallow in the front , they will just hold a large refillable water bottle but it does afall out sometimes and an iPad fitted in there too, the rear door bins were similarly shallow and awkward to hold a large refilable water bottle, you do have to wedge it in at a strange angle and it sometimes falls out.

The doors have wells as handles in them, which I find great for storing small items from my daughter's hands when I'm putting her in and out of her child seat, or for the keys whilst doing up her harness.

In the second row, there are map pockets in the back of both front seats, they are solid, a good size for holding an iPad and they are elasticated at the top which I found gave them extra flexibility!

There is a fold-down armrest in the central seat back with two cup holders. They will hold a large refillable water bottle and a disposable or reusable coffee cup.

The third-row occupants get two cup holders on the right-hand side and a well on the left that is a good size for holding an iPad or book!

As a five-seater, the boot of the Santa Fe was surprisingly large, practical and would hold 17 shopping bags. Which is one less than the Mazda CX-9, one more than the Kia Sorento and two more than the Skoda Kodiaq.

The boot space and its functionality are really important. I like to have a big boot space and little side wells or areas I can divide things into. So something I don’t want to move around while I’m driving such as Tulsi’s lunch bag or her wet swimming gear can be sectioned off in a little well where it’s not going to spill or get squashed by the rest of the things in the boot.

Hooks for securing shopping bags to are also favourites of mine, I like being able to secure the bag containing more fragile things like eggs so they don’t move around on the journey.

I measure the boot space in freezer shopping bags, prams and dogs. Not because I think all there is to a mum’s life is food shopping, prams and dogs. (Although it can feel like it sometimes!!) But because these are visually mesurable items we can all associate with. For me, the car company boot measurement of litres ia not an amount I can easily visualise and 400L in one car may differ in usability to that in another due to the configuration or shape of the space.

The Mountain Buggy Duet twin stroller fitted nicely with six shopping bags around it.

With the Britax Flexx tandem stroller, I could fit nine shopping bags.

Our Mountain Buggy Urban Jungle stroller fitted with eight shopping bags.

The Mountain Buggy Nano compact stroller would fit with seven shopping bags.

Or you could put your large dog in the boot.

When you're only using five seats the boot has a carpet panel you can put over the floor, protecting the third-row seatbacks and giving you a nice even surface, perfect for emergency nappy changes and easy to remove and clean! When using all seven seats you need to remove the carpet and the boot space is much smaller. I could only fit five shopping bags in there.

I couldn't fit the twin or tandem or single stroller in the boot! Only the Mountain Buggy Nano compact stroller fitted with three shopping bags beside it.

Loading things in an out of the boot is relatively easy as it has a nice big opening and the space is practical and easy to access. The boot has a kick open function under the back bumper and it has a powered tailgate so you can open it from the keyring also. The boot door does beep as it opens and closes which is very baby waking!

There are front and rear parking sensors in the Santa Fe I tested. The sensor visuals are displayed on the right-hand screen and on the digital screen in front of the steering wheel. The reversing camera is very good and very clear with a lot of different camera angle options.

Becoming a parent I soon realised there are some noises and sounds I feel are unnecessary and I could happily live without if it meant my baby stayed asleep!!

That often the distraction of my screaming, distressed baby is more dangerous when driving than not having a lane departure warning for example.

If it is the lane departure warning beeping that creates distress with my baby then which is safest?

It’s where I think we need to be able to strike a balance and choose when we can mute the warnings or swap them to a vibration in the steering wheel or flashing light perhaps?

A lot of these noises come with the increase in technology and especially linked to safety features and alerts. For me these all have their place.

Another thing I have realised is I spend my time in a lot more places where small children roam, parks, beaches, play gyms, swimming lessons, daycare centre etc. I have become more aware that when I’m reversing or manouvering in the car parks I have to tripple check for small children running around behind me or being in my blind spot when reversing. For this I LOVE reversing cameras, I just don’t like their beeping sounds!!

I have become so much more aware of safety and potential accidents or hazards since having a child and so I love the peace of mind that I get from the cameras and sensors combined with my own vision from windows and mirrors as I don’t trust cameras alone.

You can turn the parking sensors off with a button down by the gear stick as well as change the camera view using a button situated down there too.

Lane departure warning in the Sant Fe beeps and steers you back into your lane, you can turn this off using the button by your right knee. There is also a button to turn on and off the blind spot warning which beeps to alert you if you try and change lanes when someone is beside you.

When you come to a complete stop and have turned the engine off and open the door, the Santa Fe has a loud ‘beeeeping' noise for its rear occupant reminder. To remind you to take your children out of the back seat! It is really loud, annoying and baby waking and I am not sure anyone would really forget that they had a child in the backseats??!

You can come to a stop with the engine still running and open the door without an alarm going off!

Since becoming a mum I spend A LOT of time parked up somewhere with a nice view while my daughter is asleep in the back! If it's hot I need to leave the engine running and the aircon on but I do like to get out and drink my cuppa tea in the fresh air while enjoying the fact my limbs are free from said dangling child!!

SO this is a very important test as I have found that sometimes I have been held hostage by a cars BEEEEPING alarms when I have taken off my seatbelt or opened the door while the engine is still running!! (I only stand outside the car, I am not a bad mother!!)

The indicator volume is quite quiet and would not affect a sleeping child on board, which is just as well because the volume cannot be altered.

In the sound settings within the media screen, you can select to adjust the sat-nav volume using the screen volume buttons or the volume knob! This is genius!! And one of my favourite BabyDrive features!! It just makes it so much easier to alter the sat-nav volume whilst driving.

I find on most journeys when I use sat nav I only need directions for the last part of the journey. I know how to get to the area I am going and then it’s just the exact address I need help with. Because I need to input the address before I head off I found myself on most occasions when you can’t mute the sat nav voice having to listen to all the directions, which disturbs your concentration, any conversation in the car at the time or more importantly my sleeping baby! So being able to mute the sat nav voice until you reach the part where you actually need it is gold!

It was really easy to connect my phone to the Santa Fe, the media system is easy to use and navigate and it has a nice clear screen. There is Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which makes things easier. I had my podcast already playing on my phone and soon as I plugged in the USB the song played out of the car speakers.

The windows are really nice and quiet in the Santa Fe which I found fantastic, the doors are heavy though and shut with quite a slam.

The doors and windows can be locked from the driver's door control panel, there is also a child lock for the rear doors when you press the window lock. I found the doors are very ‘secure'! I pulled over quickly at the side of the road because my toilet training toddler needed the toilet and I had to go backwards and forwards three times from my drivers door to her offside passenger door before I managed to open it on the final try when I turned the engine off and pressed every unlock button including the one on the key! It was like Fort Knox!! She did very well to hang on, thankfully!!!

There is a safety feature called ‘Safe Exit Assist' which also stops rear passengers being able to open their door if a car, pedestrian or cyclist is detected to be approaching.

The Santa Fe did not have auto engine cut out to save fuel when you are stopped at lights.

The engine of the Santa Fe is really noisy! It is such a disappointment because it is a huge negative for such a great car, it revs really loudly and the engine is especially noisy when accelerating uphills! I find it very disturbing as the driver and found it particularly hard to hear what rear passengers were saying while I was driving. When I travelled as a rear passenger it was very loud too so I think it would be disturbing for little ones too.

There is seat belt removal alarm for front and rear seatbelts and a warning light display on the dashboard to tell you which seatbelts are not fastened.

The Santa Fe I tested is a seven-seater. The third row seats are easy to raise and lower by pulling the woven tapes on their seat backs, it is a very practical and simple method.

There are no ISO Fix or top tethers in the third-row seats so I did not try to install any child seats in there.

There is ISOFix in the two outer second-row seats, but they are not within plastic guides and are between the seat back and base cushions, so they are quite difficult to connect to.

There are three top tether anchor points in the backs of all three second-row seats. They are within plastic guides and easy to connect. I did find them quite tricky to access though, by bringing the seat backs forward each time as I couldn't reach them through the boot.

I fitted three child seats into the second row of the Santa Fe, the Britax Maxi Guard Pro and Kid Guard Pro forward facing using seatbelts and top tethers, and the Britax Graphene rear facing using the ISO Fix and top tethers. The child seats fitted well with a bit of a squeeze and the shaping on the outside of the seat base made installation a bit trickier than if the seat base had been flat.

Legroom is just enough in the Santa Fe, with the second-row seats in their furthest back position there was just enough room for a 184cm front passenger with 16cm of knee room! For the third row passengers, this didn't leave them much room at all.

The second-row seat mechanism means you would have to uninstall a child seat to get through to the third-row seats, as the seat collapses and slides forward. There are buttons on the side of the second-row chairs and on the shoulder to do this.

Posting Bub into their child seat from inside and outside the Santa Fe was fine because it was nice and raised being an SUV and the door openings are nice and wide.

Australia being a country of weather extremes- blazing sun and torrential rain, mean you may find it easier to put Bub into their seat from inside the car sometimes. If it’s hot you can get the air-con going, cool the car down and not stand out in the sun while you fasten them in or shelter from the rain and not get soaked yourself whilst you’re doing it. So it is important to test whether Bub can be easily installed from either direction!

There is room to feed Bub in the back seat if you only have one child seat installed. The seats in the front two rows are all perforated leather as they are heated, there is also a stitch detailed pattern at the top of the backrests, which is a nice design detail but would also trap child crumbs and spills and be harder to clean.

The seats in the front of the Hyundai Santa Fe are very comfortable! They are easily adjusted using electric switches on the side of the seat bases. The length of the driver's seat base is adjustable also using a button on the side of the seat base, we found it comfortabe for drivers of different heights.

The front seats are cooled and heated and the steering wheel is heated too! I found I accidentally hit the steering wheel heating button on a couple of occasions when getting my phone out of the phone charging well. Quite a shock on a sunny Queensland day when my hands started overheating and I didn't realise why at first!!

In the second row, the seats are equally as comfortable, apart from the central seat because the seat back is hard because of the armrest, however, the floor is flat and there is no central mound in the floor to straddle. The second-row seats slide and adjust for legroom and the backrests adjust for reclining their angle too.

For the first year of Tulsi's life when we would go out as a family, if I wasn’t driving, I would travel in the back with Tulsi so it’s important to check the back seat comfort as you may be spending a lot of time in them! They were never something I gave any thought to before but I definitely notice a good or bad back seat now!

The third-row seats are comfortable too, I am only 164cm and found my head nearly skimmed the ceiling though, so there is not much headroom in the third row.

The steering wheel is fully adjustable in and out and up and down. The buttons for the cruise control are on the right side of the steering wheel. They are easy to use and very accurate on undulating roads at 60km/h as well as on fast straighter rounds.

There are four aircon vents across the front dashboard, they gave good airflow that was good for cooling the front of the cabin. The controls were situated just below the central vents on the dashboard, they are easy to use and you can turn the rear air-con on and off too from there.

In the second row, there are aircon vents in the back of the central console storage box, you can reach these while driving to adjust the direction of the air for the second row passengers.

In the third row, there are aircon controls on the right side with vents. This is good for third-row passengers but also good if you're only using five seats  you are able to cool the boot if you are travelling with your shopping in the boot or your picnic in the boot on a day trip as you can keep everything cool!

There is also a 12V socket in the boot as well as buttons to collapse the second-row seats, I thought they were for the third-row seats at first and pressed them, luckily my little one wasn't in the second row at the time!! There are also two 12V sockets below the air vents in the second row too.

There are built-in window shades on the rear side doors, I LOVE these for BabyDrive as you do not have to contend with moving wrong shaped stick on shades, you can simply put them up before taking off on your journey knowing Bub will be shaded throughout the journey!

Visibility in the Santa Fe is hard out of the back with three child seats installed. It really doesn't leave any space to see out of the back window and with rear-facing child seats and window shades up too you are even more limited! The side mirrors and cameras really help with this and make parking and maneuvering at low speeds easier. The blindspot warning is also really useful when changing lanes on motorways too. For the second row passengers, the visibility out of the front of the car is very good, and rear-facing passengers get a nice big window to look out too. In the third-row, I think visibility is very limited when there are three child seats installed in front of you but there are nice big side windows in the third row that make it feel bright and not claustrophobic.

One thing I have noticed since being a mum is I hate it when I reach a destination or get home from being out and Tulsi has either done really well in the car or she is screaming her head off and I have done really well to keep it together for the entire journey (usually the latter!!) and it takes 10 minutes to park the car! It can be really stressful. Usually I dread when we get the cars as parking is tight in our apartment block carpark, the Santa Fe's cameras helped to make it less stressful when parking!

The vanity mirrors in the front of the Santa Fe are lit but the visors are not extendable.

There are four spotlights in the front ceiling and in the second row, they with the handles above the side doors, which I found my little girl could easily reach so was constantly fiddling with it! The handles in the back are well positioned for hanging a child's toy on.

I find it important to reach the interior rear lights so that when I am driving bub at night I can turn the lights on while she is awake so that she is not scared in the dark and then I can switch them off once she is asleep.

As was she constantly fiddling with the rear heated seat controls which were poorly positioned on the rear doors by the window controls! Why did Hyundai put them there?! It meant she could constantly fiddle with them and I would not know she had put them on and she was quietly cooking in her seat! I also couldn't see them or reach them to turn them off whilst driving!

The Santa Fe is great around town and out on country roads and it has been an easy car to drive! The only thing I don't like is the VERY noisy engine!

The exterior of the Santa Fe is very good looking, with some bold creases and lines that make it stand out and are picked up in the sun! The interior is very nice too. With the two-tone leather and surfaces to match and the matte silver finish, trims are nice too and there is a not too much shiny black plastic which also makes the interior feel better quality. There are some nice design details in the speaker panels, the rubber of the dashboard shelf and echoed in the stitch details on the seat backs, which reflect some of the creasing and lines in the exterior of the car and remind me a little bit of the building in Federation Square in Melbourne! The stitching in the seats is high up on the backs so hopefully wouldn't collect too much child detritus!!

There are floor mats throughout the Santa Fe as well as a large carpet panel in the boot.

The boot door has a powered tailgate that beeps twice loudly as it opens and closes, it has kick opening as well as being able to open and close it from the key fob and driver's seat position.

One feature I didn't like was when I walked past the car in a car park it beeped almost in recognition of the key in my pocket! That seems crazy, so if someone takes your keys they can easily find your car!!

The Hyundai Santa Fe scored a five-star ANCAP safety rating in 2012. It was awarded a total score of 35.63 out of 37. For the frontal offset test, it scored 15.63 out of 16 and for the side impact test it got the maximum 16/16 and 2/2 for pole test and pedestrian detection was rated marginal.

The Santa Fe has six airbags as standard. Driver and front passenger frontal airbags, front side airbags and curtain airbags for front and second-row passengers. There are NO airbags for the third-row passengers which I always find worrying in seven-seaters.

The Hyundai Santa Fe comes with anti-lock braking system (ABS), brake assist system (BAS), electronic brake force distribution (EBD), downhill brake control (DBC), hill-start assist control (HAC), traction control system (TCS), vehicle stability management (VSM), blind-spot collision-avoidance assist at the rear (BCA-R), driver attention warning (DAW), forward collision-avoidance assist (FCA) of cars, cyclists and pedestrians. As well as high beam assist (HBA), lane keeping assist (LKA), rear cross-traffic collision-avoidance assist (RCCA), smart cruise control (SCC) with stop and go, emergency stop signal (ESS), parking distance warning-reverse (PDW-R), tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS), roll-over sensor, Impact sensing auto door unlock as standard.

The top spec Highlander model I tested also comes with advanced smart parking assist system (ASPAS) and surround view monitor (SVM). The Elite model and Highlander both come with rear occupant alert (ROA), safe exit assist (SEA).

Some of these safety features are also features that drive me crazy as a mum! Like the lane departure and forward collision alert or the parking sensor beeping sound.

I want all the safety technology AND to be able to mute the sound when Tulsi’s asleep!