Nissan Frontier

The verdict: The 2024 Nissan Frontier Pro-4X is a tough little truck that excels at a little bit of everything — and it’s an exceptional value for an off-road pickup. Its mid-size dimensions make it easy to live with in city traffic, and it has just what you need to have fun on the trails.

Versus the competition: Other mid-size trucks may have flashier infotainment systems and higher-tech off-road modes, but they often cost significantly more. The Frontier Pro-4X hits a sweet spot among off-road pickups, with more standard creature comforts than the work-truck-based Chevrolet Colorado Trail Boss and a lower starting price than the Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road.

In the year of our giant touchscreen 2024, the Nissan Frontier Pro-4X is downright refreshing. The Pro-4X is an off-road trim of the rugged, versatile Frontier pickup that competes against the Chevrolet Colorado Trail Boss and Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road, and it’s fun both on the pavement and off — with none of its controls getting in the way of a good time. The Frontier’s dashboard is dominated by physical knobs and buttons, its wheelbase is relatively short, and most of the Pro-4X trim’s off-road upgrades are relatively low-tech: thick steel skid plates, upgraded shocks and all-terrain tires.

Related: Throwback: 2024 Nissan Frontier Gets ’80s-Inspired Hardbody Edition, Starts at $31,105

This is all by design, of course. The current-generation Frontier is heavily based on the outgoing truck, which debuted for the 2005 model year. Its short wheelbase was mercifully kept the same, but the Frontier’s styling was dragged out of the Great Recession and into the present day. It did grow about 5 inches in length when the current gen was released for 2022, but it remains one of the smallest mid-size trucks on sale today.

This Frontier is an evolution, not a revolution, and after a week spent on curvy Texas Hill Country roads and a day at an off-road park, I found it to be an incredibly well-rounded truck that’s genuinely easy to live with. (Per our ethics policy, Cars.com pays for its own airfare and lodging when attending such manufacturer-sponsored events.)

See full gallery

Let’s Get Dirty

This is why you’re looking at the Pro-4X, isn’t it? All 2024 Frontiers share the same 3.8-liter V-6 engine, which is good for 310 horsepower and 281 pounds-feet of torque and is mated to a nine-speed automatic transmission, but it’s the Pro-4X’s list of extras that makes it special; it’s worth springing for if you enjoy going off the pavement.

The Frontier Pro-4X has a double-wishbone independent suspension up front with a Dana solid rear axle in back, plus Bilstein off-road shocks at all four corners. It also has an electronically locking rear differential and, of course, four-wheel drive. Three steel underbody skid plates protect the oil pan, transfer case and fuel tank, and all of this rides on 17-inch alloy wheels with P265/70R17 Hankook Dynapro AT2 all-terrain tires. There are stock recovery hooks if you get really stuck painted in the same Lava Red accent color that the Pro-4X uses inside and out. Hill start assist and hill descent control are included for help on tricky grades, and the Pro-4X has LED headlights and foglights.

See full gallery

A lengthy spec sheet means nothing if the truck doesn’t work, though, and I was able to escape the city for the trails at Hidden Falls Adventure Park to put the Pro-4X to the test. It scrambled up and down trails alongside more built rigs with relative ease; the stock all-terrain tires have ample grip when aired down for trail use, and being able to engage the truck’s off-road features via physical knobs and buttons meant I didn’t even have to take my gloves off on a windy winter day.

The 4-high and 4-low settings are also controlled by a simple knob, and they engaged quickly when I came to a stop. That alone made it feel like luxury wheeling compared with the pull-stiff-knob-and-crawl-forward dance I’ve been used to on most of the Jeeps I’ve taken out. The system even tells you on the instrument panel what to do if you forget to put it into Neutral.

Being one of the smaller pickups in its class — as well as the narrowest — has advantages when picking a line or avoiding trail pinstripes down the side of the truck when you get closer to the shrubs than you expect. The Frontier’s steering is slow enough that it’s easy to place your wheels exactly where you want them, too. The one thing that was a tad too large for me, a 5-foot-4 driver, was the hood, which bulged right into my line of vision on steeper inclines.

There is, however, a great built-in workaround for this: Nissan put the camera button smack-dab in the middle of the dashboard, right underneath the touchscreen, giving drivers an easy way to see “through” the hood in trucks equipped with the optional Intelligent Around View Monitor, which has a forward-facing view. The camera’s onscreen guidelines curve as you turn the steering wheel, giving you a good idea of where your wheels will go when navigating obstacles. The camera visually flattens things a bit, and the image that’s displayed isn’t exactly a high-res affair, so you’ll still want to hop out to judge the height and depth of trickier obstacles. That said, the camera view is a great gut check for what’s up ahead.

The Frontier Pro-4X’s biggest weakness is its breakover angle, which determines how sharp a crest a truck can traverse without getting beached: At 19.6 degrees, it isn’t particularly competitive among its off-road-trim peers. The Frontier’s ground clearance is decent at 9.8 inches from the rear diff to the ground, but the number of purely mechanical components underneath suggests this wouldn’t be too hard to modify; the sway bars don’t automatically disconnect with the press of a button, and there are no electronically selectable terrain modes for the suspension.

While the Frontier’s thick front and rear sway bars limit articulation a bit, popping a wheel in the air isn’t too big of an issue thanks to the electronic locking differential. Give it a second and it hooks up, evenly splitting torque across an axle so that whichever wheel has good traction on the ground can move you forward.

Comfortable and Confident On-Road, Too

Those thick sway bars do seem to help in one place: on the road. The Frontier Pro-4X handles well on pavement, making twisty roads surprisingly fun. It changes direction more like a big car than the body-on-frame truck it is. It isn’t jarring over bumps, nor is it so softly sprung that it feels floppy. The truck’s hydraulic power steering is heavier than many of its modern peers, but I liked the amount of feedback it gave.

Our test vehicle was optionally equipped with a sturdy spray-in bedliner, as well as Nissan’s “Utili-Track” cargo system. I needed to pick up a couple of new cacti to replace my dearly departed prickly pear, and I was able to keep them in place using a ratchet strap looped through this track-based cargo system. The tie-down system’s cleats were easy to move along the tracks mounted near the top of the bed, and they’re easy to secure in place with a simple screw-down knob. My only complaint is that there’s only a few fixed tie-down loops at the bottom of the bed, so I had to get a little creative to secure plant pots that were shorter than the track and taller than the fixed tie-downs. Either way, my new prickly pears survived a trip across town without breaking off any pieces in spite of Austin’s lumpy roads’ attempts to upset the truck.

My other grievances are mostly minor. The Frontier’s headlights are so bright and focused that they do a poor job illuminating above the main beam. I found this particularly frustrating on undulating roads where I frequently see deer; in the Frontier, I couldn’t see up the next hill all that well. The truck’s turning radius wasn’t particularly stellar, either, making backing out of my carport a two-point turn. That said, the Frontier’s smaller size certainly made it easier to navigate city traffic.

The Frontier’s engine stop-start system was also particularly rough every time the engine kicked back on; you’ll have to hit a button every time you start the truck if you want it disabled. Disabling it, however, does exacerbate the biggest practical downside of the Frontier: fuel economy. It’s a great value pricewise, but its fuel economy lags behind most of its mid-size pickup peers. Rear-wheel-drive versions earn an EPA-estimated 18/24/21 mpg city/highway/combined, 4WD versions do slightly worse, and the Pro-4X brings up the rear with an estimated 18/22/19 mpg. I consistently got even less than that — as low as 17 mpg — mostly driving without stop-start enabled.

Old-School Interior in Mostly Good Ways

The Frontier’s interior isn’t flashy, but it seems well suited for off-roading. Should you get the inside of the truck dusty, the sturdy plastics, rubber and other smooth materials inside are easy to clean. There’s only a little bit of dust-magnifying, fingerprint-displaying shiny black plastic, and it’s placed around the touchscreen, gear selector and steering-wheel controls — all places you’re less likely to scratch. The interior is simple but well assembled, and plenty of available leather and soft-touch materials make it feel comfortable.

Storage bins under the rear seats, as well as a 9-inch-deep center console bin large enough to fit my small purse, made it easy to stash stuff when I was running errands and didn’t want to leave anything out in the open. You may want to invest in a locking bed cover if you haul around anything larger.

The main front cupholders were grippy enough to withstand rocky trail climbing, but I was left wanting something to hold my phone in place. The optional wireless charging pad is just that — a rubber-coated pad — and it’s not grippy enough to keep a phone from moving out of place on trails. I quickly tired of my phone dinging from losing connection with the pad and moved it to another bin. It also tended to overheat on longer drives, but that’s a frustratingly common complaint about wireless charging pads in vehicles.

Our test truck came equipped with heated front seats and a heated steering wheel, both of which are optional. They warmed up quickly and made a cold day on the trails easy to bear. The Frontier’s main heating system is also very potent. The Pro-4X comes only as a four-door crew cab, which has a roomier backseat than you might expect considering the truck’s smaller size. Taller passengers may struggle to get comfortable in the back if someone tall is also sitting in front of them, but it could work as a family truck.

Perhaps the most noticeable thing when you hop into the Frontier Pro-4X is its vast array of physical controls. Its dashboard touchscreen is only 9 inches, which is modest compared with the huge tablet-style touchscreens in many other trucks. More granular settings for the truck are found onscreen, as are the navigation and stereo controls. The driver can also control basic stereo functions using buttons on the steering wheel.

During my test drive, the Frontier’s screen would sometimes lag for just a second, and the navigation glitched out when it couldn’t connect in a more rural town, but for the most part, the system worked well enough. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard, and wireless Apple CarPlay is available. Our test truck also had satellite radio and a Wi-Fi hot spot.

For the most part, the Frontier’s controls are easy to use without taking your eyes off the road for too long. There’s a voice assistant for when you don’t want to search for a navigation or audio control, but it had a hard time understanding my voice and that I was trying to navigate to a point of interest instead of an address.

Some aspects of the Frontier’s interior may be a bit too much of a throwback, though. The steering wheel tilts but doesn’t telescope, which makes it harder for both taller and shorter drivers to find a comfortable driving position. The adjustable lumbar support is controlled with a fiddly lever on the inner side of the seat, which would be easy to accidentally hit when reaching between the seats.

More From Cars.com:

• Towing With the 2023 Nissan Frontier Pro-4X: How Good Is It?
• Here Are the 10 Cheapest Pickup Trucks You Can Buy Right Now
• Mid-Size Pickups Are Acceptable at Best in New IIHS Crash Test
• What Are the Best MPG Pickup Trucks?
• Shop for a 2024 Nissan Frontier

Doing a Bit of Everything Well

The Frontier Pro-4X’s upgrades may be sharply focused on unpaved shenanigans, but I found it to be an exceptionally well-rounded pickup. It performs even the most basic duties with ease, from hauling dirty, prickly things in its bed and going on boring errands to bashing down dirt roads. Its size made it easy to park and easy to live with even in a crowded city. Its interior isn’t the flashiest, and the infotainment system is clearly behind its peers, but with at least one safety organization planning to deduct points in vehicles lacking certain physical controls, maybe button-heavy interiors like the Frontier’s are the future after all. (I certainly hope so.) The Frontier Pro-4X is definitely worth a look if you want to head off-road but don’t want to sacrifice on-road driving manners to do so.

Related Video:

Cars.com’s Editorial department is your source for automotive news and reviews. In line with Cars.com’s long-standing ethics policy, editors and reviewers don’t accept gifts or free trips from automakers. The Editorial department is independent of Cars.com’s advertising, sales and sponsored content departments.