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The 10 most satisfying car brands to own in 2026, according to consumer reports


Customer satisfaction says a lot about how well an automaker is really serving its buyers. According to Consumer Reports’ latest owner satisfaction study, these are the brands that owners are most likely to buy from again in 2026, based on how happy they are with their vehicles overall.

This year’s rankings feature a mix of familiar heavy hitters and rising challengers. Established names like BMW, Lexus, and Subaru continue to perform strongly, while newer brands like Rivian and Genesis are quickly building fiercely loyal customer bases of their own.

In order to give you the most up-to-date and accurate information possible, the data used to compile this article was sourced from various manufacturer websites and other authoritative sources, such as Consumer Reports. Models are ranked based on the number of owners who responded that they would buy from the brand again in the future.


Static front 3/4 shot of a red 2026 Toyota Grand Highlander.


The 10 most reliable car brands in 2026, according to Consumer Reports

Expected leaders are joined by some surprising new entries.

10

Chevrolet

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 64%

Chevrolet might be all the way down here at number ten, but when you take a look at their lineup it is pretty impressive that they’ve managed to woo so many different kinds of buyers. The brand offers everything from the small and dull Trax to the high octane Corvette, and everything in between. Despite this, buyers from all different segments

9

Honda

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 64%

Honda ranks number nine on our list, with 64 percent of owners saying they would buy from the brand again. In contrast to Chevrolet, Honda has a pretty focused lineup of vehicles, so this is a bit more disappointing for the Japanese brand. That being said, they still remain one of the most popular car brands in America, with the CR-V currently being the best-selling SUV in the country. They are also planning an extensive rollout of hybrids, which should start to bridge the gap between them and their competitors.

  • Prologue
  • Passport
  • Ridgeline

8

Toyota

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 65%

Being one of the largest automakers in the world, this is not where the Japanese giant would like to rank. While their lineup of vehicles are all very solid, carrying on the brand’s reputation for practicality, efficiency, and reliability, we think they have started to push their position too much. Due to their popularity, prices have started to creep up, and with rivals getting better and better every day, Toyota isn’t the easy choice that they used to be.


Rear 3/4 shot of a 2027 Kia Telluride


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7

Lexus

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 66%

Lexus continues to excel in the realms of comfort and reliability, consistently being ranked one of the most dependable brands on the market by a number of sources. They are also generally more affordable than their rivals despite being equally luxurious on the inside. The problem that Lexus has is that their cars aren’t nearly as exciting to drive as other options out there, and a lot of cars in their lineup are starting to feel pretty dated.

6

Genesis

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 66%

For such a young brand, it is impressive that Genesis is ranked as highly as it is. In a short amount of time, the Korean automaker has quickly been able to challenge legacy brands, with lower prices and a fine balance of plush interiors and thrilling performance. They still have some work to do to convince people that they build reliable cars that last in the long run, but in time we see Genesis competing at the top of the market.

5

Ford

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 68%

Ford has a pretty diverse lineup of vehicles, much like Chevrolet, including sports cars, off-road SUVs, pickup trucks, and EVs. While the brand does suffer from a poor reputation when it comes to dependability, which is only spurred on by their constant recalls, most of the cars in their current lineup are actually excellent. We do expect, however, that the F-Series carries the brand in a lot of ways, outselling every other vehicle in America by quite a large margin.

  • F-Series
  • Explorer
  • Bronco Sport
  • Mustang Mach-E
  • Escape
  • Mustang


Side profile shot of a 2027 Kia Telluride


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4

Tesla

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 69%

Tesla has been the subject of quite a lot of controversy over the last while, with quality issues and politics playing a large role in the poor public perception of the brand. However, owners seem unperturbed by the noise, with many of them staying fiercely loyal. It isn’t hard to see why, with Teslas offering class-leading range and technology, setting a standard that other automakers are still rising to.

  • Model Y
  • Model 3
  • Cybertruck

3

Subaru

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 69%

Subaru is a brand that is consistently underestimated. According to Consumer Reports, they are not only one of the most satisfying brands on the market, but one of the most reliable too. This year they ranked second, below only Toyota. While reception of the new Outback has been pretty poor, we’re hard pressed to find another model in their lineup that we don’t like, and the brand’s buyers seem to feel the same way.

  • Crosstrek
  • Forester
  • Outback

2

BMW

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 71%

It isn’t hard to understand how BMW has ranked so highly on this list, with the brand offering a lineup of some pretty fantastic vehicles. Their cars are plush on the inside and loaded with innovative technology, but its the fantastic driving experience that their buyers seem particularly pleased with. All of this, and their record for reliability has shot up in the last couple of years.


Rear 3/4 shot of a 2024 Nissan Rogue


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1

Rivian

Percentage of owners who would buy again: 85%

Taking first place on this list is Rivian, an EV startup from California that has been making waves. They are certainly a brand to watch, with it feeling like they are on a similar trajectory to Tesla during their early days. The brand currently only sells three models, two SUVs and a pickup, but they are slowly but surely expanding their lineup. It is clear that their focus on technology and all-terrain capability have made them a hit with their buyers. This is the third year in a row that Rivian has claimed top spot in Consumer Reports’ list.

Old winners are joined by new competitors

There are a lot of brands on this list that have seen the top ten before. Rivian and BMW have consistently ranked at the top, with a huge percentage of owners saying they would return to the brands. Tesla, Ford, Genesis, and Lexus are no strangers to the top ten either. Chevrolet and Toyota have risen into the top ten, knocking out Porsche and Mini. Subaru has seen some fantastic improvement as well, climbing from number eight to number three on the list.



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Recent Reviews

Why your new TV’s motion looks blurrier than a 20-year-old plasma


Modern displays are amazing when it comes to detail, brightness, color, and all the ingredients that make for an impressive picture—except motion clarity.

CRT screens are still the king of motion clarity, but plasma flat-panel screens hold a respectable second place, and in many ways I still miss my old 720p 51-inch plasma TV and the crisp motion I gave up by switching to a 4K LCD.

Plasma solved motion the “right” way

Plasma displays didn’t just show an image—they flashed it.

While they operate on different principles, CRTs and plasma TVs have a few things in common. First, the phosphors used by CRTs and plasma displays are the same. Second, because these phosphors fade quickly, they need to be continuously refreshed.

In a CRT, the electron beam scanning from the top to the bottom of the screen achieves this, and in a plasma, a high-speed electric pulse does the same. Because of this rapid pulse-and-fade, these screen technologies have crisp perceptual motion, since our brains tend to interpret moving images that don’t pulse as “smearing” across our retinas.

The pulsing nature of plasma technology isn’t the only reason for its better motion reproduction. These screens also have very low latency and very fast pixel response times. Combined, it’s not quite as good as CRT motion handling, but it’s significantly better than LCD and OLED technology, even today.

Modern TVs rely on sample-and-hold—and that’s the problem

Stand and deliver blurry images

Blur Busters UFO Test

Modern LCD and OLED televisions are “sample and hold” technologies. They can hold each frame of video perfectly for the entire duration of that frame without deviating in brightness and then instantly snap to the next frame without any dipping to black in-between.

On paper, this sounds like a good thing, but your eyes don’t stay still when tracking motion. As they follow a moving object, the image being held on screen effectively drags across your retina, creating the perception of blur. Even if the panel itself is perfectly sharp.

You might not even realize how blurry motion is on modern displays if all you’ve ever seen with the naked eye is an LCD or plasma. However, if you see a CRT or plasma in person, the difference is quite striking.

The sample and hold issue means that no matter how much you increase the refresh rate, that type of blur persists. It’s why my 85Hz CRT monitor is clearly less blurry in motion than my 240Hz LCD monitor. It’s especially apparent when you’re playing 2D games that scroll the entire screen, with LCDs or OLEDs smearing the image in a way that gives me a bit of a headache if I’m being honest.

Playing Diablo 2 on a CRT. Credit: Sydney Louw Butler/Shutterstock.com

It creates this weird situation where a modern TV can be incredibly sharp in a freeze frame but somehow look softer than a lower-resolution display that isn’t sample and hold as soon as you press play.

Motion interpolation is a workaround, not a solution

It’s an abomination, that’s what it is

One of the “fixes” that TV makers came up with to reduce unwanted motion blur is a technology known as frame interpolation, or more commonly “motion smoothing.” Here an algorithm creates fake frames that guess at what the middle step of motion would look like if it were captured. This creates a high frame-rate video output, which we see as smoother and more crisp.

While this doesn’t take away sample-and-hold blur, it does improve motion clarity. Unfortunately, it also destroys the intended frame rate that shows and movies were meant to be seen at. It’s also useless for video games, because it introduces an enormous amount of input lag. NVIDIA’s DLSS technology is also frame interpolation, but it works for games because of several mitigations NVIDIA put into the technology. These measures don’t exist on TVs.

While some people think motion smoothing isn’t all bad, TV makers are no longer activating it by default as much anymore, and my advice is to always turn it off because the trade-offs are just not worth it.

Screenshot 2025-07-01 at 9.21.03 AM

7/10

Brand

TCL

Display Size

85-inches

The 2025 model TCL QM6K Google TV delivers a stunningly clear and bright picture with a new Mini-LED panel, improved local dimming zones, Dolby Vision IQ, and a neat new Halo Control system for improved visuals. Get this TV and elevate your living room. 


Black frame insertion tries to recreate plasma—but comes with trade-offs

Who turned out the lights?

The other trick sample-and-hold screens have to mimic what CRTs and plasma TVs do naturally is called BFI, or Black Frame Insertion. As the name suggests, the display inserts a full black frame between every original frame. This provides an instant and dramatic increase in motion clarity. However, it also has a big impact on brightness. As much as half of the light is now gone, so the image is much dimmer. Pushing overall brightness to compensate makes things hotter and more energy-hungry.

Some BFI implementations cause visible flicker, for which I personally have no tolerance at all, but the biggest problem here is that BFI doesn’t have the smooth pulsing roll off of the phosphors used in CRTs and plasma.

The future might circle back—but we’re not there yet

That might be changing, however, because a new generation of LCDs can leverage the power of multi-zone backlight technology to strobe the backlight across the screen in a way that mimics a CRT scanline.

NVIDIA’s G-SYNC Pulsar has received rave reviews from the biggest motion blur haters, and I sincerely hope that a similar technology becomes standard in TVs going ahead, so we can go back to enjoying the crisp motion we used to have without all the compromises.



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