Aston Martin DBX S review – beating Ferrari's Purosangue to the top of the class

You want an ultra-high performance SUV? You’re in luck, because the choice is plentiful from every corner of the market and from seemingly every brand you can think of. From Alfa Romeo to Range Rover, there’s more options when it comes to 2+ton/500+bhp four-wheel drive behemoths than there are sports cars. Or hot hatches. Pretty much anything really. And now we’ve driven the latest addition: the Aston Martin DBX S, all £210,000, 717bhp of it.

It hasn’t taken long for Aston Martin’s current CEO, Adrian Hallmark (the fourth since Lawrence Stroll took a controlling interest in the company), to implement his plan for broadening the brand’s product portfolio. Already announced for 2026 is the Vantage S, with the DB12 S shortly to follow, and ahead of their arrival comes the DBX S. It’s based on the 707 but is not a replacement for it nor the original 540bhp DBX, which launched in 2020 and drifted from the price list at the tail end in 2024.

Hallmark wants to offer Aston Martin’s customers more choice, providing a line-up on a par with those of its rivals. Therefore, just as Bentley and Porsche customers have the choice between various flavours of Cayenne and Bentayga, Aston Martin has joined the party by creating a more powerful, more focused, and yes, more expensive model to sit above the DBX707.

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Five years on and there’s still a presence to the DBX that few rivals this side of Ferrari’s Purosangue can match. Changes to the S are light, including a new front splitter and rear diffuser, with the exhausts now stacked vertically within the latter. There are also some new side sills, but when finished in gloss black they look a little cheap, drawing your eye to the sizable gaps between each individual piece of the bodykit.

The DBX707’s ‘upgraded’ looks have always been its weak point to me and the S does little to change that. There’s little change inside either, beside some ‘S’ badges across the trim, which now includes some Alcantara, plus the addition of the underwhelming Apple CarPlay Ultra. It remains a clean design and still provides the welcome blend of an elevated driving position but with a sense of sitting in the car rather than on it. In fact, it feels like a large estate car rather than an SUV. Remove some ride height and Aston Martin would have an RS6 rival on its hands. Now there’s a thought.

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The cosmetic changes are only the side orders to the S’s upgrades, however, because while these are on the light side – literally when you consider the 18kg saved by choosing the carbonfibre roof (it does away with the roof rails) and the further 19kg lost if you opt for the extra-cost 23-inch magnesium wheels – the mechanical revisions are more detailed and nuanced. And they come together to subtly enhance what is already one of the sharpest and most engaging performance SUVs you can buy.

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The engine upgrades aren’t the focal point, despite the AMG-sourced 4-litre hot-vee V8 ditching the 707’s turbos for those fitted to the Valhalla. This means larger-diameter compressor wheels and associated upgrades to the ’charger's internals, giving the DBX S a 20bhp uplift to 717bhp, while torque remains the same at 664lb ft. 

Both now arrive later – peak torque between 3000 and 5250rpm, peak power at 6250rpm – and you don’t notice the increase in output until you reach the higher echelons of the rev range. Here the S retains an urgency where the regular 707, no slouch itself, starts to soften its thumping shove. 

You need to go looking for the performance gains, which live in Sport and Sport+ modes, where the nine-speed multi-clutch gearbox has had its shift points massaged to reflect the engine’s higher rev range. Each shift lands with more aggression when you pull on the paddles, and if you leave it in auto the downshifts in both Sport modes are quicker and more intuitive, everything feeling ramped up by half again. 

It’s a similar feeling with the chassis tune. Immediate impressions are of a low-speed ride quality that’s overstepped the threshold into harshness, but this initial perceived firmness is down to tighter body control rather than an overly stiff set-up. The air-springs are a development of those first installed for the 707’s 2024MY update, and the Bilstein DTX dampers first used on the DB12 are further tuned here.

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A DBX strong point has always been its lack of body pitch and roll, eradicating that feeling that you’re driving something very top-heavy. The 707 improved this and the S takes it a step further once more. There’s just enough roll – no more than 1.5 degrees – to gauge the car’s reaction when you add load into the chassis, but it settles with an uncanny immediacy, giving you that unexpected confidence the DBX has always generated. 

A four per cent quicker steering ratio takes a few corners to tune into, but then you find a front end that hunts grip and provides a precision few, if any in the sector can match. With a four-wheel drive system that’s rear-wheel drive until it thinks you need a helping hand with the torque, the S remains a fluid, linear machine that’s unexpectedly capable and engaging even on roads that look tight for its upsized footprint. It makes an M5 Touring feel one-dimensional.

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Standard carbon-ceramic brakes – 420mm discs for the front, 390mm at the rear – are on the numb side during their first cold application but work better if you can get some heat into them, while the standard Pirelli P Zero tyre rarely protests unless you decide to drive like an idiot and take on physics with the S’s mass (2198kg in its lightest spec, according to Aston Martin). 

Visually, the DBX S may lack the uplift from the 707 many will expect, but Aston Martin will argue the detail has gone into the bits you can’t see to create a performance SUV that’s still top of its class. Which it very much is.

Price and rivals 

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It’s slightly obscene that there is so much choice at this end of the market, then again human beings are an odd bunch at times. Alfa Romeo’s Stelvio Quadrifoglio props up the sector with 513bhp and a £95,890 RRP, much less if you take advantage of the £18,000 discounts currently in the market. The Alfa is the standout in its sector, not least because it raised ride height aside it cares very little for being an SUV. 

BMW has plenty to offer, from the grotesque X6 M £131,545 or £154,470 for whatever is worse than grotesque for the XM. Bentley Bentayga Speed? £219,000 please. Lamborghini Urus SE? That starts at £208,000 before mandatory options. Mercedes-AMG G63? Germany’s answer to the Land Rover Defender starts at £185,595. 

Talking of Land Rovers, a Defender OCTA starts at £145,300 which is an awful lot of car, but then it has had an awful lot of work done to it to make it a Defender with ideas of being a Porsche 911 GT3. Sticking with JLR, the Range Rover Sport SV now starts at £139,995 and has its dynamic sites set on the £210,000 DBX S. The top of the pile is where you’ll find Ferrari’s £313,000 V12-engined Purosangue.