Nissan Frontier Pro-4X Mid-size Off-road Truck Review

The Mojave Desert was the perfect place to put this rig through the wringer.

We jumped at the chance to bisect the 2,500-square-mile Mojave Trails National Monument, an area more than twice the size of Yosemite, to put the new Nissan Frontier Pro-4X through its paces. 

It was somewhat of a full-circle moment, you see. In 1983, Nissan wanted to shake up the pickup truck market. To do that, it had to prove its newest “model 720” King Cab was capable. To convince media, the brand invited eight journalists along on a journey from Las Vegas to Barstow, CA, along one of the most remote, rugged sections of dirt you can find in the West: the 147-mile Mojave Road. The route, first used for millennia by native people including the Mojave Tribe and later, by Spanish explorers, is still there.

So, 40 years after Nissan made its case with the 720, it invited another group of journalists to repeat the feat, this time driving the midsize Nissan Frontier Pro-4X, its beefiest guise. This model gets skid plates, Bilstein shock absorbers and a locking rear limited-slip differential to handle more rugged off-roading.

Speaking of scale, Nissan 720 in its “largest” version stretched to a mere 15.5 feet, fully three feet shorter than the Frontier, and was a cramped 5.5 feet wide—a foot narrower than the 2023 Frontier. That had to be one cozy cabin. Although it had 4x4 capability and a manual five-speed, the ground clearance was a practically slammed seven inches (Pro-4X gets 9.5). And power, such as it was, came from a 2.4-liter, 103 hp four-cylinder. I’ve ridden motorcycles with more power! The Frontier has a decidedly more modern, shiftable nine-speed automatic with a low range mated to a 310-hp, 3.8-liter V-6.

It would take us a bit more than two days to make the journey and there was the added twist of an “atmospheric river” promising washouts, flash flooding, and frigid rather than boiling temperatures as well as general mayhem. Bring it on!

Truckness Where You Need it

When Nissan revised Frontier a few years ago, it absolutely nailed the ergonomics. My co-driver stretched taller than six feet and I’m 5’ 6”, but both of us could get comfortable behind the wheel. This isn’t the default for mid-size pickups, unfortunately, with too many brands seeming to think humans don’t come in different sizes, but that’s a boon to Nissan, because the company's built a rig that’s long-mile easy to drive, even when those miles are plying a lot of washboard.

A revised interior (Nissan launched the newest Frontier in 2021 as a 2022 model) retains physical controls and real gauges rather than moving to screens that could get washed out in direct sunlight. Nissan also gets that you need as much analogue as possible, especially when off-roading, which forces serious multitasking, so Nissan equips the cabin with hard switchgear rather than burying controls in the Pro-4X’s nine-inch touchscreen. There are conventional radio tuning knobs, and mega props to Nissan for giving Frontier a chunky, overlarge controller befitting a Maytag washing machine for toggling from high to low range. You can grab that sucker when you need it, and that’s just what you want.

Kudos, also, for the firm-feeling action of the nine-speed shift lever that lets you downshift the nine-speed autobox manually to drive technical terrain. It’s subtle, too, but pedal placement is perfect; on a gnarly section it was very easy to left-foot brake, freeing up my right foot for subtler, quicker throttle application.

Properly Suspended and Armored

You’ll hear people beef that Nissan’s not doing fancier suspension bits with remote reservoirs and disconnecting sway bars à la Jeep Gladiator Rubicon, but that Jeep pegs the price needle over $50K, while you can get into a Pro-4X for under $40K. Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro nosebleeds into $50K as well. Plus, we found the Bilstein shocks on Nissan Frontier Pro-4X to be excellent.

On-road the Frontier’s ride is creamy and nearly sedan smooth. While off-roading, it tamed high-frequency static with zero fuss, seldom sending harder hits crashing into the bump stops. At slower speeds we rattled our tester from time to time with rock scrapes, but that’s why it gets steel skid places to protect the undercarriage (and an aluminum one up front).

Going Gently and in Control

You could fault Nissan for not having massive wheel articulation; the aforementioned Jeep gets there via disconnecting suspension bits and 11.1 inches of ground clearance. But that Jeep is also eight inches longer than the Nissan Pro-4X. On especially tight terrain where you might have a boulder to crawl over, an apex to dog-walk around, and a Joshua tree ready to pinstripe your truck’s paint, Nissan’s relatively compact footprint made tip-toeing easier.

In fact what you want out on the trail isn’t some Earth-roaming tank, but instead, stability and versatility. Time and again that was proven, no more so than when descending a washed-out mogul-like descent where we shifted to low range and manually geared down to first. You could bother with hill-descent control, but instead we just steadied the rocking from lifting one corner of the truck to the opposite corner with steady use of the brakes.

On other trucks with bulging hoods and gun-sight glass you’d really struggle to judge your corners and clearance. For these circumstances, Nissan made sure to cut down the front-door frames for increased visibility via more greenhouse. The windscreen angle is just right for outward visibility over the schnoz, with A-pillars seeming to only sit in your periphery, not blocking your view.

The lone fly in this sauce is that, while there’s camera capability with 360-degree viewing, it shuts off the fun at a mere 5mph, where lots of rivals give the choice of much-higher speed viewing of your truck’s edges, plus the resolution is Y2K-Nokia-cell-phone weak. Parking cameras on cars have gotten well into hi-def range at this point and your bare-bones $99 GoPro proves the tech is dirt cheap. Since the competition’s already showcasing the possibilities and major benefits, this is an area for Nissan to upgrade.

Timeless Quality

Hearkening back 40 years to remind us where Nissan’s been was a smarter thought than the carmaker probably realized. The brand still make trucks in the U.S., and its latest, Frontier, excels in the same ways that made its 1980s trucks shine: grit and far more substance than gloss. Are there warts? Sure. Nissan doesn’t really have a match for Toyota’s TRD Pro level goodies—but then again, it's not asking for nearly as much bank for the Pro-4X.

Given Nissan’s mission to go as eco as possible, a hybrid Frontier or even a plug-in would be swell. Although EPA fuel economy of 17 city and 22 highway is actually quite good for the segment, and proved to give us excellent range, Ford Ranger’s turbocharged four already has an eco lead (20 city/24 hwy), with Ford set to update that truck shortly. (Not to mention the Ford Maverick hybrid achieves 42/33—though there’s still no AWD version.)

What this drive proved is the Frontier’s a winner, with mild-mannered, friendly controls and excellent off-road chops minus the on-road sloppiness that plagues so many purpose-built 4x4 alternatives. Multitools always have weaknesses, but Nissan’s excels almost everywhere, and comes at a relative bargain to boot.