Any experience with newer VW Atlas?

Our family is growing, and my wife's 2-row X5 is likely to be getting undersized pretty soon. She's really interested in moving to a 3-Row VW Atlas, one of the newerish ones. I don't have a specific year.

They are reviewed really positively by theCarMom and some other reviewers in terms of how family friendly they are. But in my head, I feel like the GRM crew cautions on newer VW.

Maintenance is fine, as we'd be coming off an X5, which is incredibly nice but certainly maintenance heavy.

So - any advice?

Already have my Expedition, which we will either keep or replace with another expedition or a minivan.

Congrats, and a cautionary tale from my neighbors: They had a second gen X5 and ended up with an Atlas for their growing family last year.

The deals were too good and they wanted to keep it teutonic. They now hate the infotainment even though it seemed OK for the test drive. Seems reliable enough, it's an older platform.

Advice:

• Watch Savage Geese together. I use these debbie downers to ground me when I get too excited about a model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXclX59_XtA
• Test drive a minivan first and bring all your car seats and strollers
• Then test drive the usual suspects (Atlas, Highlander, Pilot, CX-9) within the same weekend

I had an Atlas as a rental in Phoenix for a long weekend. It was fine, but I was surprised the flinty ride and hard plastics in the interior. Otherwise I can't really remember anything about it, so it must not be terrible. 

I used to rent them, everyone complained they used a lot of gas, but otherwise were nice on the inside. 3rd row is for very small children, and only about a foot left for luggage behind.

If it's a possibility, I'd highly recommend looking at a Chrysler Pacifica, and even looking at the GRM review. Yes it's a minivan, but once you see how nice and usable it is inside, you can get past it. Everyone we rented to hated it when we told them, but once the sat in it and drove it they fell in love.

In reply to classicJackets (FS) :

They were one of the few larger 3 rows in the segment when we were shopping in 2020, with larger 3rd row and decent cargo space behind it. We liked the Telluride better in just about every way, plus we didn't want to roll the dice on VW reliability. Never had a single issue with the Telluride. 

We have a 2018 SE 4-Motion (VR6) that we purchased with 40K miles and now has 120K. No issues whatsoever even though we beat on it as a kid hauler and now 16 YO driver machine. 

As others have said, it is definitely plasticy but has held up well. Being an SE, it doesn't have all the luxury features like a sunroof and real leather which may help in the longevity. We get the typical SUV 20ish in mixed gas mileage. The only real complaints are a wacky automatic windshield wiper function that will randomly wipe, sunken seating position, and a smallish gas tank/range. 

The Atlas replaced a 2017 Honda Pilot that my wife hated the shifting performance. For full disclosure we've had a number of VW and Audi products so we are a platform fan but have been happy with the reliability. 
 

VW went crazy with their warranties for a few years, so reasonable mileage 2019 models still have 1-2 years of full warranty remaining. That was one of the things that helped me talk myself into a modern vw product.

Not specific, but Ive had a 2018 tiguan for 3years and 20k miles. No issues other than it being due for rear brakes. The atlas being a v6, should have better acceleration/driveability than the tiguan. Like mentioned previously, if you get the right model year/mileage, might still have an 8yr/72k mile basic warranty

I just had one as a rental for 3 weeks and 5k miles. (Road trips) 

I have a few thoughts. 
 

The seat position for me was horrible- it's about 3 inches too low and I could not get confortable. 
 

The infotainment reset a couple of times on us. 
 

fuel avg of 21mpg with a Yakima topper and 80mph. Not terrible. That's also loaded down. 
 

steering is light and it turns well. 
 

reasonably quiet- but not luxury. 
 

that's about it. It's an ok car- I'm actually in the market, but could not live with the seating position.