The Ram heavy duty gets a refresh for the 2025 Maldi year. And in this video, I’ll cover the exterior changes, the interior changes, take it for a drive, and see what it’s like out on the road, as well as talking about the kind of fuel economy you can expect and also the pricing and how it compares to the competition these days. And so, as far as the 2025 changes on the outside of the Ram heavy duty, well, it gets a nice redo to the front end here. And I think they did a better job this year of differentiating the heavy duty ones from the 1500. So you have those double stack LEDs and LEDs are standard now across the board on all 2025 heavy duty Rams.

Now the projector ones you see here are on these higher trims. So there still is a headlight upgrade to be had. But great that you have, you know, really good nighttime visibility regardless of which trim you get. Now this one also has the sport appearance package. So you have this hood that has these fake vents in it.
Unfortunately, they’re not functional, but you know on the side and on the front there. Just a very cool look. And I mean that grill is so tall, very bold. That is also larger. Of course, the whole front end has been reworked uh for 2025 in general.
But uh you know, I think it’s a really nice look, actually. And you know, compared to some of the others out there, I think this is one of the ones I think is going to age really well and looks very, very good.

Coming down to the sides here, the Sport Appearance Package also throws in these 20-in wheels that you have as an upgrade over the 18s that come standard. And this one also has the nice large Cumins badge on the side because this does have that brand new diesel Cumins engine. And we’ll talk all about that here once we’re out on the road.
But going down to the back end of this thing, it’s still available with the 6’4 in bed or the 8ft bed. And then out back, you know, the changes are a lot more minor than the front end.

It’s basically just the new tail lights you got from the 1500 for 2025. Uh but otherwise, uh, you know, no real big changes there, but still really good. Truck beds still all the same as before there.
You know, no changes. But, uh, overall, I think it’s a really nice refresh. Certainly freshens up the look. makes it, you know, newer looking than the pre-refresh for sure. And I think it’s just again a really handsome look.

The interior also gets a nice refresh here that sticks with the same theme as before of having a large vertical touchcreen, but it is a larger screen here for these uh upper trims. You get a 14.4 in touchscreen. Now, that’s up from 12 in previously. And uh but you know, same kind of menu structure as before, it’s still running the UK Connectnect 5 system, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute.But the other big thing is you now have a column mounted shifter once again which is you know a nice thing to have back and uh you know a few other little you know minor things here but uh as far as the main fundamentals it’s all basically the same. There is also the option now for a passenger display. This one we’re in here is the Laram. So it does not have that uh but nice thing to have especially if you’re on long drives I suppose for that passenger. But uh yeah the Laram is still you know kind of one of the mid-grade trims.
This is a nice look at, you know, what a, you know, lower version of a 2500 is like, even though this one still retails for almost $90,000, but there is the Longhorn and the Limited above this still even that you can go for if you’d like.

And there, of course, is the lower trims all the way down to Tradesman still like there were in the past and the off-road rebel and Power Wagon ones, too. But anyway, as far as the basics of this interior, you still have these same great seats. Uh, I really love these seats. They are heated and ventilated.
I love the white piping here. You have all the usual adjustments and you know pretty comfortable seats here. Steering wheel is also you know basically unchanged. Still has a great 9 and3 grip and is a heated wheel here in the Laramese. So that’s great.
You also have the digital gauge cluster which has all the great customization it had before. I believe that screen again is mostly unchanged but you know still really great to have. Um and I do really love how every little quadrant can be customized as well as the look of the main thing overall. You can have a map view. You can have all the gauges minimized if you want to see some other info.

You know, whatever you want, you can have in there and it’s so well done. I really love how much customization you have. Coming over to the middle here though, getting back to that screen. So, again, 14.4 in.
It has wireless Apple CarPlay, wireless Android Auto, of course, and um it works pretty well. It’s running again you connect 5 for the software. And it’s sometimes a little slow to connect to CarPlay. That’s my main complaint with it. You know, sometimes it’ll take 15, 20 seconds, maybe even a little longer in order to get that CarPlay connection.
One time I actually had to manually connect it because it wasn’t doing it on its own. So, not perfect. I mean, RAM’s not the only, you know, company out there that has some issues with their uh infotainment, you know, not being 100% perfect, but uh you know, very minor as far as the connectivity issues that I experienced. So, not a big deal at all.

And the only other thing I will say is that it strangely would not load the TomTom maps for the top widget there.
And uh I don’t know why because it was loading maps there for um the map view and the gauge cluster. And if you go to the actual nav screen, it’s pulling it up on there. So just one other little, you know, quirk, but the great thing with this is it’s, you know, overtheair updatable. So you can get some improvements uh over the life of the vehicle with that. Now everything else works great.
This one has the 360 camera, which is very important to have in my opinion on a truck this large. And so really great that you have all of that. You know, lots of different views for all that. And uh you know, going through radio stations, everything else works great. And I still love that you still do have the volume and tune knobs and the buttons there on the sides.

Uh so you still have some physical controls and you know, still a really well done screen, I think. Now coming beneath the screen, you have your two USBA and two USBC jacks and auxiliary jacks still intact. Now the other new thing here is you have two uh wireless charging pads now instead of one. So that’s great. And I have, you know, nice rubberized brackets and surfaces here, as well as, you know, extra little brackets here to really hug your phone in tightly.
So, that should do reliable wireless charging here. And then, of course, storage in these things is fantastic all the time. So, coming down, you have that big bin.

You can fit all kinds of stuff as well as a power outlet in there. And you have this sliding tray with cup holders and extra, you know, storage there.
And then you of course have the center armrest, which is nice and softly padded. You open that up and you’ll see a felt lined uh upper surface and then also uh one uh that opens up to the uh very deep extra cubby you have there below. There’s also a little like document slot or something right here by your right knee. And of course the double-decker storage here in the uh doors. And you also have the bonus space here for the ones that don’t have the passenger display of having that extra passenger cubby there.
And you know, really well done. And I always enjoyed the Ram materials. I think they’re some of my favorite as far as just the materials, you know, the uh stitching and the extra padding on the tops of the doors here.

Even again on just a Laram trim, the nice trim you have everywhere. It all is, you know, very well done.
Uh this one also has this Harman Carden 17 speaker stereo that I think is probably the best in its segment. It is so well done. It’s more speaker count, I think, than everybody. Uh but it’s really clear and crisp. Has fantastic bass if you like bass heavy music.
I was enjoying that earlier this week. And a really, really good stereo. So, another really nice perk here of the Ram over the others. And back seats, all the same as before there. You know, it means you have a ton of space and uh, you know, again, all their usual cubbies and their heated seats back here in the back of the Laramie here.
And, uh, even those speakers again up in the roof there and everything. And, uh, you know, a really comfortable back seat.

But, let’s start up and go for a drive. So, the Ram 2500 here has the RAM key and a nice, you know, chunky key. Has the metal there on the sides, which is nice.
Little bit on the thick side, but uh not too bad, honestly. And just some buttons there in the back. But of course, it is keyless access, keyless entry, and push button start. So, you just leave the key in your pocket, hit the engine start button, and it starts right up. All right, so setting off here in the Ram 2500.
So, the first thing you notice about this thing, well, I think the first thing I notice is the very high seating position here. Even me just being 5’9, I mean, I feel like I’m really sitting up high even with this seat in its lowest position possible. Um, I mean, you still have enough headroom and everything, but uh, it’s just you have a very commanding view of the road for sure.

Nice large side mirrors, of course, here. This one has the mirrors there set up for towing and all that.
So, you have that extra visibility view out of the back, of course, is great. And again, having that 360 camera is a clutch that doesn’t come standard, but make sure you get one with that if you are not a pro at driving vehicles this large, cuz uh it certainly is nice to have, especially in tight situations.

Other things here though, uh, one thing I’ve been really impressed with this week is this 8-speed automatic. So, now you get the ZF 8-speed automatic here with the diesel, and it’s really smooth, and it’s impressive considering this thing’s managing over 1,000 pound- feet of torque, and it is so so smooth. Uh, throttle response is also very good and and very responsive.
brakes have, you know, good amount of dead travel before you start getting some tight bite out of them, but you know, feel very reassuring.

Um, and, you know, this engine is really the dominating factor of this driving experience. And it still has that classic, you know, diesel sound, even though this is a redesigned Cumins motor. Same displacement as before, but, you know, has been heavily uh reworked. Um, and one of the things they did is they actually changed um the cam and the fuel pump uh gears to helical gear so that they’re a little quieter.
Um, so the engine is, you know, going to be a little quieter than the old uh Cumins diesel, which I think is appreciated. You still get again great uh diesel exhaust note there. And you get a bunch of other efficiency improvements with this engine as well, which I’ll talk about in a minute here.

But um yeah, it just always feels like it’s in the right gear. And uh you know that uh turbo diesel is always right there with a boatload of torque that it’s ready to serve up for you.
And so we’re going to turn down onto this back road here. I don’t believe there’s any drive modes here in this. So we’re just going to go ahead and turn down onto this back road here and see how it accelerates.

And here we go. Takes it a second, but then takes off pretty good.
And of course, once you’re up at higher speeds, I think passing power is really the thing that’s the most impressive to me because obviously again being in two wheel drive mode here, it’s got to limit itself a little bit, I’m sure, because, you know, if you just unleashed, you know, the full torque of this thing in the back of an unladen truck, I mean, it would be, you know, a complete mess as far as spinning the wheels and all that. But, um, yeah, there it is. I mean, you know, just one or two downshifts and then you get into it, you know, when you’re cruising like 40 mph and I mean, this thing gets up to speed really quickly. So, this 6.7 L Cumins turbo diesel inline 6 engine now does 430 horsepower and 1,075 lb feet of torque.
That’s 60 more horsepower and 225 more pound- feet of torque than what you got on the pre-refresh old Cumins diesel.

And uh so they achieved that by giving you a redesigned intake and exhaust valves. The manifold is now aluminum and um they also have a smaller turbine now and so that allows it to actually spool faster but they have increased the fuel pressure. So again we’re making more power with you know a smaller turbine there. And um it’s it will so there just lit up traction control there.

So, I mean, it will certainly uh spin the tires if you if you wanted to. And uh yeah, I mean it’s a lot of power. Now, this isn’t best-in-class power. Ford still retains that crown, but still is a very very strong motor here. Now, it is expensive.
So, this is about a $12,500 option for this uh Cumins diesel engine. So, it’s expensive, very expensive if you want to have, you know, that maximum amount of capability. If you don’t want to spend all that extra money, uh you do still get the 6.4 L Hemi gas V8 engine is standard and that I believe is unchanged here for 2025. Um but uh yeah, this diesel though is something else.
It is very very punchy and and feels really good to use.
And by the way, it’ll do a 6.9 seconds 0 to 60 time for anyone who’s wondering, which is I think a little quicker than before. And also this diesel engine is more efficient than before, although we don’t have official fuel economy ratings. I’ll talk more about my observed fuel economy here in a minute.
Um, but as far as the truck stuff, that’s very important. Um, here for the 2500s, you get a 20,000lb max tow rating and a 2740lb payload rating. Um, and then if you go for the 3500 and you have it properly equipped and all that, max tow rating for these is going to be 36,610 lb.

Um, which again is not the top tower. Ford still claims 40,000 lb, but this is, you know, right with everything else.
you know, the only other things here are the Silverado HD and Sierra HD. Um, but yeah, you know, it’s uh I mean, this is still a ton of towing even just from what we saw, you know, 5 or 10 years ago. I mean, it’s a huge amount of muscle here and, you know, very impressive as far as that goes. The other thing that’s really impressive is the handling. You know, even though this is a 2500, it’s really impressive that you can get these uh with not this not only is this the only one that has the coil rear suspension.
That’s something you don’t get on the competitors, but also the fact you can you can have an auto leveling rear air suspension on these as well to allow the back end to come down a little bit in order to make it easier to hook up a trailer, but also, you know, just getting a really nice smooth ride.

And Ram always, I think, in my opinion is generally the best as far as ride quality among, you know, the uh full-size trucks here. But, you know, especially for 2500, it’s not an easy feat to, you know, make it a soft, you know, smooth ride. And the fact that this does do that is, you know, commendable. And it’s been a nice thing to drive around in all week.
You know, no complaints really with the ride whatsoever, even on these 20-in wheels, you know, slightly smaller sidewalls, I’m assuming, than the 18s there. But, so now we’re merging out onto the highway here. And this is again where this thing is really going to shine, having now the eight speeds and that extra torque, you know, for passing and all that.

And I just also turned on the adaptive cruise control system, which you do get as standard along with lane keep assist. Both those things are standard here on the 2500s now, which is great.
Um, especially the lane keep assist. This again, if you’re someone who’s not used to driving large trucks, certainly appreciate it uh while you learn the size of this vehicle here, which I mean, it does feel, you know, like it’s pretty large in its lane and something you have to pay a little more attention to. So, it is nice to have the assist, the depth of cruise control, especially, you know, very nice to have out on the highway. It also does fully work with trailering and all that. So, uh it can really take a lot of the fatigue out of, you know, driving there.
It would be nice to see hands-free. Um, you know, we will see which of the heavy duty trucks does the hands-free thing first, whether that’s, you know, GM or Ford or uh Ram here, but as of right now, we still don’t have that just yet.

But, you know, of course, really nice out on the highway here cruising. And then again, you turn on this fantastic stereo or whatever you want to do, and it’s just, you know, going to be a really nice smooth ride. I will say though, this uh active lane management that they call it, you know, it’s not going to be the most assertive of systems.
So, I’m going to just try it on here. So it it nudges you, but it’s not going to like do lane centering. So it’s really just a corrective system and not so much, you know, a system to, you know, do a lot of the steering for you or anything.

So just keep that in mind, um, whenever you are, you know, using this system. And the last really nice thing about these out on the highway is you can get a 50gallon fuel tank in the 8 ft bed version of these if you’d like.
Uh, so you can have incredible cruising range if you want that here. Uh, especially again combined with the diesel, which again is supposed to be more fuel efficient.

We don’t have any fuel economy ratings for it. I wish, you know, we had some kind of idea, but what I can tell you here is that I haven’t driven this vehicle a ton this week. I mean, this thing, even as it is with this regular tank, has about 500 miles of range.
Um, and so I’ve put about 70 mi on it here so far, but I’ve been getting 13.4 MPG.

Now, I did get stuck in some traffic earlier in the week um for, you know, about 10 to 15 minutes or so. So, that probably dragged it down a little bit here, but I did do some highway driving and stuff to bring that average up. So, I mean, again, it’s a giant heavy vehicle with, you know, almost,00 lb feet of torque, and I, you know, have been sampling that torque as well.
So, I can’t expect anything too much. So, I think that sounds about right for what you could probably expect, but of course, your mileage will always vary. Comes down to a million different variables. Um, but then the last thing to mention here really is the pricing and how this compares to the competition. So, these start at about $475,000 um for just a regular 2500 tradesman.

Now, the Larams here are going to be starting around $625,000. Then this one again with a very expensive diesel engine. This also has a few of the other upgrade packages on it. This one comes out to right around $89,500. And so at that price point, it is actually pretty competitive with the rest.
But if you want to get the best pricing on a Ram or any of these heavy duty trucks, uh you’re definitely going to want to head over to mattmaranmoing.com.

And then you click on the new car quotes page there, which will give you access to dealer invoice pricing, as well as also connecting you to a local dealer so you can take one of these for a test drive, check it out for yourself, and see what you think about the Ram 2500. So there’ll be a link in the description as well as a link in a pin comment for you to go straight to that site to get all that information.

But as far as how this compares to the competition though, um it is very competitively priced, especially compared to uh the Ford.
Now, the Ford technically is about $2,000 or so. There’s so many options, and it really comes down to exactly what you want, what you don’t need, and what you can leave off. But if you’re configuring it to be about the same as this, it seems like it’s about $2,000 cheaper. Again, we’re talking about these things that are $90,000, and a lot of these, you know, often have cash on the hood, and there’s discounts and things to be had. So, you know, your deal will certainly vary, but um you know, for basically the same money, it seems the Ford does give you again, even with its diesel engine, you know, big expensive upgrade, same money, gives you 500 horsepower, 1,200 lb feet of torque and that 40,000 lb tow rating, uh potentially, you know, again, configured properly and all that, but you know, it just gives you more for your money.

Now, it is worth noting you’ll get a smaller screen in the Ford, you get a worse stereo, you know, there’s a few little give and take things there. And of course, it all comes down to personal preference, but that one still seems like the strongest option if you are, you know, at least you worried about specs. Um, that one is certainly going to be, I think, the best performing on paper. Now, also, if you want to have the best deal on paper, um, you know, you can save some money with the Chevy and the GMC, those again comparably equipped, same kind of trim levels and, you know, features and all that do give you about, you know, 100 less pound- feet of torque. But if you don’t need to have the absolute best uh torque rating, tow rating is actually within I think 500 lb of this as far as you know again max tow ratings and all that.

So pretty similar performance in the real world. Um and those are about $815,000 comparably equipped. So at that point, you know, you’re saving yourself about $8,000. Um you know, and then if you again possibly add on some incentives or something onto that, you know, that one probably is going to be the value leader in my opinion. And honestly, the GMC is very nice.
I think that has a pretty comparable interior to this. Now, their screen is slightly smaller. It’s a 13 odd in screen versus the 14 here. I don’t think anyone’s really counting every inch of screen real estate here, but this is, you know, going to have the biggest screen of the bunch. But, um, that, you know, those GM trucks are also very, very nice.

I spent, you know, weeks with, uh, the GMC uh, not too long ago for the 1500 version. Very, very nice. And, um, you know, just again another solid option there that does come in at a nice savings. And so just, you know, another one to consider there. So anyway, um, you know, it all again at the end of the day comes down to personal preference.
The Cumins is really cool to have here in this. And, you know, it’s a certainly a nice improvement. And if you’re just, you know, a Ram loyalist that really enjoys your current one and you want to go up to the new one here, um, you know, it sounds like there’s some real nice improvements here for this diesel motor here. And, uh, again, I think ride is even a little bit smoother than what I remember with the last 2500 that I had from Ram, uh, you know, several years ago. And overall, yeah, I’m really impressed with the Ram 2500 here.
So, anyway, that’s all of my thoughts here on it. Let me know your thoughts on it in the comments below.

Huge thanks to Ram for providing me here with this vehicle to review for you guys today. And yeah, thank you all very much for watching and I’ll see you guys on the next one. Take care.
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