For those not needing a heavy duty truck I'd recommend at least test driving a Ridgeline. LOL and before everyone chimes in "but it's not a real truck" I know what it is and isn't. If you will need your truck to do the following, a Ridgeline won't be a good choice.
1) Do a lot of 4,000 plus pound towing. Ridgeline is rated to tow up to 5,000# so great for small trailers with your lawn tractor, SXS, motorcycles, light camper, etc. If I needed to tow 5,000+ pound trailer I'd probably go 1/2 ton but some configurations of Ranger and Colorado are rated to tow up to 6,000-7,000.
2) Take your truck off-roading, rock crawling, mud bogging, etc. Ridgeline doesn't have enough ground clearance for that, no low range, and the AWD system isn't designed for doing a lot of this.
I have 2 trailers both aluminum, an open motorcycle and a 6x12' box, so Ridgeline is more than capable for them. I'm on my 2nd Ridgeline, having bought a 2023 last December, and I'm not subjecting my $40,000 truck to rock crawling or banging it through the woods. I have a couple SXS's for that anyway.
I use the bed for hauling firewood, bags of garbage to the dumpster every 2-3 weeks, 5 gallon cans of gasoline and diesel, light motorcycles, stuff from Lowes, etc.,
When I was looking to replace my 2018 Ridgeline I looked at GM's new Canyon/Colorado that was just coming out as well as Nissan's new Frontier. (The newer 1/2 ton trucks, as others have commented, are simply too wide and large for many of the roads I drive on and spaces I park in.) The more I looked the more things I liked about the Ridgeline. First off the bed, while only 5'-3" long, is wider than other mid-size trucks with over 4' between the low wheel wells. Reaching over to access items in the bed is also fairly easy.
The rear seats are wide open underneath which is convenient to slide a rifle case, golf clubs, etc. under. Or they individually fold completely up out of the way against the seat back which provides a lot of space. I can fit my bicycle back there. Also the back seats are quite comfortable. The front seats are large, supportive, and *very* comfortable. After driving a Silverado 1500 for a week I couldn't wait to get back in my Ridgeline. The Silverado seats were fairly large but had very little support.
Handling and ride: there's just no comparison between the other midsize trucks I've driven and Ridgeline. Which is to be expected with Ridgeline's fully independent suspension, it handles like a nice car instead of a truck. In the above mentioned Silverado when were were on gravel roads with washboard surfaces that truck had a jarring ride and the back end was hopping and sliding wide on corners. My friends Tacoma is even worse in this regard.
When it comes to the 4wd system Ridgeline utilizes AWD, actually Accura's torque vectoring SHAWD and I can say on the dirt and gravel roads I often drive on, as well as snow and ice covered roads, it works better than any 4WD system I've used.
I almost forgot to mention the large, weather-tight trunk under the back of the bed which I don't know how I'd get along without now? The spare is also located inside that compartment rather than hanging outside under the back of the truck.
