I'm one of those who have been completely happy with my RAV4 seats. I have a 2019 Limited with the Softex seats. My "car seat experience" goes quite a ways back, but it has been close to a couple of decades that "seat comfort" has been the most important thing in a car, to me. The "modern" part of that goes back to a 2006 Camry XLE, with its leather seats. It wasn't something I noticed on the test drive, but after about six months of driving that car, I realized that there was one thing about the seats that really bothered me -- they had a seam going from front to back, and it kind of "pushed up" at the very back, essentially pushing against my tailbone. I actually took that to an upholstery shop several times, as we tried to reshape that seat cushion, remove that seam, and so on. I was about to just get a seat cushion from the SE, but eventually I just wound up getting a 2008 Camry SE V6, again with the leather seats.
The SE seats were perfect for me -- they proved that I preferred "more bolstering," and I certainly do prefer to "sit down into the seat," rather than feeling like I'm sitting "on top of the seat," as many other seats make me feel. When the 2015 Corolla generation came out, I took one for a test drive, and found that the seat was extremely similar to the Camry SE seat -- again, I went for the Corolla S Premium, with Softex seats. The bolstering and all of the other seat shapes were almost identical to the Camry SE seat, so I traded for a Corolla S Premium, and enjoyed about 10 miles per gallon better gas mileage.
I went for the 2019 RAV4 Limited because, again, it had Softex seats, along with the Technology Package with the bird's-eye-view camera system, and a few other things. The seat is a bit less heavily bolstered, but otherwise, the shapes and sizes are still very similar to the Camry SE seat and the Corolla S Premium seats that I liked so much. So, this is my history of "seats that I like."
That said, I'm a smaller guy. Five-foot-five -- at age 63, I'm actually losing a bit of height over the years. I'm about 175 pounds -- a bit overweight for my height, but not outrageously so. It seems that the "uncomfortable seats" messages here have come from guys who have been quite a bit larger than I am, but I certainly don't know if that's always the case.
All I can say is that "I try before I buy." Especially after that Camry XLE -- I take test drives as long as I can get away with. I have also been going to the local "Auto Show" every year for at least a couple of decades, and the main thing I do is sit in as many cars that I can -- especially all of the cars that I have at least a minimal interest in. And I can certainly say that an insane percentage of cars have horrible seats. It's generally true that "the more you pay, the more comfortable the seats are," but it's like the Corolla -- you can get very good seats in normally-priced cars, if you do a lot of test driving. But in the end, we all come in different shapes and sizes, and seats that "fit me perfectly" may not fit someone else, especially if they're a lot larger than I am. And so on. Test drive as many cars in the segment you're looking for. Take longer test drives in the cars you're truly interested in. I have a friend who says "he doesn't care about stuff like that," and just buys the cheapest stripped-down used car he can find, and his current car (Hyundai Elantra, probably around five years old now) has TERRIBLE seats. He even complains about them, himself. Test drive, test drive, test drive, test drive.
