I had this list in another thread but here it is, somewhat truncated, for the sake of posterity.
1. The paint job is probably the worst I've seen on a car in 15 years. Aside from orange peel on every panel, the panels were dirty when they sprayed them. There are all sorts of below paint defects from debris on the panel they just sprayed over. The drivers side mirror trim (the black "trim" part on the inside, next to the mirror) is particularly horrid. Honestly I could get over it, but these are going to turn into places where the paint chips off after a bunch of years.
2. The metal scuff plates aren't stainless or at least aren't a high-grade stainless. Mine came to me with rust marks. I detailed it all off, but still. And they are already scuffed thanks to my wife. Going to order replacements and have clear vinyl (3M?) applied over them as a sacrificial layer.
3. Drivers seat range of seat adjustment is fairly limited. In order to get the seat to bucket, we have it bottomed out on the floor and the front tilt all the way up. Kia saved a buck by limiting how far the motors moved the seat.
6. The cooled seat option doesn't work all that well. Either the perforations are too small or, more likely, the helper fan is weak. Compared to an explorer I sat in recently, it's like the Kia's aren't even on. You could play air hockey on the Explorer seats when it was turned all the way up.
7. I have to press the "confirm" button on the infotainment display every single time I start the car. Extremely obnoxious. It does not go off by itself either. I've waited quite a while.
8. We've had the backup camera go dark on us several times now if we start the car and immediately switch into reverse. It seems to do it occasionally as part of a boot-up cycle. Not fun if you are already moving and looking at it.
9. No DRL. Seriously? It's been said before but it's almost standard procedure now for a car that MSRP's in the mid-40's. Even an $18K honda civic has them. Big miss here. If someone came out with aftermarket fogs that had them integrated as a trim piece, I'd probably get them. But again, for a car that aspires to play in this price range, this is a big miss.
10. The drivers seat has a convenience feature to move down and back to help you get in and out if you are short. The problem is, you can't set how far down and how far back it moves. This is an issue because we have a car seat behind the driver (and passenger) and we realized it crushed the car seat the first time it did this with one installed as it moved down and back. So, we had to disable it. It wouldn't have been difficult if you could have set the extent to which it went down and back. Sadly, it's all or nothing, and the "normal" and "extended" modes don't help.
11. The climate control system doesn't actually ever turn off when it is off. If at any speed over 20, you can feel air coming through the vents when the system is off. I had a 20-year old Audi that didn't do this. A simple flap actuated when the system was off stopping air getting forced through. When I'm sitting behind a belching diesel in stop and go traffic, I like to turn this off until I move away from that vehicle. Also, it's a bit fiddly to get the AC compressor to turn off. You have to get off auto mode, turn on the ac, and then turn it off again to apparently turn the compressor off. If you just switch off auto, the compressor stays on despite the AC light not being on.
12. The USB cables for the center console under the black shiny plastic cubby doesn't have an escape route for the cable. I have seen other manufacturers do this and it makes sense. Also, the center console arm rest also doesn't have an escape hole for a USB cable. Yes, you can still close it if you get a cheap/soft USB cable, and we do that but it really locks the cable in place. It's a 1-second design decision Kia didn't think about.
13. The "carpet" that tucks under the second row seat when you are using the third row seat is sort of dangling there. It's supposed to be helped in place by a bit of elastic but it's cheap and doesn't really work, so it sort of hangs down on one side of the car while it's tucked up nice and tight on the other side. Just cheap materials.
14. The transmission won't stay in sport mode and only remembers normal and "eco". I'm learning to live with Eco, but I prefer sport and it's obnoxious to have to click the silly button every time I get in the car.
15. The interior sunshade for the pano roof squeaks a bit when closing after being all the way open. Meh. I can probably fix with some waterproof grease and a qtip, but I'll just use it a few more months and see if it will self-lube itself a bit before I try.
16. The bug screen on the sunroof just seems like something that isn't durable and how do you clean the bugs out of it? Other vehicles have plastic air/bug deflectors that pop up rather than some sort of mesh fabric.
17. I'm not confident the forward collision auto-braking actually works. Someone said this is speed-dependent? It seems like a feature you'd like at anything over 10MPH. My wife nearly creamed someone in stop-and-go heavy traffic on the highway and the car never did anything about it on its own, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't really work. The sonar-powered auto-cruise does work however, so I don't know, but she was pedal-to-the-floor braking and really she must have missed the car by inches. Just to say in her defence, not her fault, someone pulled in front of her and came to a full stop, so she didn't have/wasn't aggressive about increasing the following distance between cars. Just one of those d-bags who switches lanes every minute in stop and go like they will get somewhere faster, without ever considering they just pulled right in front of someone.
18. No forward parking sensors. Again, on a $40K car, I expect to have them.
19. I don't think the third row seat is actually leather. Kia doesn't seem to state this anywhere, but it's clearly made of different material than the front seat.
20. It feels like only the perforated leather on the drivers and second row seats are leather, and the rest is vinyl. I know that supposedly they all have a vinyl spray on them, but really, they feel like vinyl so I think they are. Nothing like other leather seats I've owned or test drove from other manufacturers.
21. The transmission is just okay. Basically, in eco mode, it shifts up into high gears very aggressively for the sake of gas mileage and then if you encounter a hill or any sort of resistance, the engine/transmission shudders a little. This is more than likely the torque converter and you can feel it because of the low engine RPM's, but it just feels unsettling/cheap. They should have used a sensor to identify when you are on a hill and force a downshift. Sport mode just obnoxiously holds the gear forever. At 65MPH in sport mode it won't shift into 6th. That's not what defines sport for me. Faster shifts are. In general, the transmission is OK for most situations, but I guess I'm just used to a better auto transmission.
22. You have to pay extra for a cargo net or cargo cover and for floor mats. Again, for a car positioning itself in the mid to upper 40's, this is not in keeping with the competition which just include these items rather than making them dealer profit centers. I haven't seen a good aftermarket or OEM unit at any significant savings off fleabay either.
23. No multi-color interior lighting. Ford has this on their least expensive cars. Sure, not a big deal, but not expensive to implement either.
24. Random bulbs are not LED's like the bulb illuminating the driver footwell and the rear plate. I guess Kia saved a few pennies not using LED's?
25. There isn't any way to actually get back to the CD screen or activate playing the CD again after stopping (like switching to the radio) without ejecting and re-inserting the disc. There is an icon for CD's but it's buried way down in a menu somewhere - I saw it once. Clearly not something you are going to do while you are driving. Now, if you could only set it to favorites or something.
26. The little clear film on the rear doors. I get the idea, but the square is so small, it's not really doing much there. They saved a few pennies by not having it larger I guess.
27. POI and nav database is weak like others have said.