When my lady and I leased our 2011 Forester XT, we cross-shopped it with the X3 at the time (i.e. with the 3.0 NA inline-6). We found the 8 speed tranny to be very jumpy and never skipped gears when downshifting as advertised (i.e. jumped from 8 to 6 to 5 to 4 before giving any real power). The interior at the time was stellar, as were the driving dynamics.
If your tester wasn't a great handler, nor was the interior as stellar as it used to be, sounds like BMW is resting on its laurels. It'll probably sell well though with those fuel economy numbers.
Ultimately, even though the price difference was only about $5,000, the lease payments were almost double because BMW was commanding an insulting 57% of the vehicle price on a 36 month lease, while Subaru only asked for 50% (not to mention 8.8% financing). Hence, we got the Subaru.