OK quick follow up on this. We took our first road trip last weekend - visited some family in the VA mountains and did some light off roading. Here's my perspective after taking the T4R on its first extended drive and off road for the first time:

1) Mileage was good. We got 18.5 combined MPG on the drive, loaded full of bags, full fuel, and 4 people, mixed city/highway/and country road driving, including two trips over the eastern continental divide (east to west, and then back west to east) and a a few hours of off roading. This exceeded my expectations.
2) The ride is very comfortable for longer trips.
3) The navigation systems sucks. Interface is awful (see first post in this thread), and the system selects bizarre routes. The "three route" option selection is a nice feature, but the system kept trying to reroute us off of the selected route onto routes that would have taken much longer. We ended up using the wife's iPhone instead. I straight up don't trust the onboard nav to get me where I need to go in a fast or efficient manner. Also, the ETA function calculates poorly, continually displaying arrival times much later than actual.
4) Plenty of room for a family of 4 and all of your stuff.
5) Yellow Lamin-X made the fog lights much more effective. Was thinking that I should have gone with the amber film, but the yellow lights provided great visibility during a foggy night passage over the divide.
6) The 4Runner looks a lot better dirty than it does clean. It looks great all the time, but after off roading it looks perfect. A little bit of mud and dust go a long way...
7) For a showroom stock truck, it did great off road. We did some trail riding, a couple hill climbs, and some articulation tests and it did great for a bone-stock rig. Super impressed.
8) I like crawl control. Used it on a steep hill climb - early morning when the ground was still frozen. Traction control off, 4WD Low, crawl control on medium - the T4R clawed its way up the steep and slick dirt track full of tree roots with little issue.
9) An attempt at the same hill climb later in the morning when the ground was thawed was unsuccessful. The track got very muddy and the Nitto's simply weren't up for the task. Got about half way up with the settings listed above. Tried with crawl control on high and got a bit farther but couldn't get all the way to the top. I could have probably put it in 4WD High and blasted my way up the hill, but the tree roots and mud were causing a good bit of side to side walking and there were trees lining the track, so I opted to save my 3-week old rig from potential calamity and move onto other things.
10) My concerns about the stock skid plates were unfounded as others have stated earlier in this thread. I pinged off a couple rocks during our first foray off road in the new 4 Runner. Nothing hard, and we certainly weren't rock crawling. A couple thunks underneath on the rutted parts of the trail, and one very loud thunk while bombing through a meadow. No damage to speak of.
11) Approach angle needs to be improved. Again, wasn't expecting much here with a bone-stock rig. Had to baby it through relatively minor troughs to avoid driving the front fascia into the mud - took a lot of angled passes to navigate these parts of the trail. Completely functional off road as-is, but this is one of the biggest areas of needed improvement IMO. Adding a front bumper to the wish list.
12) Departure angle needs to be improved. Again, wasn't expecting much here with a bone-stock rig. The spare tire is the biggest offender here. Need to move this - adding a rear bumper with tire carrier to the wish list.
13) Clearance is great for a bone-stock rig, but could be improved. (See 10, 11, and 12 above).
14) Articulation is pretty good for a bone-stock rig. This exceeded my expectations. A few passes through some well-spaced moguls exercised the suspension quite well. I want through several passes with full articulation and didn't get any wheel rub. Tires came way off the ground on alternating corners, so there's a lot to improve here, but super impressed for a showroom stock rig. Stock Jeeps, Rams, Chevys, or Fords would have been creaking and moaning through that - the Toyota took it in stride...
15) The XP Predator running boards are cool looking, but the steps that protrude from the bottom will be problematic during heavy off roading. They dug into the dirt and mud all over the place during my light off roading. Some rock sliders may be in order.
16) I didn't try terrain select or A-Trac. I'm thinking this may have helped with the failed hill climbs, but that seemed like a super sketchy place to try it out. Will have to try this out next time I'm out. Would be great to get others' perspective on this.

So I'm super happy with my purchase, and I've now got a short-list of wish list items for future mods, starting with bumpers and suspension, some sliders, some decent roof crossbars, and maybe a wrap to fend off the inevitable pinstripes.

I have photos and videos of the hill climb and articulation but (embarrassingly) I can't figure out how to post them. I searched the FAQs and found a post on how to create an album but I can't get the photos to show up on there, and that doesn't allow videos. Any guidance to other posts on the forum with instructions on how to do this would be appreciated.