From contemporary reviews, Spin compared the album favorably to the group's previous album Zen Arcade and praised the songwriting, noting that "these new songs could go up against anything on the radio and blow it away" and that the group has "developed into brilliant pop songwriters." The review concluded that despite producer Spot's "characteristically cheap production", the album "doesn't just fulfill the enormous promise of the Minneapolis trio. It fulfills the even greater promise of punk rock", and that the album "affirms everything that was good about punk in the first place". The New York Times critic Jon Pareles placed New Day Rising at third on his best albums of 1985 list.
From retrospective reviews, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that "[o]ccasionally, the razor-thin production and waves of noise mean that it takes a little bit of effort to pick out the melodies, but more often the furious noise and melodies fuse together to create an overwhelming sonic force", and that Hart and Mould "both turn in songs that are catchy, clever, and alternately wracked with pain or teeming with humor. New Day Rising is a positively cathartic record and ranks as Hüsker Dü's most sustained moment of pure power." In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album #495 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and in 2012 pushed it up to rank 488, saying, "The Hüskers created a roar like garbage trucks trying to sing Beach Boys songs", with the album again being ranked number 428 in the 2020 edition. The magazine also included the title track in its "100 Greatest Guitar Songs" list, ranking it at 96. PopMatters included the album on their list of "12 Essential Alternative Rock Albums from the 1980s", saying "New Day Rising was Hüsker Dü's first full-blown alterna-rock record. It's an album that captures a thoroughly road-tested band in its prime, one invigorated by its discovery of how to balance melody, noise, passion, and power without diminishing any of those aspects".
In 2016, Garrett Martin of Paste wrote: "Hüsker Dü are like the Beatles: they have three or four best albums. It doesn’t have the reputation of Zen Arcade, and Bob Mould shits all over the production in his autobiography, but New Day Rising is Hüsker Dü’s best collection of songs, and the most consistent example of the band’s trademark combination of hardcore virility and classic pop hooks." In 2020, AJ Ramirez of PopMatters wrote: "Had this LP been released a decade later and been shepherded by a more flattering producer, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine 'Celebrated Summer', 'Books About UFOs', or 'I Don’t Know What You’re Talking About' being embraced by alternative radio playlists."