Renault Symbioz Review 2024

The flippant answer here would be to say the Symbioz is a perfect answer for those for whom a Captur isn’t quite big enough, and an Austral is a little too big.

The more straightforward take is that the Symbioz is pretty much the typical modern family car. It’s 4.4 metres long and has an elevated seating position for four, maybe five people, plus a decently-sized and quite adaptable boot. So it’d suit the typical modern family with one or two kids, a bunch of clobber, and a desire to spend as little on fuel as possible, without going fully electric with a Scenic E-Tech.

There's just one engine to choose from: a 1.6-litre hybrid, so that makes your decision easier. In terms of trim level, we reckon the most affordable Techno trim represents excellent value for money. Standard kit includes 18-inch alloy wheels, a 10.4-inch media system and a rear-view parking camera.

The Renault Symbioz faces strong competition from the Nissan Qashqai, a benchmark in the family SUV market. Other popular alternatives to the Symbioz include the Hyundai Tucson and Kia Sportage, as well as the Skoda Karoq and Volkswagen Tiguan. You might also want to consider more practical versions of slightly smaller SUVs - such as the Kia Niro and Hyundai Kona. 

If you’ve not driven a Renault in a while, the Symbioz wouldn’t be a bad way of reintroducing yourself to the brand. You may be surprised by the cabin quality, which isn’t just better than Renaults of old, but above-par even for the class.

You’ll find plenty of dark, textured plastics of course, but a surprising number have a yielding, soft-touch feel, and while the cabin of our Iconic Esprit Alpine test car looked a little gloomy (despite the model’s flashes of Alpine blue), some tactile textures and a generally well-built feel - there were no creaks or rattles over poor road surfaces, despite a fairly firm ride - make up for it. Switches mostly operate with a smooth feel too (the one strange exception being the slightly creaky-feeling electric handbrake switch).

All Symbioz get the same 10.4-inch portrait-orientated touchscreen sprouting from the centre console, and it gets all the basics right. The high mounting point makes it easy to glance at and it’s only a short stretch for your arm. A little shelf below the physical heating and ventilation controls gives you a place to balance your thumb on while you poke around on the screen with an outstretched finger too.

In our brief experience so far, it’s also easy to use. The portrait layout means the standard Google Maps integration is clear, and switching between other significant menus, such as car functions or the home screen, is pretty quick – there’s no notable lag when navigating around. At first you’ll wonder how best to operate audio functions, before remembering that just as it’s done for more than 30 years, Renault still fits a small, physical control behind the steering wheel – so for basics like skipping tracks and radio stations or changing the volume at least, you don’t need to look at the screen at all.

There’s a brace of USB-C ports for the front passengers (and another pair in the rear), wireless charging, and wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration, so it covers all the basics there too. Longer-term exposure might highlight notable weaknesses, but otherwise the Symbioz’s infotainment has no real issues.

No complaints about space up front; as well as having an appealing and usable dashboard layout, both front seat passengers get enough room in every direction not to feel hemmed in, and there are useful cubby holes scattered about the place too. Well, some are more useful than others – the one ahead of the gear selector is best, being ideal for phones, cables, and other detritus, while below the gear selector there’s another phone spot.

The door pockets are decently sized too, and between the seats there is a pair of cupholders. The cubby under the narrow centre armrest though is useful only if you regularly carry small, fairly narrow and upright objects – good for storing your biro collection vertically, perhaps.

Rear seat space isn’t bad but you may begin to struggle if your family is on the taller side. With the driver seat arranged for a 5’8” (172cm) driver, there was around 3.5” (9cm) of knee room, and around 2” (5cm) of headroom. It feels a little gloomy back there with the narrowing windows, but the seats are as comfortable as those up front. The sliding rear bench means you can also choose between passengers and luggage (alas, the laws of physics prevent you having both at once). At its maximum, the boot offers 624 litres, but 492 litres with the rear seats fully back is still pretty decent. You can remove a panel in the boot floor for extra depth, or keep it there for a flat load area.

With just one engine option in the Symbioz you won’t have to spend hours deliberating at the dealership on which model to choose. The Symbioz gets a 1.6-litre petrol full hybrid setup driving through a six-speed automatic transmission – technically a four-speed gearbox and additional ratios courtesy of two electric motors, in common with Renault’s other E-Tech hybrids.

In the Symbioz you get a modest 145PS from the setup, along with 149Nm of torque from the 1.6 engine and 250Nm from the motors – Renault doesn’t quote a combined figure. It does quote performance numbers, so 0-62mph comes up in 10.6 seconds and top speed is a no-doubt efficiency-preserving 106mph.

If the former seems if not quick then at least not especially slow, it’s probably because, despite its seemingly chunky body, the Symbioz isn’t that heavy by SUV standards at between 1426 and 1447kg, or a good 200-odd kilos less than the (admittedly more powerful and quicker) Nissan Qashqai e-Power hybrid.

Foot to the floor and the Symbioz feels just about good for its figures too. There’s not the acceleration here you’d associate with a fully electric car now, but there’s enough to step smartly out of junctions and get up to speed without inconveniencing others.

The car will quite happily mooch around in electric power at low speeds, and kick off the engine at higher ones to save fuel, but call for harder acceleration and you’ll hear the engine spring into somewhat vocal life to assist you. Switch to Sport mode and the balance changes slightly – the engine spends less time switched off, the electric motors instead helping mainly with acceleration for a more responsive (if not actually much faster) feel. Like most hybrids, you can nudge the gear selector into a ‘B’ mode for more regenerative braking to recuperate energy.

Hybrids tend to get off to a good start with refinement, literally, as pressing the starter button doesn’t necessarily rouse the engine. That’s not the case when we started the Symbioz, with the 1.6-litre four-cylinder immediately whirring into life, though as the battery wasn’t quite full, the car was likely kicking in to help charge it.

At low speeds the engine does indeed stay off most of the time, so the Symbioz is as quiet and refined as any electric car. More so in some cases; Renault has done a fine job of keeping the cabin isolated, so even when the engine fires back up on the move, you’d have to be concentrating to tell that it was on – though an increase in tyre noise does account for some of that.

The exception to this quietude is when you call for harder acceleration, such as up a hill, when the engine emits a surprisingly loud, nasal tone, as the gearbox hunts around for lower ratios, but thankfully it settles down again as soon as you ease off.

As far as safety kit goes, the Renault Symbioz is pretty well equipped, with the usual mix of airbags – driver and passenger, side, head, and curtain airbags – as well as accident mitigation technology such as active emergency braking with cyclist and pedestrian detection, driver attention alerts, lane keep assist, and speed limit alerts.

Stepping up to Techno Esprit Alpine trim adds blind spot warning, adaptive cruise control, rear cross traffic alert, and occupant safe exit alert, while the Iconic Esprit Alpine gets a 360-degree camera for parking. One feature we appreciate is a hotkey button on the dashboard that you can use to call up your preferred mix of safety assist features. You program your preference using the touchscreen, and can then use the button to select those preferences thereafter.

Euro NCAP awarded the Renault Symbioz a four-star safety rating in 2024.

The Symbioz is too new to have appeared in the HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index, but we can glean some information about its likely performance from other Renaults to have appeared in the most recent survey in 2023. And it’s not particularly good news, with Renault as a brand languishing down towards the bottom, in 28th place out of 29 makes, beating only Vauxhall.

On the plus side, Renault made no appearances in either the list of the worst 20 cars, nor the 10 most unreliable cars, nor the 10 most unreliable brands – so whatever owners’ issues with Renault’s cars, at least they aren’t getting stranded.

In Techno trim the Symbioz starts in insurance group 16, with both Esprit Alpine versions stepping up a single group to 17. For comparison, a Nissan Qashqai starts lower, at group 11, but by the time you start looking at higher-spec hybrids, it’s touching group 26 – so the Renault should be more affordable to insure.

CO2 ratings from 105-108g/km mean a first-year VED bill of £185 for 2024/2025, and a fiver less per year thereafter. For the same period, you’re looking at a 26% BIK rate, too – higher than pure EVs and plug-in hybrids, but below most conventionally-powered rivals. 

The Symbioz range starts with Techno trim, and includes 18-inch alloy wheels, LED front and rear lights, auto lights, a synthetic leather steering wheel, keyless entry and start, a 10.25-inch digital driver display and 10.4-inch portrait infotainment screen, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, wireless phone charging, adaptive cruise, and a rear-view parking camera.

Step up to Techno Esprit Alpine trim and you get larger 19-inch alloys, Esprit Alpine interior styling details, sports pedals, electric and heated front seats, a hands-free tailgate, and a heated steering wheel. Going one further to Iconic Esprit Alpine, you get a clever glass roof with selectable opacity, a 360-degree parking camera, hands-free parking, and nine-speaker Harman Kardon audio.

Colour-wise there’s a choice of the usual whites, blacks, and greys, plus Flame Red, and a pair of blues - a darker Iron Blue, and a lighter Mercury Blue with a silvery-blue hue.