BMW 5 Series Touring Review 2025: Price, specs & boot space

No one has bought a BMW 5 Series Touring purely for its load carrying ability, but if you want a practical, roomy and very comfortable estate car, it’s a sound bet. It also appeals to many over the usual MPV or SUV offerings. What many buyers will look for when choosing this model is all of the above plus a great image and driving ability. It’s here where the 5 Series Touring gains an advantage over its rivals.

The 5 Series saloon does all of the passenger carrying duties the Touring offers, but a 570-litre boot in the estate is a useful 50-litres up on the four-door model. Plus, it’s easier to reach in for items in the Touring’s boot.

The petrol 520i Touring will be the most cost-effective route into owning a BMW 5 Series Touring, and it will be very good to drive. However, we’d look to the 530e plug-in hybrid with its EV-only driving range of up to 58 miles plus excellent combined economy.

The 530e also delivers the sort of authoritative performance you look for in a BMW without being so quick it puts your licence at risk on every journey.

There are only two serious threats to the BMW 5 Series Touring when buying new: the Audi A6 Avant and the Mercedes-Benz E-Class. The Audi is ruthlessly well made and has a solidity even its German counterparts find mildly intimidating, but it’s not as engaging to drive as the BMW. The E-Class takes comfort as its leading theme and outdoes its rivals on the amount of space it offers people and luggage. The Jaguar XF Sportbrake was once an option for new buyers, but it now limited to those seeking a used car. Or, you could look to the Volvo’s V90 that was taken off sale by the Swedish firm but is now back on its new car books.

There is a depth to the quality of materials inside this BMW 5 Series Touring that exceeds the previous generation and puts it firmly on a par with the latest BMW 7 Series. Wherever your hand reaches for, it’s met by a surface that feels solid, engineered and long-lasting. Happily, it also looks good and the mix of finishes all blend together harmoniously.

When operating the few buttons in the Touring cabin, they all work with a precise motion, and even the touchscreen’s functions have a satisfying click to let you know they’ve done their job.

If you’re the sort of person who itches to have the latest flat screen television or smartphone, you’re going to love the BMW 5 Series Touring. It comes as standard in all models with the same 14.9-inch infotainment  screen as the saloon, plus the 12.3-inch main dash display. The two are seamlessly joined together to present as one large panel on the dash, though each with its own discernible display.

While we lament the loss of some easy to work buttons in this 5 Series’ cabin, the touchscreen is among the best and has voice controls to access many functions. Luckily, BMW also fits a rotary controller between the seats much like the old iDrive system, so you can scroll and click to where you need to be without your finger bobbing up and down trying to press an icon as you drive.

As you’d expect, it comes with Apple Car Play and Android Auto, as well as Bluetooth, wifi, sat-nav, USB points, and wireless phone charging. There’s also a Harman Kardon stereo set-up that is superb. Your kids will also thank you for the video streaming the infotainment is capable of, or you can play video games, but only when the car is parked.

Better still, it’s all very easy to use too. You can control the system via the touchscreen, via the steering wheel controls, voice control or the BMW iDrive rotary controller and supplementary buttons on the centre console. That might seem like overkill but it means you can operate the system however you like, which might vary depending on whether you’re driving or sat in traffic. 

The BMW 5 Series Touring is 5060mm long and 1900mm wide, while the roof sits 1515mm from the ground. The distance between the front and rear wheels, called the wheelbase, is 2995mm, so it’s a large car by any measuring tape.

The exterior dimensions translate into plenty of cabin room and a large boot. The powered tailgate is standard on all models and opens quickly enough that you won’t be cursing it on wet days while trying to load up the shopping. You’ll easily fit in the weekly shop with space to spare thanks to the 570-litre capacity. This isn’t as much as the BMW’s German rivals muster, but you’re very unlikely to be left wishing for more.

Folding the rear seats is simplicity itself thanks to the remote release levers set into the side walls of the boot. A quick tug on these and the 40-20-40 split rear seat back drops down. With them folded, the load floor is not completely flat as it is in a Volvo V90, but you won’t have to huff and puff to slide in larger items or drag them out again. With all of the seats tipped down, you have up to 1700-litres of load volume, which is exactly the same as the previous 5 Series Touring.

For the 5 Series Touring, as opposed to the all-electric i5 Touring, BMW only offered one engine for the initial launch. This is the 530e plug-in hybrid model that uses a 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that is aided by an electric motor to offer a combined 299PS. Together, they take the 530e Touring from rest to 62mph in 6.4 seconds, which is ample for most needs.

With the battery of the 530e fully charged up, which can take just over three hours with a 7kW charger, you have an EV driving range of up to 58 miles depending on the exact spec of the car you choose. That should be sufficient for most commutes, and the 530e can travel up to motorway speeds on electric power alone, so you are not only confined to quiet running in town.

When using the EV power, the BMW is wonderfully hushed at city speeds, while at faster velocities there is a little hum from the tyres and wind around the door mirrors but nothing too intrusive. As the petrol engine comes into play, it does so without hesitation, while the eight-speed automatic transmission that is standard across the range is equally smooth.

Like the saloon model, BMW will broaden the Touring’s appeal with engines either side of the 530e, so an entry-point 520i is in the pipeline along with the potent 550e plug-in hybrid with its 489PS combination of electric motor and 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo petrol engine. That should be swift enough for most driver, but BMW will also sell you an M5 Touring if you really need to get the Labradors to the woods for a walk in a hurry.

The beauty of the plug-in hybrid set-up of the 530e, and its 550e sister, is you can run the BMW 5 Series Touring as an EV for much of the time. You will need to take the time to charge it up, or conserve battery power for when you need it, but it’s worth this for the hushed progress you make. Beyond some muted whirr from the tyres on the road surface and, at higher speeds, a little wind rustle, the BMW is commendably quiet.

Even when the petrol engine comes into play, there is not a lot to disturb the inner calm of the 5 Series Touring, so chatting with passengers in the front and back is easily achieved.

BMW’s IconicSounds feature in the Touring is the same as in the saloon. Quite why they’ve bothered with this is beyond us as it’s just irksome with its fake whooshes and whoops. Luckily, it can be switched off, and should be at the first chance you get.

The Touring has not been separately tested from the BMW 5 Series saloon by Euro NCAP, but we can expect the estate to enjoy the same five-star rating as the four-door model. This means excellent scores for adult and child occupant protection, as well as strong results for safety assist and protection of vulnerable road users.

All Tourings come with a host of seven airbags, automated emergency braking, lane departure warning and assist, adaptive headlights and cruise control, rear cross traffic alert, and dynamic stability control. The 5 Series Touring also features the Parking Assistant including start monitoring, Trailer Assistant and Reversing Assist Camera as standard.

There is also the optional Parking Assistant Professional pack that provides automated parking and the ability to move the car up to 200 metres from outside the car using an smartphone app. The real benefit of this is you can park or pull the car the out of very tight spaces.

It’s early days for this generation BMW 5 Series, but we would expect the Touring to be an easy car to live with as BMW ranked 12th out of 29 manufacturers in the most recent HonestJohn Satisfaction Survey. That puts BMW in front of rivals Volvo, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz.

All of the BMW 530e Touring models sit in group 40 (out of 50) for insurance, which is one group lower than its equivalent predecessor. We can expect the less powerful 520i model to sit a few groups further down, while the 550e will be a couple of groups higher up the ladder. That puts the BMW on a level playing field with its key competitors.

If you’re expecting a massive financial wallop for choosing the BMW 5 Series Touring, the 530e comes as a pleasant surprise. Its carbon dioxide emissions of 17g/km mean the car falls in the £110 first-year VED bracket, but in subsequent years, you’ll pay £195 just like a petrol-engined 5 Series Touring. 

However, it’s not all roses as the list price of the BMW 5 Series Touring also means you will pay an additional £425 applied to cars costing more than £40,000 when new. This is applied from the car’s first birthday until it reaches five years from first registration.

For the BMW 5 Series Touring line-up, the German firm offers the car in two trim levels, which are M Sport and M Sport Pro.

Take the M Sport and it comes with 19-inch alloy wheels as standard, along with the Shadow Line gloss exterior trim that defines this spec. The car also has M Sport suspension, but not the adaptive set-up unless you choose the 550e, along with LED lights and a powered tailgate. Inside, there’s a mix of M Alcantara and Veganza vegan leather upholstery in black, or you can upgrade to different colours at a cost.

However, the steering wheel is swathed in real leather, while electric adjust for the front Sport seats is included. You also get air conditioning, wireless charging, and the large dash and infotainment screens. BMW also provides its My Modes that lets you choose from a number of settings to tailor how the car drives and the cabin ambience.

With the M Sport Pro, you gain 20-inch alloy wheels and some revised trim details like the illuminated front kidney grilles. Weighing up what you get for the not inconsiderable extra outlay, we’d stick with the plain M Sport model and perhaps use the savings to choose from the optional extras list, of which there is plenty to choose from.