Omoda 5 Review 2025: Price, specs & boot space

If you’re looking for a family SUV with convincing style and quality for a very affordable price, and you also want the money you pay to earn you lots of luxury kit, then it could be. If, however, you’re looking for the ultimate in family-friendly practicality, or the last word in dynamic polish, then the Omoda 5 is neither, and you’re better off looking elsewhere.

We haven’t tried the all-electric version of the Omoda 5 yet, but we’d hope it’s better than the petrol, which is very difficult to drive smoothly because of its hypersensitive and inconsistent throttle. On the trim level front, range-topping Noble trim adds some desirable extras over entry-level Comfort trim, but doesn’t cost a whole lot more.

As a compact family SUV, the Omoda 5 is very similar in size to the Nissan Qashqai, which is probably no accident as it’s one of the best-selling cars in Britain. There are a few other big-sellers in the class, too, such as the Kia Sportage and Hyundai Tucson. The Peugeot 3008 is also similar in size, and also has a similar angular design and sloping roof to the Omoda, and like the Chinese car, it’s available in both petrol and electric forms.

Like with the interior design of the Omoda 5, there’s a difference here according to whether to go for the petrol-powered version or the all-electric E5.

In the petrol version, pretty much every surface you encounter is made of plastic of some type. Most of them look fairly plush nonetheless, with glossy finishes or pleasant texturing, and many are soft to the touch as well. Venture further away from your natural eyeline, though, and you’ll find several panels that are harder and tougher in their finish. These do undermine the feeling of quality a wee bit, but they don’t ruin it completely, and the Omoda 5 still has very convincing build quality, especially given the price point.

The electric E5 is designed to look and feel a little more next-generation than the petrol, and that brings not only the revised cabin design we talked about just a minute ago but also some different materials, such as dark wood-effect panelling and metallic-effect trims, both of which look like they’re part of a Mercedes tribute band. They look nice enough and are successful in giving the cabin a lift. The bigger screens (more on that in a moment) also contribute to the snazzier feel.

We’ve already observed differences in design and quality between the petrol-powered versions of the Omoda 5 and the all-electric E5, and there are more differences in this area. In both, you get a pair of digital screens set side-by-side, one behind the steering wheel to act as your instrument, placed alongside a central infotainment touchscreen in the middle of the dashtop. In the petrol-powered car, these screens each measure 10.25 inches, while in the EV, both measure 12.25 inches.

Either way, you get a very similar amount of functionality, with DAB, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, ventilated wireless phone charging (so your phone doesn’t overheat), and a voice assistant. Everything you’d expect, then. Unfortunately, the system isn’t so impressive for ease of use. Too many important functions are buried too deeply within the seemingly bottomless structure of submenus, and this means that the whole thing becomes too distracting to use easily on the move. You can try and circumnavigate all this by attempting to use the car’s voice assistant instead, but we had very little joy with it, and didn’t once manage to issue a command that it either could or would carry out.

In terms of overall size, the Omoda 5 is very similar to the Nissan Qashqai. Crack out the tape measure, and you’ll find that the car is 4,400mm in length (although the EV version is 4,424mm long for some reason), 1,588mm in height, and 1,830mm in width.

While there’s plenty of similarity in the exterior dimensions, though, the same can’t be said of the interior dimensions. There’s plenty of space up front, as you’d expect, but the back seats are appreciably tighter on kneeroom. The same goes for rear headroom, with that sloping roof cutting into the space over your head. There’s enough headroom and legroom for a six-foot adult to sit comfortably, but anyone much taller will soon struggle, and a Qashqai is roomier in both directions.

The boot isn’t great by class standards, either, the 380 litres of space you get being more comparable to that of a family hatchback such as the Volkswagen Golf than that of a family SUV. The loadspace is pretty shallow, too. The rear seats fold down in a 60/40 split to allow you to extend your load volume, and the backrests lie pretty flat on top of their bases. A false boot floor also levels off both a step to the folded seatbacks and a small load lip at the entrance to the boot, leaving you with an impressively flat and level load area. There isn’t much space underneath the false floor, though, so don’t expect vast amounts of hidden storage.

The entry-level version of the Omoda 5 is powered by a turbocharged 1.6-litre petrol engine giving 186PS, paired with a seven-speed twin-clutch automatic gearbox. According to the official figures, the 0-62mph sprint is dealt with in 7.8 seconds, while the top speed is given at 128mph. However, it’s not so much the power and pace on offer, but rather the inconsistency with which it’s delivered.

Key to this is the fact that the throttle pedal is incredibly sensitive, possibly because there’s only a small amount of pedal travel from top to bottom. As a result, any teeny amount of variation in the position of the pedal has a big effect on the behaviour of the engine, and the performance that’s served up. 

When you initially pull away, you apply what you think is a reasonable amount of pressure to the pedal: sometimes the response you get will be exceedingly gentle, with virtually no urgency to your acceleration, leaving you feeling desperately short of go. And then another time, when you think you’ve pushed the pedal the exact same amount, the engine revs will be sent soaring and you’ll be surging forward way quicker than you intended, sometimes to the point where the front wheels are spinning up. No matter how careful you are, you’ll find it nigh-on impossible to modulate the throttle pedal effectively, and you’ll be guessing how the car is going to react every single time you press it.

And, if you’ve been stationary long enough for the engine stop-start to have kicked in, then your post-pedal-pressing guessing game will be extended by a couple of seconds while you wait for the engine to restart and the gearbox to engage drive. And even once all that is finally done, you still have no idea how the car is going to react to your input.

When you’re picking up speed on the move rather than initially pulling away, the throttle does become slightly easier to modulate, making the car a little easier to drive smoothly. However, you’ll still be taken by surprise by the car’s reactions every so often, and you’ll also find that the reactions of the throttle and gearbox are always desperately slow. Overall, the petrol drivetrain doesn’t lack power, but it does lack polish.

As a result, we’re hoping for much brighter things from the all-electric version of the Omoda 5. We haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but we aim to rectify that very soon indeed. It has a 204PS electric motor, which according to the official figures, gives it a 0-62mph time of 7.2 seconds and a top speed of 107mph. Let’s hope it goes about it a bit more smoothly.

According to official WLTP figures, the Omoda E5’s 61kWh battery gives it a range of 257 miles. That’s not too bad in the scheme of things, but many EVs do considerably better. Bear in mind, too, that your real-world returns are likely to be considerably worse than that. Even in seemingly ideal conditions, you should probably expect at least 20% less than the official figure, and if you undertake a long motorway slog in cold conditions, your car’s range readout will drop a lot more quickly.

As we’ve already said, it’s extremely difficult to drive the petrol-powered version of the Omoda 5 smoothly due to the hypersensitivity of the throttle pedal. All too often, the car feels jerky and unpolished when pulling away from the mark. And when the sensitive throttle sends the engine revs shooting skyward, as it does on an all-too-regular basis, the engine sounds coarse and harsh.

The engine does mellow quite a bit once you’ve settled down to a steady motorway cruise, so engine noise isn’t a problem there, and wind noise was also quite well isolated from our test car, which will have been helped in no small part by the double glazed side windows fitted. Road noise is the most prevalent noise on the motorway, but this isn’t an issue, either.

We like it when a car comes with the same extensive amount of safety kit regardless of which of the various trim levels you pick, and that’s the case with the Omoda 5. You get seven airbags to help protect you if the worst happens, and to help prevent it from happening in the first place, you get an extensive suite of driver aids including blind spot detection, lane departure warning and prevention, autonomous emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, rear cross-traffic alert, speed limit recognition and driver attention monitor. 

With the possible exception of that last item, these systems aren’t over-nannying in the way they operate, so you’re not subjected to a constant cacophony of bongs and beeps as you drive along. However, the driver attention monitor can get slightly annoying as it admonishes you on a regular basis for becoming distracted for too long, especially when it’s the car’s infotainment system that’s the whole reason your eyes have been diverted from the road.

The petrol-powered Omoda 5 was subjected to Euro NCAP crash tests back in 2022, a full two years before it went on sale in the UK. It achieved the full five-star rating, which certainly isn’t a given these days. The tests become harder and harder each year, so ordinarily, we couldn’t be sure that a five-star rating of 2022 would stand if the car was tested according to the very latest standards. However, the electric E5 was assessed later in 2024 and achieved the same five-star rating.

We haven’t actually seen official charging times for the Omoda E5’s 61kWh battery. Based on what we’ve observed on other EV batteries of that size, we’d estimate that it’d take around 11 hours to replenish on a regular three-pin domestic socket, whereas if you do what most EV drivers will and get a 7.4kW wall box charger installed at your home, then that period is likely to be cut to more like six hours. Either way, a home charge is likely to cost around £17 if your domestic power is billed at the UK’s national average rate, or around half that if you get yourself on a domestic power tariff that allows you to charge your car overnight on heavily discounted off-peak power.

DC rapid charging is supported, but only at a rate of up to 80kW, which isn’t very fast in truth. Omoda states the ability to charge from 30% to 80% in a fairly reasonable-sounding 28 minutes, but do bear in mind that this only represents half of the battery’s capacity.

It’s notoriously difficult to predict the reliability of an all-new car because there’s no data to go on, and that prediction becomes even more difficult when the all-new car in question is from an all-new brand: well, all-new to the UK at least. As such, we’ll have to suspend judgment in this area for now, at least until Omoda has sold enough cars in the UK to feature in our go-to source of reliability information, the HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index.

The generosity of Omoda’s warranty should provide you with some confidence, though, the standard arrangement being a seven-year, 100,000-mile affair. The battery warranty on the EV version runs for an additional year but with the same mileage limit.

On top of that, you also get complimentary RAC breakdown cover for the first year, and this can be extended for a further six years if you get your car serviced according to schedule at a recognised Omoda dealer.

Buy your petrol-powered Omoda 5 in entry-level Comfort spec, and your car will sit in insurance group 32 (out of 50, with premiums being the more expensive the higher the number). Upgrade to Noble trim, and your classification rises to group 33. Go for the all-electric E5 version, and the Comfort sits in group 34 while the Noble sits in group 35.

Regardless of whether you choose the petrol-powered version of the Omoda 5 or the EV, you’ll pay the same flat rate of VED tax. That’s because the exchequer has now scrapped the previous VED exemption for electric cars. This flat rate currently stands at £195 per year. More positively, no version of the Omoda 5 costs more than £40,000, even with optional extras, so no version is liable for the additional ‘expensive car’ supplement, which can drastically increase the amount of tax you pay in the first six years of ownership.

We’ve already talked elsewhere about the safety and infotainment kit that the various different versions of the Omoda 5 get, so we won’t repeat ourselves by talking about it again here.

In terms of other luxury kit, the entry-level Comfort version comes with single-zone air-conditioning, leatherette upholstery, powered front seat adjustment, powered windows, power adjustment and folding for the door mirrors, front- and rear parking sensors, a reversing camera, keyless entry and go, 18-inch alloy wheels, privacy glass, LED lighting all round, automatic lights and wipers, and adaptive cruise control.

Upgrade to the Noble trim, and you also get a powered sunroof, powered tailgate, 360-degree cameras, dual-zone air-con, heated front seats, and heated steering wheel.