MG HS Review & Prices

MG is on a bit of a roll at the moment, with its latest electric cars and the new MG3 hatchback seriously impressing. The metamorphosis continues with an all-new version of its mass-market family-sized SUV - the HS.

The previous HS was firmly in the ‘cheap but not very cheerful’ category, but this new model is rather more desirable and capable, despite not being much more expensive. It’s a bit like a Harvester - nobody’s going to consider it a high-end option, but if you’re looking to feed the whole family on a budget, it’s nice enough that you don’t feel punished for your penny-pinching.

The HS’s alternatives are numerous, and the MG’s price point means it can effectively compete with smaller SUVs such as the Ford Puma on price, but is more akin to a Ford Kuga in size. One alternative that pulls this off better than any is the Citroen C5 Aircross, which is so good we gave it the Family Values gong in the 2024 Carwow Awards.

Other alternatives include the Kia Sportage, Nissan Qashqai and Skoda Karoq, while the BYD Seal U is another SUV that puts affordability first.

For a car that’s not much more expensive than a Volkswagen Polo hatchback, you might expect the MG HS to be cramped inside. That’s certainly not the case, though - a six-foot adult can stretch out in the back, while there’s a 507-litre boot that’s on par with the competition.

Storage for smaller items isn’t the best, and nor is the layout and feel of the cabin up front. You can see where MG’s tried, with dual 12.3-inch screens set behind one continuous frontage to make it look like a single widescreen display - but the basic graphics and vast bezels mean you’re hardly going to mistake it for a BMW X3 any time soon.

Those screens provide all the information you need, and the infotainment system is certainly a huge improvement over the last HS. They’re a bit awkward to use, however, and physical switchgear is limited to just the steering wheel and a few shortcut buttons.

The HS is available with a normal petrol engine with manual or automatic gearboxes - it’s fine, but it’s not the headline-grabber. That honour goes to the HS plug-in hybrid, which can do an amazing 75 miles on a full charge. With this, not only can you run the HS like a fully electric car for the vast majority of your journeys, but it nudges the HS into the 5% Benefit-in-Kind tax band - making it hundreds of pounds a month cheaper than the equivalent Kia Sportage or Ford Kuga for company car drivers.

The way the HS drives has been improved hugely over the outgoing car, but it’s still not fantastic. A Kia Sportage or Ford Kuga handle bumps better and steer more sweetly than the HS, and they feel more responsive and reassuring in the corners. However, if you’re just bimbling around town, or cruising along the motorway, you won’t find too much to dislike about driving the HS.

If the new MG HS seems like the SUV for you, check out our best MG HS deals on Carwow. You can see our other MG deals here, or search for a used MG for sale here. And remember, Carwow can even help you sell your old car.

The MG HS starts from just a few hundred pounds more than a Citroen C5 Aircross - though it gets a long list of standard equipment making it very good value on paper. That makes it a significant amount less than any other SUV of this size, though - the Kia Sportage, Ford Kuga and Toyota RAV4 all seem very pricey by comparison.

The pricing is simple to understand, too. It’s a £1,500 jump if you’d like an automatic gearbox, and a £2,500 jump to go from basic SE trim to the range-topping Trophy.

The HS PHEV, meanwhile, does the same trick of being far cheaper than alternatives - it even undercuts the Citroen C5 Aircross PHEV by almost £4,000.

A decent engine and impressive plug-in hybrid - but the HS doesn’t handle corners or ride bumps as well as the best family cars

In town

The HS has pretty soft suspension, so it can handle bigger bumps without too much thudding - at the expense of feeling a little uncontrolled. Hit a speed bump too fast and you’ll feel the car bouncing a little. The steering is quite heavy right off the centre before becoming very light, which is a little disconcerting but doesn’t take too long to get used to.

Visibility isn’t amazing - the windscreen pillars are quite thick, and you can’t easily see the front corners of the bonnet. There’s also a big blind spot over your shoulder thanks to very chunky C-pillars.

However, all models get a reversing camera and the Trophy spec comes with a really useful 360-degree monitor which can even give a ‘transparent chassis’ effect - using the camera feeds to show you what’s underneath the car as well as around it.

The plug-in hybrid is the best engine to choose for town driving. With up to 75 miles of pure electric range - and plenty of power from the electric motor - it truly feels like driving a regular electric SUV, making it very smooth and pleasant. The automatic petrol, by contrast, is a bit jerky, while the manual has a light action albeit with a slightly rubbery shift.

On the motorway

Both the regular petrol and the plug-in hybrid HS are impressively refined on the motorway, with very little engine noise allowed to penetrate the cabin. Wind and road noise is quite well-contained as well, making the HS much quieter than many budget SUVs.

There’s ample power from either engine, but the petrol’s 169hp does rather trail the 371hp on offer from the plug-in hybrid. The former feels adequate to haul this large family SUV up to speed, but it does need working quite hard on a sliproad or to execute decisive overtakes.

The PHEV, meanwhile, has loads of power in reserve - with more than 200hp from the electric motor alone, even when it’s running as a pure EV it feels impressively peppy right up to the legal limit.

The HS’s soft suspension irons out bumps on faster roads well, but like at lower speeds it has a tendency to bounce around if it hits a sharper pothole or crevice.

MG’s full suite of driver assistance aids come with the HS, and the adaptive cruise control is a pretty good system - it works well and the alerts aren’t too annoying. More on the rest of the car’s safety assists later, however…

On a twisty road

The HS isn’t much fun to drive on a twisty road. You can go for the manual gearbox for maximum driver involvement, or the PHEV for the most power - but both have dead, lifeless steering that doesn’t communicate what the front wheels are doing, and limited grip that leads to the car washing wide in fast corners.

The body can lean quite a bit in bends, too, so for the sake of your family in the back it’s probably better to take it easy on a twisting road. A Ford Kuga is much more fun to fling about in the corners.

Lots of space in the back, but limited storage for small items and alternatives have bigger boots

Front-seat occupants in the MG HS are quite well-treated. The seats get electric adjustment and are wide and reasonably supportive. It’s a shame that they don’t adjust for tilt, though, as long-legged drivers will feel like they need a bit more under-thigh support.

There are a pair of cupholders ahead of the gear lever and a wireless phone charger ahead of it, plus a small space under the armrest. The glovebox is a reasonable size, as are the door bins - the only thing that’s really missing is a quick place to stash keys or wallets that isn’t out of sight. It’s also a shame that, while there are two USB ports, they’re USB-A and not the more modern and universal USB-C that more and more cars are including.

Space in the back seats

A six-foot passenger can sit behind a six-foot driver with room to spare, so it’s fair to say that rear seat space in the MG HS is easily on par with a Citroen C5 Aircross or Kia Sportage in this regard. The centre seat is quite narrow, but the bench is pretty flat so it doesn’t feel like you’re uncomfortably perched way up.

Rear passengers get a totally flat floor with plenty of foot room, large rear windows for a good view out and a fold-down centre armrest with a couple of cupholders. There are also door bins which can accommodate a bottle of water, plus a couple of USB-A ports in the centre for keeping gadgets charged.

Boot space

With a 507-litre boot, the new HS has addressed one of the issues of its predecessor - and impressively, despite the large battery, the plug-in hybrid doesn’t lose any boot space. That means that while the petrol’s boot is smaller than a Citroen C5 Aircross (580 litres) or Ford Kuga (526 litres), the PHEV’s is actually bigger than the equivalent version of either of those cars, which only get 460 and 475 litres of space respectively.

It’s roomy, but not very clever - you don’t get any bag hooks or tie-down points, and while the seats do fold down totally flat you have to walk around or reach through to do so. There’s a small space under the floor which can accommodate a few bits and pieces, such as the hybrid’s charging cable.

The most luxurious MG interior yet, but software still leaves a little to be desired

The HS’s dashboard looks like a million dollars compared with the old car’s - it’s modern and uses some pretty high-quality materials in places. The dash is dominated by two 12.3-inch screens, one for driver information and the other for infotainment, while other physical controls are limited to those around the steering wheel and a row of shortcut switches underneath the central display.

You don’t have to prod around for long to find cheap materials - the door cards, glovebox lid and lower part of the centre console all feel hard and scratchy, but that’s to be expected in a car as cheap as this.

The infotainment software is the same as you’ll find in the MG3 and MG4, which is to say it’s not bad but could be improved. There are too many fiddly menus to contend with, some of which don’t feel like they’re well optimised for a touchscreen.

While there are physical shortcut buttons to demist the front and rear windscreens, plus one to turn the climate control on and off altogether, we’d prefer if these took you to the car’s various menus instead as they don’t really save you too many button presses.

The driver display isn’t as good as alternatives, either. While it can display a full-screen map - which is nice - you can’t get a proper analogue rev counter, which can be annoying in manual models. There’s quite a lot of wasted space, too, with tiny readouts surrounded by big swathes of nothing.

Starting with the regular petrol HS - we achieved around 44mpg on a mixed road route, which is pretty good for a car of this size. Expect that to dip to less than 40mpg if you’re just driving through town, but prolonged motorway use might see it creep up a little further.

CO2 emissions of 168g/km for the manual and 173g/km for the automatic mean you’re unlikely to recommend this as a company car, however, as tax bills will be quite high.

The PHEV, however, has the potential for extremely low running costs indeed. Official tests peg the fuel consumption at a remarkable 672.6mpg, a product of its huge 75-mile electric range. That’s among the highest range of any PHEV on sale, beaten only by the Mercedes GLC 300e and Range Rover Sport P460e - both of which cost far, far more than the HS.

This is thanks to a battery that’s actually bigger than the one you got in a first-generation Nissan Leaf - an impressive showcase of how far PHEVs have come. It endows the HS with official CO2 figures of just 12g/km - punting it into the 5% band for company car tax. This means it’ll be a good couple of hundred pounds per month cheaper as a company car than the equivalent Sportage or Kuga PHEV.

Fuel economy obviously depends on how you drive it, but 75 miles of EV-only range is enough to encompass the overwhelming majority of journeys without ever having to use the petrol engine. And with impressive performance from the electric motor, you won’t feel the need to call on the engine just so you can keep up with traffic, either. When we get a chance to test the HS PHEV on a longer route we’ll tell you how efficient it is (or isn’t) with a discharged battery.

One slight shame is that you can’t fast-charge the HS, like you can with some other large-capacity PHEVs. At a maximum rate of 7kW from a wallbox charger, it’ll take more than four hours to charge - not a problem if you’re topping up overnight, but it means you can’t really take advantage of public charge points to replenish your batteries on a long run.

Euro NCAP hasn’t crash-tested the MG HS yet, but the old model scored a full five stars when it was tested back in 2019. The only other MG tested since then was the MG4, which also scored five stars. As a family car, MG’s doubtless targeting a high rating here, and we’ll update this review once it’s been put through its paces.

The usual roster of safety equipment is all standard - autonomous emergency braking, speed limit assist, lane-keeping aids and more. Some of these systems work better than others, though. We found the lane-keeping to be unobtrusive and we were happy to keep it on, however the driver attention warning was so annoying that it actually reduced the attention we paid to the road as we frantically tried to shut it up by turning it off.

With all these systems in slightly fiddly menus within the touchscreen there’s actually more risk you might hit something while trying to get rid of them. Best to do this before you set off, then - but we wish MG would fit a shortcut button, like some manufacturers have started doing.

MG has enough faith in its cars to offer a seven-year, 80,000-mile warranty with all of them. However, the brand performs poorly in the Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, with more than a third of MG owners reporting a problem with their vehicle.

It’s too early to make a definitive call on MG HS reliability, though. The engines used in this model are all-new - which can be a good or bad thing, either remedying the problems of older engines or introducing a whole host of new ones. Time will tell.