OMODA Omoda 5 Review & Prices

In the early 2000s it was Hyundai and Kia that were offering cheap ‘n’ cheerful cars with loads of standard equipment and small price tags - in the 2020s, it’s the Chinese. Omoda is the latest Chinese car brand to hit the UK, and it’s doing so with this - the Omoda 5 SUV.

And in the same way that a Greggs opening up shop next to a local bakery will cause some raised eyebrows, the Omoda aims to offer customers the same stuff they’re used to, but at a lower price. Other budget SUVs it’s taking aim at include the MG HS, Skoda Karoq and our favourite, the Citroen C5 Aircross.

A quick word about Omoda. While the brand is new to the UK, it’s been on sale in Asian territories for a while and is an offshoot of one of China’s biggest manufacturers - Chery, which sells about as many cars worldwide as Tesla. So don’t go thinking this is a bit player.

There’s certainly nothing surprising about the styling. The Omoda 5 could charitably brand itself as ‘inspired’ by existing SUVs rather than straight copying them - this does mean it’s pretty bland and inoffensive to look at, though the glitzy grille is a little brash. Sculptured flanks, ‘upside-down’ headlight arrangements and a full-width element joining the rear lights is all pretty par for the course. It’s smart, but you won’t stand out in a crowd.

For interior space, the Omoda 5 lags behind the competition. It’s not a particularly small car, but rear legroom is quite poor and headroom in both rows of seats is pretty dreadful. Small rear doors also make loading child seats a pain, and the boot is a cramped 380 litres in capacity - about the same size as a regular family hatchback’s.

The 5 does win back some points when you look at the standard equipment list, though. Even the base-spec ‘Comfort’ model gets all-round LED lights, a twin-screen dashboard setup, heated and electrically-adjustable front seats, and wireless smartphone connectivity.

You also get a powerful 190hp engine and an automatic gearbox. If you went to Volkswagen with the same amount of money burning a hole in your pocket, they’d be able to sell you a basic-spec T-Cross with a five-speed manual.

Despite the powerful engine, the Omoda 5 isn’t sporty to drive, or particularly satisfying. It’s quite quiet out on the road, but the soft suspension gets easily unsettled on poor road surfaces and the gearbox has a tendency to be dimwitted, especially around town.

And what you save in purchase price, you’ll pay for at the pumps. Fuel economy from the Omoda 5 is very poor compared to most alternatives, and high CO2 emissions means it’s not going to make it on many company car lists. For a more appealing alternative here, you could try the all-electric Omoda E5 instead.

If the allure of a powerful engine and loads of standard equipment for not much money gets you, then check out our best Omoda 5 deals here. You can check out our other favourite family cars and SUVs too, and remember Carwow can even help you sell your old car when the time comes.

The Omoda 5 range kicks off at a little more than £25,000. That’s very competitive indeed - a Skoda Karoq starts at more than £28,000, or more than £40,000 if you want one with a similar level of power and equipment. In fact, the Omoda 5 starts at a couple of hundred pounds less than a basic Volkswagen T-Cross, which has far less equipment and exactly half the horsepower.

If you want the better-equipped Noble variant of the Omoda 5, even that will only set you back £27,000. It's easy to see why the Omoda 5 could be a really compelling proposition, looking at the specs and equipment versus the cost.

A powerful engine, but dimwitted gearbox and wallowy suspension spoil matters

In town

The Omoda 5 is a bit annoying to drive in town for a few reasons - but there are some positive points. Every model comes with a reversing camera, and top-spec Noble cars get a 360-degree surround-view monitor which even activates at junctions to help you avoid clipping kerbs. Noble models also get air purification in the climate control to help take those inner-city nasties out - a nice touch usually reserved for upmarket cars.

However, the gearbox can be a pain. At junctions it can be hesitant, refusing to pull away without first girding its loins - and then it has the tendency to do so with rather more gusto than needed. All of this makes for jerky progress. It’s all too easy to accidentally select Manual mode on the gear lever, leaving you stuck in first gear until you realise and rectify this.

The suspension is a bit wallowy, too. It’s soft enough to iron out bumps, but you soon notice that the car’s body keeps moving for a little bit after you’ve been over a big pothole or speed hump. This can be a bit nauseating. Visibility is also quite poor, especially for taller drivers whose heads will almost be touching the ceiling, meaning you have to lean forwards to get a good look at traffic lights. As for the rear-view mirror - it’s bizarre, being wide-angled enough to see not just the rear window but both front-seat passengers at the same time. It gives the sensation of looking down a tunnel and isn’t really very useful for judging distance.

On the motorway

The Omoda’s 190hp engine is a boon on the motorway, especially when you compare it to the rather gutless SUVs you can usually buy at this price point. It makes short sliproads and overtaking much easier, and combined with the seven-speed gearbox which keeps revs low it’s quite relaxing.

Wind, road and engine noise are well contained and the suspension is a bit less irritating on smoother roads - though if you hit a bump or a crest the car does still bob about for a while after.

The Omoda has a full suite of assisted driving features, with adaptive cruise control standard on both models. These work fine, though even the closest following distance is rather hesitant. The lane-keeping aids are fairly unobtrusive though the obligatory driver attention monitor and speed limit assist are very irritating - and require quite a bit of searching through menus to turn off.

On a twisty road

Despite the powerful engine the Omoda is not a sporty SUV, and you’ll be able to show it a clean pair of heels in a similarly powerful Skoda Karoq or Nissan Qashqai as they’re just much more reassuring to drive. The Omoda’s steering is very remote, giving you no real idea what the front wheels are up to, and it leans a fair bit in bends too.

Even in ‘Sport’ mode the gearbox can be hesitant, and there are no steering wheel-mounted paddles to take control yourself - you have to do that from the central selector, which isn’t particularly fun.

A small boot and cramped rear seats, but storage spaces aren’t bad

The Omoda’s front passengers sit in fairly comfortable seats, with the driver’s adjustable electrically as standard. Electric adjustment for the passenger seat comes with the Noble trim level. However, neither seat can be set low enough for even a moderately tall driver - our 6’2 tester’s hair was brushing the headlining, so if you’re taller than that you should definitely test-drive the Omoda before buying to check you fit.

Storage space consists of a reasonable glovebox and door bins, a centre cubby and a pair of cupholders. There’s also a big space under the centre console suitable for things you want accessible but out of the way. And up top, you get a pair of spaces to store your phone, one of which is a wireless charger - though it’s a shame this is the one positioned furthest from the driver.

Space in the back seats

Though the Omoda 5 isn’t a particularly small car, space in the rear is quite limited. Sat behind a six-foot driver, there’s limited legroom, and though the centre seat is flat and there isn’t too much of a hump in the floor the cabin is still a bit too narrow to accommodate three adults comfortably.

The real issue is headroom, though, which is very poor. A six-foot adult will find their head brushing the roof, and the door line is quite a bit lower than the roofline so you really have to duck your head to get in or out. ISOFIX points are on both outer rear seats, but there’s not a lot of room for a bulky rear-facing car seat and the doors make getting one in quite tricky.

Boot space

With just a 380-litre boot on tap the Omoda 5 doesn’t offer much of a practicality boost over a standard family hatchback such as a Golf. Certainly all of its main SUV alternatives have more space on offer - the Citroen C5 Aircross has 580 litres, the MG HS has 507 litres, and even the dinky VW T-Cross has 385 litres of space.

While the Omoda’s boot is quite long, it’s also shallow, and the rigid parcel shelf means you’ll have to remove it to carry larger items. There’s also nowhere to store it inside the car. The rear seats fold down easily, though you may need to remove the bulky headrests first to stop them fouling on the front seatbacks, and then they leave a reasonably flat load area for bigger items.

Generally very posh-feeling for the money, but lacks the final polish

The Omoda’s interior looks very premium when you first step in. The dashboard has two 10.3-inch screens across the top for driver information and infotainment, set under a single housing a lot like a Mercedes. The phone charging pads look very like what you get on a Tesla Model 3, the climate controls look straight out of a Nissan Ariya and the gear selector has Audi written all over it. Not literally. So, like the exterior, it’s a bit of pastiche of lots of other cars.

Some of Omoda’s design decisions are more successful than others. We like the minimalist centre console, the strip of climate controls separate from the touchscreen and the straightforward steering wheel and column stalk controls. Less good is the interesting pairing of matte chrome AND rose gold trim - pick one - the busy driver information display, and some of the more oddly-placed controls.

The infotainment is a lot like the systems on other Chinese cars like BYD or MG - it’s clearly powerful, with a sharp, clear screen, but the menu system is a bit labyrinthine and based too much around tiny virtual buttons that are very hard to hit on the move.

There are some clangers, too - if the system detects you’ve looked away from the road for too long, it flashes up a warning in the cluster saying ‘You have been distracted!’ - ironically very distracting in itself.

Quality is a mixed bag, but you’d expect that in a car this price. Some of the plastics feel quite cheap and there are some really poor areas, like very ill-fitting floor mats, but most of what you touch feels posh and premium. It definitely appears to be much more expensive than its price tag, and compared to similarly priced cars from other brands it comes out rather well.

The Omoda’s 1.6-litre petrol engine is extremely thirsty compared to most alternatives. Omoda claims about 31mpg, though we got an average of 34mpg over a lot of mixed mileage. That’s really poor for a car of this size - any comparable SUV, even much larger ones, can get over 40mpg with their petrol engines. An equivalent VW T-Cross will get over 50mpg without much difficulty. That’s a difference of around £600 a year in fuel bills based on 10,000 miles - not insignificant.

The Omoda’s tank is quite small, too, so you’ll struggle to get 400 miles from a fill necessitating lots of visits to petrol stations.

With CO2 emissions of 170g/km, the Omoda falls into the most expensive band for company car Benefit-in-Kind tax, and attracts a beefy £680 first year’s tax bill.

No arguing with Omoda here - the 5 achieved a full five-star Euro NCAP safety rating when it was tested for the European market back in 2022. Scores of 87% for both adult and child occupants are pretty good.

The usual glut of standard safety systems are fitted - lane-keeping aids, adaptive cruise control and speed limit assist. These have to be turned on and off through quite a fiddly menu, while alternatives have shortcuts set up - a useful touch that we’d love Omoda to implement.

It’s a bit early to say if Omoda will prove to be a reliable brand or not. Chinese brands have mixed reputations in the UK - MG, for example, came flat bottom in the 2024 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey. Omoda’s parent company, Chery, has never sold cars in the UK but is a vast brand globally,

Omoda is offering its cars with a 7-year, 100,000 mile warranty - the equal of a Kia or MG - which should be reassuring.