Jaecoo 5 review

The exterior might be eye-catching, but the cabin is nowhere near as arresting. To give the Jaecoo 5 its dues, it’s mostly stitched together well and the set-up – huge touchscreen in the middle and not much switchgear – is ubiquitous these days.

But considering the firm’s ‘luxury’ spiel, the materials are pushing it. Gloss black is a magnet for fingerprints; the steering wheel trim is downright nasty; the lack of colour is rather humdrum. Meh. It’s like the designers had no affection for the poor thing, or any concept of making it desirable.

You can forgive the hard-wearing plastics on the doors, this is a budget car after all. The synthetic leather seats are fine and reasonably cushioned, but not very supportive.

The layout isn’t the best either. The cupholders are angled in such a way that the front passenger gets no armrest cushioning, beneath which is a storage box that’s rather small. Ho hum. Under the centre console there’s an open storage space with USBs and a 12V socket, but they’re hard to get at.

What about the touchscreen, is that any good?

Let’s start with the positives. It’s bright, crisp, sensibly slanted to avoid glare, and responds well. No complaints there. You’ll find the climate controls on the bottom portion of the screen, and they’re only a swipe away when you’ve got Apple CarPlay or Android Auto Activated.

But the logic behind it is, let’s say, peculiar. Most of the settings are housed in a series of tabs and pages that need endless scrolling to navigate, so interacting with it on the move is like attempting brain surgery on horseback. And yes, you’ll be buzzed with a distraction warning in seconds.

The homescreen is half-filled with icons, which means a lot of the space goes to waste. But even some of those are redundant or as good as. The sat nav, for example: that’s not included on the petrol car, but the shortcut for it survives. Why? Why retain a dead end for no reason?

Meanwhile the driver display wisely avoids bombarding you with information. Unless it’s the ADAS complaining, obvs. Jaecoo is hardly alone there.

Be honest, how practical is it?

This is where the Jaecoo 5 starts to claw back some respectability. Legroom in the back is okay behind a tall-ish driver, but copious behind a smaller one. Headroom is adequate for six footers. And if you’ve got the Luxury trim’s sunroof wide open, it’s as gloriously bright as the weather will allow.

Meanwhile the 480-litre boot will serve you well for pretty much everything this side of moving house, with a huge pit of space underneath the flat floor. 1,180 litres can be yours if you knock the back seats down. That's comparable with this car's chief competition.