Used MG5 review (2020-2024)

If you've scrolled through our image gallery, you've probably already seen the issue – the MG5 isn't exactly a looker. This is a car that was sold during the 2020s but with styling borrowed from the mid-2000s. Its profile is both awkwardly short in length and strangely tall in height, with the car looking like someone's shoved blocks into its suspension.

Pre-facelift cars built until 2022 were especially bland with a generic front grille and headlight setup. MG did try to correct this with the facelift version, ditching the grille and swapping in a simple black bar to connect its beadier headlights. However, none of these additions manage to disguise the MG5's tired design, and virtually all new MGs that've followed since look much more modern by comparison.

For some, the looks will already have discounted the MG5 from consideration but, if you're less bothered by superficial considerations, there's a lot of substance here. Stepping inside the car reveals some key benefits. For example, the cabin is spacious and the dashboard is easy to get your head around, not to mention that you won't have to look at the car's outside anymore!

More important than that, however, is the car's pricing. Even the most recent MG5s you can buy on 74 plates cost less than £15,000 at the time of writing. That's less than half their brand-new price after just 18 months on the road. Every comparable used EV we found required some compromise – either less space, less range or an older numberplate than our MG5. And, if you want a fuel-powered rival, you'll need to spend thousands more to find something comparable to the MG5. 

Speaking of range, all recent MG5s came with the same 61kWh battery pack. This returns up to 250 miles on a full charge in ideal conditions. That's not an especially impressive figure these days, with many long-range EVs cracking more than 400 miles, while the BMW iX3 has just hit the 500-mile er… milestone. However, weigh up the MG5 against cars in the same cost range and it quickly becomes one of the longest-range options at this price.

Ultimately, the MG5 is a car that appeals to the head over the heart. As a used car, it offers a great price-to-range ratio, along with a practical cabin and long standard equipment list. Plus, it's smooth and easy to drive, and remains hushed at speed. It just lacks the exciting or desirable edge that many modern EVs enjoy, so you're unlikely to find yourself lusting after it, despite its many sensible benefits.

Read on to learn about the MG5's practicality, performance and handling in more detail.

Considering the MG5's underwhelming exterior, your expectations for the cabin might be quite low. But you're in for a pleasant surprise either way as the interior is nicer than the car's price suggests. The layout is a fairly typical mix of physical controls for important functions, with a centre-mounted infotainment system handling everything else. Build quality feels robust, and you'll find soft-touch surfaces and stitched details that elevate the MG above most of its European competitors.

It's quick to acclimatise to the MG's dashboard. Key driving controls like the gear selector, drive mode and regenerative braking adjustment are in the centre console, falling neatly under your left hand. A few points are lost as the climate controls are confined to the touchscreen, but you do get a physical shortcut button to jump straight to that menu. This sits in the same row as the volume up and down buttons, which we prefer to all screen-based alternatives, but still isn't as easy to use as a proper dial.

The infotainment screen is a mostly solid effort. You'll find persistent shortcut icons on the driver's side, plus physical buttons below to jump to the home screen or the climate controls. Between those, you're rarely more than a few taps away from whatever function you're looking for. The graphics are sharp and fuss-free making it easy to understand the menu layouts, too. However, the very best in class now have screens that dwarf the MG5's modest display, and faster processors so there's no interruption as you wait for a menu to load.

You'll find another digital display behind the steering wheel, but this unit is less impressive. We like that your speed and power figures are high-contrast digital numbers on either side – but the centre area is a naff-looking low-contrast unit with too many colours, fonts and graphics all competing for your attention. There's important information here like your current drive mode and regenerative braking level, but it's much less prominent than the huge, mostly pointless Tesla-style graphic showing other cars detected around the MG5.

The MG5 shares its platform with the Roewe i5 – a Chinese-market petrol-powered car. As a result, it can't take full advantage of its electric layout in the same way that the EV-only MG4 can. That means you have a longer vestigial bonnet that previously concealed an engine now robbing space from the MG5's passengers. Those sat up front won't notice, but rear-seat space is decidedly average. Seat a very tall person in front and you'll struggle to get even a short adult sat behind them.

Even your front passenger might whinge a little once they notice there's no height adjustment on their seat – potentially leaving their knees at an uncomfortable angle. Although, that complaint will be drowned out once again by your rear-seat passengers. This is because the rear bench is mounted quite high, which means even average-sized adults will find their heads getting uncomfortably close to the ceiling.

But this is an estate car, right? So you might think MG's restricted the passenger space in favour of a big boot. Unfortunately, the 479-litre cargo area is only average for family cars this size and, compared to estate rivals, actually lags behind most of the class. Again, we suspect this mid-table practicality is the result of shoehorning a battery pack underneath a platform originally designed for a petrol engine. Nevertheless, the MG5 should still provide enough storage for a pushchair or a medium-sized pooch.

Despite not being designed as an EV, the MG5 does share a handy storage feature with many battery-powered models. That would be the handy shelf beneath the centre console where a transmission tunnel would traditionally go. It's just large enough to slot an average handbag or a bulky purse, and easily accessible as you get in and out of the car. Beyond that, you get the usual combo of a glovebox, armrest cubby and door bins for your paraphernalia.

There's just one electric motor available for the MG5 – a 156hp unit powering the front wheels. This draws power from a 61kWh battery pack giving the car a claimed 250-mile range. None of those figures are remotely close to what the latest and greatest EVs can accomplish, but should be enough for most drivers, most of the time.

If you're tackling long distances in your MG5, you can fast-charge the car at up to 87kW – again, a pretty pedestrian figure compared with newer EVs. This is enough for a benchmark 10-80% charge in 35 minutes, but a long way off the best in class. Like most EVs, the MG5 will work best if you can do the majority of your charging at home.

So the motor setup doesn't stand out on paper, but it makes a much better impression on real roads. You get a smooth, linear wall of torque pushing the car forwards with no waiting for an engine to spin up, or for a gearbox to swap cogs. We're also a little unsure of the car's 156hp rating as we thought it felt a little quicker in practice, with confident acceleration all the way up to fast motorway speeds.

It's well tuned too, with a brief ramp-up of power to stop you spinning tyres or clonking your passengers' heads against the headrests. The brakes are also easy to modulate, with no perceptible handover between the motor's regenerative braking and the physical brake disks.

Look at the MG5 in profile and you might notice it rides quite high. There's lots of suspension travel and a decent amount of ground clearance. Not only is this a benefit when tackling Britain's scruffy roads, but it also means lots of travel for the car's springs and dampers to absorb impacts. As a result, the MG5 rides fairly comfortably, with the soft setup cushioning most bumps before they make it to the cabin.

Like some other softly sprung cars we've tried, however, the flip-side is that the suspension's reactions are sometimes too slow to keep up with faster bumps. That means short, sharp impacts like motorway expansion joints can beat the springs and make it up into the car's body. Similarly, very poor road surfaces will send a little vibration through the floor into the base of your seat.

You might expect that slackening off the car's suspension might impact its handling – and you'd be right. The tall ride height and soft springs combine to give the car a slightly wobbly sensation if you start driving like a hooligan. You'll get lots of body roll through tight corners and some ungainly side-to-side motions through quick direction changes.

Inevitably, the MG5's lack of athleticism means most drivers end up driving the car in a fairly sedate manner – and this is where it's as its best. Once you settle down, you'll find the intuitive steering and pedals make placing the car on the road easy, and you have the instant reactions of the electric motor available any time you want to jump through a gap in traffic.