Audi SQ5 Sportback Review & Prices

The SQ5 Sportback is the sporty, high-performance version of the Audi Q5 Sportback coupe-SUV, which itself is the more style-focused version of the family-favourite Audi Q5 SUV. Phew.

It may be once, twice, three times an Audi, but at its core the SQ5 Sportback is a fast, comfortable and striking - if a little garish - family car. It’s not the most practical people-carrying solution though, and its size does spoil the fun on a country lane. Brace your wallet too, as it’s a thirsty beast thanks to its 3.0-litre V6 engine.

Think of the SQ5 Sportback as a pair of chunky-soled, fashionable but uber-expensive trainers. They don’t make much sense, but they’re easy to live with and head turning - if you can stomach the price.

Quick SUVs are all the rage at the moment, and the SQ5 Sportback has some compelling alternatives in the BMW X3 M50i and Mercedes GLC 43 AMG Coupe. The Volvo EC40 Dual Motor and Tesla Model Y are electric alternatives to consider, and if the rakish roofline isn’t to your taste, the SQ5 SUV is available.

Only the BMW and Mercedes give the SQ5 a run for its money when it comes to road presence. The front end is pretty much all grille, especially when specified with gloss black trims, and the slim LED headlights and fancy OLED rear light bar are quite pretty.

Four enormous and functional exhaust tips mark the SQ5 Sportback out against its lesser-engined counterparts; a welcome return to form after Audi’s love affair with plastic exhaust trims.

The interior is divisive too, with Audi’s latest generation of infotainment screens dominating the SQ5’s dashboard. A 14.5-inch touchscreen infotainment display and 11.9-inch driver’s screen combo reside in a sleek, curved panel. There’s a rather gimmicky, separate, 10.9-inch touchscreen display for the passenger too.

Less divisive are the SQ5’s standard-fit heated and ventilated sports seats, which are as comfortable to sit in as they are nice to look at. The driver’s seat is highly adjustable, as is the steering wheel, but material quality is not at all up to scratch for a car this expensive, with far too many cheap-feeling plastics on the doors cards, lower dashboard and centre console. Shame.

The SQ5 Sportback’s rear bench is comfortable and spacious for leg room in the outer seats, but headroom is far from generous. Middle seat travel should be reserved for emergencies only, as the gearbox tunnel bump is huge and you sit even closer to the roof.

Boot space is enough for a family of four at 470 litres - only 5 litres behind the regular SQ5 - but lags massively behind the Mercedes GLC Coupe and BMW X3.

Around town the SQ5 Sportback is hassle-free, absorbing any harsh blow thrown at it, and with handy 360-degree parking cameras as standard. Motorways are comfortable, with minimal wind noise and bumps and dips ironed out well. Country lanes are a mixed bag; the SQ5’s size makes tight roads feel unnerving, but there’s no denying its performance, with a rapid 0-62mph time of 4.5 seconds.

As a fast, luxurious family car it’s definitely worth considering, though it is a little compromised. Check out new Audi SQ5 Sportback deals on Carwow, or Audi SQ5 Sportback lease deals instead. There are used Audi SQ5 Sportbacks available through our network of trusted dealers, or other used Audis for sale if you want to browse the range. Carwow can even help you sell your current car when the time comes.

The Audi SQ5 Sportback is easily the most expensive fruit on the Audi Q5 family tree, and at launch you’ve only got the ‘Edition 1’ car to choose from at just over £76,000. That puts it at around £6000 more than a BMW X3 M50i, but around £2000 less than the Mercedes GLC 43 AMG Coupe.

Edition 1 cars come very well equipped as standard though, with 360-degree cameras, 21-inch alloy wheels, Matrix LED headlights and OLED taillights as well as (fantastic) lane keeping active cruise control. It’s a bit cheeky that the only free colour is gloss white though.

The SQ5 Sportback blends comfortable suspension with strong performance, but there’s no escaping its size when pushing on

In town

As soon as you set off in the SQ5 Sportback it’s clear that you’re in for a comfy journey. Even with its rather chunky A-pillars, forward visibility is good thanks to a high seating position and slim, frameless rear-view mirror.

The standard-fit air suspension does a great job of absorbing pothole blows and harsh, broken road surfaces when it’s set to the default ‘comfort’ mode. Granted, big speedbumps and dips do shake you around a touch, but that’s to be expected given it’s a sporty ‘S’ model - and it’s never uncomfortable.

Pulling away from junctions can be annoying though, as the SQ5’s mild hybrid system and stop-start does its best to get you going before the engine kicks in. That makes it feel awfully sluggish until the engine kicks in, at which point you get pushed back into your seat and reminded of the 4.5-second 0-62mph time.

Parking the SQ5 Sportback ends up being a bit of a procedure; the turning circle isn’t great, and the rakish roofline and thick rear pillars restrict rear visibility, forcing you to rely on the parking cameras. Fortunately the cameras are excellent, high-quality items that give you a crisp image with handy angles for seeing exactly how close the wheels are to the curb.

On the motorway

Motorways are even more comfortable, as the SQ5 Sportback really settles into a comfortable cruise at high speed, gliding over motorway dips and ruts. There’s very little in the way of wind noise, but road noise isn’t quite as well contained on the standard-fit 21-inch wheels and wide tyres.

Getting up to speed is a piece of cake, thanks to a 365hp 3.0-litre V6 turbocharged engine and seven-speed automatic gearbox. All it takes is a gentle flex of your right foot and you’re (very quickly) at the national speed limit.

The active cruise control that comes as standard on the SQ5 Sportback is one of the best in the business, keeping you centred in your lane with little fuss and no bouncing from side-to-side as in some of its alternatives.

On a twisty road

Audi has done well to hide the SQ5’s weight; it feels responsive to your inputs and can carry impressive speed down a twisty country lane. The steering wheel is well weighted in sports mode, heavy enough to communicate how much grip the front wheels have without being annoying to steer.

The brisk acceleration between corners is a good laugh too, as are the powerful brakes which give you confidence. It does a good job of absorbing bumps in the road too, but uneven road surfaces in fast corners do test the air suspension to its limit and you can feel yourself getting shaken around a bit.

The biggest problem the SQ5 Sportback faces on a twisty road is its size, and the fact that it’s hard to judge where its corners are. Narrow roads in particular feel claustrophobic, especially when you’re going at the national speed limit, and some of the fun can turn into apprehension when there’s a blind corner coming up.

The SQ5 Sportback has plenty of room up front, but its sporty roofline does impact practicality in the back

The front seats are the stars of the SQ5 Sportback’s interior, as they not only look good but they’re comfortable and highly adjustable. It’s easy to find the right driving position alongside the adjustable steering wheel.

There’s loads of room up front, but not all that much in the way of storage. There’s a deep cubby underneath the centre arm rest, but it’s not very long or wide, and there’s a wireless phone charging pad in front of the gear selector plus a pair of cup holders.

You can fit litre-sized water bottles in the front doors, but the storage bins themselves are an odd shape and all other odds and ends will rest on top of the bottles. The glovebox is lacklustre too; barely big enough to fit the service booklet and owner’s manual in.

Space in the back seats

It’s a similar story in the back of the SQ5 Sportback, with a healthy amount of legroom and space under the front seats for your feet. Rear headroom, however, is poor.

Even occupants under six feet tall can feel the headliner ruffling their locks, and the middle seat of the rear bench is only for children or emergencies; you’re sat an inch or so higher than the outer passengers, and adults will regularly turn the interior light on with their head.

The enormous transmission tunnel hump in the floor takes up a lot of foot space, and the rear seats feel even cosier with the passenger straddling it. With the centre seat flipped down, the outer passengers have a comfortable centre arm rest with a pair of cup holders.

You get a pair of storage nets on the front seat backs, but they feel a bit flimsy, and the door cubbies are much the same as the front. You’ll get a litre-sized water bottle in there, but not much else. At least the door arm rests are a good length, and well padded.

Boot space

At 470 litres in size, the SQ5 Sportback’s boot can’t hold a candle to the BMW X3 M50i at 570 litres and the Mercedes GLC 53 AMG Coupe at 545 litres. It’s not a small boot by any means, but there are smaller and more affordable SUVs with more boot capacity such as the BMW X1 and Renault Rafale.

There are some clever touches though, such as the handles for dropping the rear seat backs both in the boot and by the seat bases. The seats lock in place when folded down too, which adds extra peace of mind, but it’s a shame there aren’t any seatbelt guides to stop them getting caught in the process.

The parcel shelf cover has a handy storage space underneath the boot floor, though it’s a bit of a faff to access and hide away. At least there’s a little under floor storage space, and the air suspension lowers at the touch of a button - great for lifting heavy loads into the boot.

A handsome, mostly high-quality interior is let down by fussy infotainment and some scratchy plastics

Audi is big on screens at the moment, and the SQ5 Sportback hasn’t escaped the tech-heavy treatment. The dashboard is dominated by a trio of displays, with a swish two-in-one solution for the driver instruments and the central infotainment display, as well as a separate display for the passenger, tacked on to the side.

The passenger screen is a bit unsightly, and it feels gimmicky. The central display is certainly easy enough for the passenger to reach, and at no point in our testing of the SQ5 Sportback did a passenger use any function on their display that they couldn’t use on the middle screen.

The latest generation of Audi infotainment is a faff to use, with so many menus and submenus for the car’s settings and driver assistance programs that it’s a big distraction on the move. The shortcuts at the side of the screen don’t do much to simplify things, either.

Audi has implemented a ‘Hey Audi’ voice command function in the SQ5 Sportback, and it works surprisingly well - so long as you dumb down your sentences to very basic commands.

The lack of polish is a shame, because otherwise the dashboard is rather nice to behold. The wraparound dash-top looks smart, even if the ambient lighting isn’t all that sleek, and the door tops and upper-dashboard surfaces are all nice to the touch.

Some of the plastics, however, are far too hard and scratchy for a car that costs as much as this. The lower half of the dashboard, centre console, air vents, door cards and even the door handles just feel cheap and a bit nasty.

The haptic touch controls on the steering wheel and for the windows don’t feel nice either, and they reveal more finger prints than forensics at an amateur crime scene. At least the Bang & Olufsen sound system is fantastic, and the customisable exterior lighting is a fun feature.

With a twin-turbocharged, 3.0-litre V6 engine under the bonnet and weighing in at over two tonnes, you can’t expect all that much in the way of fuel economy from the SQ5 Sportback.

Audi’s official figures claim an average of around 33mpg from the SQ5, but in real world testing we only managed to achieve that figure on a motorway-heavy route. In town you’re looking at around 22-26mpg, but that figure can diminish rapidly if you’re inclined to make the most of the 365hp power figure.

You’ll find yourself paying a lot of road tax to get an SQ5 on your driveway, as its CO2 output of around 193g/km means it’s in one of the highest road tax bands. Company car buyers might want to look at a fully-electric Audi SQ6 e-tron Sportback instead, because the SQ5 sits in the costliest Benefit-in-Kind band. Ouch.

The SQ5 Sportback shares its Euro NCAP results with the entire Audi Q5 model range, which earned a fantastic five-star safety rating when crash tested in 2025. It scored especially well for child occupant safety at 86%, followed by adult occupants at 85%.

There are a trio of ISOFIX child seat anchor points with handy flip-up covers; two in the rear seats and a useful one for the front passenger seat too - ideal for a single parent travelling with a young child.

You get automatic emergency braking as standard with the SQ5, as well as lane departure warning, lane assist steering, traffic sign recognition, camera assistance for junctions and a driver attention and drowsiness monitoring system.

The latest generation of Q5 and SQ5 Sportback are too new for any long-term problems to have come to light, but Audi came a lowly 27th out of 32 manufacturers entered into the 2024 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey. Ouch.

Audi offers a pretty standard 3-year/60,000-mile warranty with the SQ5 Sportback, on par with posh alternatives from BMW and Mercedes. You can extend the warranty to five years/90,000 miles though, which should add a little more peace of mind.