BYD Dolphin Surf Review & Prices

The smallest BYD on sale in the UK, the Dolphin Surf is an all-electric hatchback with quirky looks, a surprising amount of equipment for the price and decent electric range compared to its alternatives. It’s a shame that the stiff suspension rattles you around in town, though, and the interior materials leave a lot to be desired.

You can think of it as a McDonald’s double cheeseburger meal. Yes, you could opt for something smaller and cheaper (the Leapmotor T03 or Dacia Spring) or something bigger and more expensive (the Nissan Micra and Hyundai Inster come to mind), but on a cost-versus-satisfaction scale, the Dolphin Surf is pretty much in the sweet spot.

Though, the dinky BYD is a lot harder to digest than a double cheeseburger. It’s not necessarily ugly, but it’s certainly not handsome, either. At least the mix of striking lines, sharp creases and funky angles mean it looks like nothing else on the road…so you won’t lose it in your local car park.

BYD Dolphin Surf: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 137 - 200 miles
Efficiency: 4.0 mi/kWh
Battery size: 30.0kWh, 43.2kWh
Max charge speed: 65kWh/85kW
Charge time AC: 9hrs 42mins, 0-100%, 7kW
Charge time DC: 30mins 10-80%, 65kW/85kWh
Charge port location: Right front
Power outputs: 88hp, 156hp

The Dolphin Surf isn’t quite as baffling to look at inside, with a much smoother, more restrained design. There are a few typical BYD quirks, such as the flowing dashboard with a centrally-mounted 10.1-inch infotainment touchscreen that rotates from landscape to portrait at the touch of a button. Why? Honestly, not a clue.

It’s easy enough to operate, that being said, with three-finger swipe controls for the climate settings, but the menus are a bit of a headache to navigate.

Shame the sort-of-suede-sort-of-leatherette upholstery feels so nasty, because there’s a lot of it inside. It almost feels like you’re climbing into a wetsuit, to be honest, and there are a lot of hard, scratchy plastics - such as the horn and door cards - which remind you you’re in a cheap car.

At least it’s spacious, with plenty of room for four tall adults to sit in comfort and a surprising amount of legroom in the back. The 308-litre boot is a generous size but a pretty awkward shape, tapering at the top of the back seats. Underfloor cable storage is handy, but you’ll struggle to fit boxy items in which wouldn’t phase a Fiat Grande Panda Electric.

Range varies from 137 miles in the entry-level car to a far more useful 200 miles in the mid-spec Boost. The sportier range-topper splits the difference at 193 miles.

The Dolphin Surf is a breeze to drive in town, but it could do with some softer suspension as it jiggles you around over rough roads and thuds through potholes. There’s plenty of wind and road noise at motorway speeds, but the peppy motors and nimble steering mean the little BYD is surprisingly amusing on a twisty road…so long as it isn’t bumpy.

Verdict

The BYD Dolphin Surf has appeal on account of its generous standard kit and spacious cabin, but the Citroen e-C3 is more practical still and a Honda Super-N is far more pleasant to drive.

Check out new BYD Dolphin Surf deals on Carwow, or Dolphin Surf lease deals instead. There are other used BYDs on sale through our network of trusted dealers, and you can even sell your current car through Carwow when the time comes to make a change.

BYD has come in strong with the Dolphin Surf’s price, with the entry-level Active model starting at just over £18,500. That’s fantastic value compared to some alternatives considering it comes with vegan leather-trimmed seats, the 10.1-inch phone-mirroring infotainment, rear view camera and adaptive, lane assist cruise control.

You’ll have to pay a few thousand pounds more for the mid-range Boost model with a bigger battery and more range, but you also get 16-inch alloy wheels, electric front seats and electric folding mirrors for that. Top spec cars have the same battery but twice as much power, as well as 360-degree parking cameras and tinted rear windows.

The Dolphin Surf is particularly great value when you compare it against the Renault 5, which starts at almost £23,000 for the entry-level model. The base spec Citroen e-C3 and Hyundai Inster are around the same price, too, and the top-spec Surf is better equipped than either.

It’s fun to drive and easy to nip around town in, but the Dolphin Surf is noisy at speed and far from comfortable

In town

As soon as you get in the Dolphin Surf it’s clear that city driving is going to be a breeze. You sit high up in the cabin, with a massive windscreen and no bonnet in your line of sight; like sitting in front of a bay window. Forward visibility is excellent.

Pop the twisty gear selector in drive, flex the accelerator and you’re met with surprisingly strong acceleration for such a small car - especially in the top-spec Comfort model we tested. The electric motor is a touch noisy, but it’s easily drowned out by music.

It’s easy to place the Dolphin Surf on tight roads and through width restrictions, as its slab-sided design adds some peace of mind, and you can see the top of the passenger wheel arch if you lean forward a bit. The steering feels vague when you start turning, but it’s weightier than the Citroen e-C3 - and feels sportier as a result.

The Dolphin Surf isn’t as comfortable as its alternatives. Gentle dips and shallow speed bumps don’t disrupt it much, but broken roads and sharp potholes do thud through the cabin, and you get bounced around on jiggly roads. The brakes are questionable too, either too spongy or too sharp depending on how much regeneration the car is doing.

On the motorway

Motorways aren’t the Dolphin Surf’s forte. It’ll get up to the national speed limit without any fuss, though it’ll take you a while in Active and Boost models.

You can really feel cracks in the road surface through the seats and steering wheel. While it’s not deafening, you can hear a bit of road noise and wind noise, especially around the door mirrors, noticeable from as low as 50mph.

The Dolphin Surf doesn’t fare too well over larger dips in the road either. It can feel as though it’s floating above them rather than driving through them, giving you an unsettled feeling in your stomach.

On a twisty road

Its weighty steering and low-ish weight makes the Dolphin Surf fun to drive on a twisty road, but only in sport mode. There’s not much body lean in tight corners, and there’s just enough feel through the steering wheel for you to know how much grip the front tyres have.

Twisty roads are best taken at a moderate pace though, as the Dolphin Surf feels unsettled on bumpy bends - giving you a similar sensation to the floaty motorway dips. Braking performance was disappointing when we tested it, as the Dolphin Surf squirms around heavily when you really need to step on the anchors.

Space and practicality

There’s more room inside the Dolphin Surf than you might expect from a small car, but there aren’t any clever storage solutions

Even sitting high up, there’s a lot of headroom in the BYD Dolphin Surf. It’s easy to get comfortable too, as the front seats are fairly supportive - though they lack any lumbar adjustability. The steering wheel adjusts for height and reach, too.

Storage up front is a mixed bag. The centre console cup holders are too wide to stop bottles from falling over, and while one of them can store a litre-sized bottle, it’s still not a snug fit. At least the door bins have built-in bottle holders, but they’re not felt-lined so odds and ends rattle about as you drive.

There’s a big glovebox, and while the storage cubby in the centre is large it’s also uncovered - not great if you ever need to park in the dodgy part of town.

Space in the back seats

Don’t let its tiny footprint deceive you, the back of the Dolphin Surf is really rather roomy. There’s enough space for two adults to sit comfortably behind two in the front, with lots of knee room and space under the front seats for your feet.

Headroom isn’t great, but a six-footer won’t feel too claustrophobic on long drives. The front seat backs are fabric trimmed as opposed to plastic, so people with long legs won’t be jammed in against hard plastic.

The seat back pockets feel high quality, made from the same leatherette that the rest of the seats are trimmed in, and there’s a usefully large cubby on the floor underneath the centre console as well as bottle holders in the large door bins.

You also get three ISOFIX child seat anchor points on the Dolphin Surf, which you don’t even get in a lot of much larger, more expensive cars; perfect for a solo parent traveling with an infant.

Boot space

You’ll be able to fit a couple of pieces of hand luggage in the Dolphin Surf’s boot, with a backpack or two wedged in there too. At 308 litres it’s about 20 litres down on the Renault 5 and more than 40 litres smaller than a Hyundai Inster’s boot.

It’s an odd shape too, narrowing at the top, but on the plus side there are four sturdy-feeling tie down points for a net or bungees.

You can fold the rear seats down to increase boot capacity to 1,037 litres, but there’s an enormous edge where the back rests hinge which is annoying when you need to load flat items in. The boot edge lip is rather large, too, but there’s a usefully large underfloor storage cubby with some neat zip-up bags to keep charging cables in. Shame there’s no frunk, though.

You’ll find handy straps on the seat backs, making it easy to pull them back up, but the seatbelts easily get caught in the process as there aren’t any guides keeping them out of the way.

There’s plenty of standard kit and the dashboard is funky, but there are lots of cheap plastics in the cabin too

It’s not quite as ‘out there’ as the exterior, but the Dolphin Surf’s interior is easy on the eye with a diamond-patterned dashboard which curves down underneath the 10.1-inch central infotainment screen.

The seats look rather sporty, with pronounced bolsters and fixed headrests in the front, trimmed in leatherette and a neoprene-like fabric. The upper-centre console, leading edge of the dashboard and door card inserts are trimmed in the same fabric, but the rest of the interior surfaces are made from very scratchy, shiny plastics.

Switchgear is a different story, as the row of physical buttons, the gear selector, door handles and the door buttons all feel sturdy and high quality, with well-damped clicks. The air vents look and feel rather nice too, as does the steering wheel - excluding the plastic airbag cover.

As with other models in the BYD range, the infotainment screen rotates from landscape to portrait at the touch of a button, unless you’re using Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, which locks it to landscape mode.

The graphics are crisp and clean, and it’s fairly touch-responsive, but the climate control touchbar at the bottom of the screen is fiddly to use and there are too many menus to navigate. You can use three-figure swipe motions to change the fan speed and temperature instead, but drag and swipe gestures feel strange; your fingers drag along the screen with the odd friction squeak.

The temperature settings are unintuitive though; instead of giving you a temperature you’re presented with a series of numbers and letters representing hot and cool instead.

You get a powerful enough charger in the cabin to plug in a laptop or tablet, and a vehicle-to-load adapter means you could run your home appliances off of the Dolphin Surf’s battery, should that ever be necessary.

Unfortunately, the driver display isn’t as posh as the central screen, with three rather low-definition displays masquerading as one larger item.

You can choose from two batteries with three different power outputs in the Dolphin Surf. Active trim level cars have a 30kWh battery with an 88hp motor and a range of 137 miles.

Boost models have a larger 43.2kWh battery, with the same 88hp power output but can go much further at 200 miles, which puts the Dolphin Surf broadly in line with alternatives such as the Citroen e-C3 (199 miles) and entry-level Renault 5 E-Tech (190 miles).

Top-spec Comfort models have the same 43.2kWh battery but almost double the power output at 156hp, though range falls slightly to 193 miles. The Dolphin Surf Comfort we tested showed a hugely impressive 4.4mi/kWh in city driving, which suggests it can achieve almost all of its claimed range, but this dropped down to 4.0mi/kWh in mixed conditions.

Neither battery level has particularly fast charging; 65kW for the smaller battery and 85kW for the larger one, but the size difference means they all take around 30 minutes to charge from 10-80%.

The Dolphin Surf will appeal to company car drivers because it sits in the lowest band for Benefit-in-Kind rates, while owner-buyers also benefit from the minimum first-year tax rate. All Dolphin Surf models escape the luxury car supplement in years two to six, too.

BYD Dolphin Surf Euro NCAP score (2025): 5/5

Adult occupant: 82%
Child occupant: 86%
Vulnerable road users: 76%
Safety assist: 77%

The BYD Dolphin Surf scored a five-star rating when tested by Euro NCAP in 2025, which is a very impressive result for a car of this size and price.

All trim levels come equipped with lane-keeping active cruise control, emergency lane keep assist, automatic emergency braking, collision warning and an infuriating driver attention monitor as standard; far too sensitive and with an irritating chime.

*the basic XXX-year warranty is extended by a year with each approved service

BYD came 16th out of 30 brands in the 2026 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, which is slap-bang in the middle of the table. Unimpressive, but not disappointing either.

While the Dolphin Surf is too new to know of any problems that might occur, BYD offers an impressive six-year, 93,750-mile warranty. This is among the best warranties going, comparable to the Hyundai Inster at five years/unlimited mileage but surpassed by the Honda Super-N at eight years/100,000 miles with annual dealer servicing.