Range Rover Evoque Review & Prices

The Range Rover Evoque is the poodle of the car world - it looks chic and stylish, and usually finds itself at a designer outlet rather than a muddy field. But you mustn’t forget that it was bred as a gun dog and so it’s just as comfortable traversing rough terrain as it is looking stylish driving through Kensington.

As a desirable, small SUV, the Evoque has no shortage of alternatives. Other cars with high driving positions and posh badges include the BMW X2, the Volvo XC40, the Audi Q3 and the Mercedes-Benz GLA. High-end Evoques could even be alternatives to cars from the class above such as the Lexus NX, BMW X3, Volvo XC60 or Audi Q5.

The original Evoque was launched in 2011, and the 2018 model - facelifted in 2023 - didn’t exactly rewrite the rule book when it came to styling. Despite this, the Evoque still looks fresh today - a testament to how less can be more. Slim, sleek headlights, a narrow grille, and minimalist styling with just a few sharp lines make for a nice clean style that has aged extremely well.

However, the 2023 update really took the shine off the Evoque’s interior. Where there used to be a smart, easy-to-use twin-screen setup, the new-look interior gets a much more minimalist approach. There’s now just one single screen that controls everything, including the climate controls, and while it’s sharp and quick to respond to inputs the interface isn’t particularly intuitive and changing some settings can feel really awkward.

What’s worse is that nothing’s really replaced the bits Land Rover took away - there’s just a big slab of plastic between the passengers with a lonely gear selector plonked in the middle. Not good-looking, and certainly not as pleasant as the rest of the car.

At least storage up front is plentiful, with loads of adjustment in the driving position. All-round visibility is pretty good, and the Evoque gets a full set of cameras - including a seriously clever ‘Transparent Bonnet’ which figures out what’s immediately underneath the car. Good for off-roading, yes, but also useful if you’re trying to navigate a really tight car park.

Rear seat passengers get reasonable space, though not as much as they do in a Volvo XC40, and the boot is well on par with alternatives - though space is significantly reduced in the plug-in hybrid version.

Speaking of plug-in hybrid, the Evoque gets a range of engines which, unusually, still includes two diesel options. There’s also a sole mild hybrid petrol as well as the aforementioned PHEV. This is the pick of the range for company car drivers, but there’s a lot to be said for the relaxed power delivery and fuel economy of a diesel engine, particularly on long runs.

And you’ll enjoy doing long runs in the Evoque, as it’s extremely comfortable and refined. It’s even surprisingly fun and capable in corners, but it’s off the beaten track where it excels compared to alternatives. Thanks to standard four-wheel drive and a glut of off-road technology, the Evoque is capable of humiliating many much larger, more expensive cars on the rough stuff. It’ll certainly take you much further than an Audi Q3 or Volvo XC40 would.

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The Range Rover Evoque starts at just under £44,000, making it quite a lot more expensive than entry-level versions of the Audi Q3 or Volvo XC40 - albeit with plenty of standard equipment and a posher powertrain.

The three trim levels are S, Dynamic SE and Autobiography. At the entry-level you get leather upholstery, electric seats, a digital dashboard, keyless entry, LED lights and 18-inch wheels, plus the full choice of engines.

Dynamic SE models come in at just over £47,000 and add 19-inch wheels, posher LED lights, a premium sound system, a powered tailgate and 360-degree camera. The £55,000 Autobiography sounds like a huge leap, but that’s mostly because it’s only available with the most powerful diesel or the plug-in hybrid engine - it also gets a digital rear-view mirror, panoramic glass roof, extended leather upholstery, 20-inch wheels and even posher (for the second time) LED headlights. It’s a real luxury SUV in miniature.

More fun to drive on twisty roads than you’d expect and epic off road, but it’s bumpier around town

In town

The Evoque might be the smallest Range Rover you can buy, but it still gives you some of that traditional commanding Land Rover driving position, so you get a great view out over the bonnet, though the windscreen is quite narrow which can take a little time to adjust to. That does little to impact forward visibility though, and you can also see clearly around the sides of the car, which is useful in town.

You get nice big door mirrors, which are great when you’re parking, but less good is the fact that the rear screen is pretty small, so the view out of the back isn’t great.

The automatic gearbox is slow to respond when you need a quick burst of acceleration, such as when you’re pulling out of a busy junction, and you can be left floundering, waiting for the ‘box to make up its mind.

The seats are comfortable, but the Evoque does have a tendency to jiggle and jolt you around at low speeds. It deals with big things — speedbumps and the likes — quite nicely, but smaller bumps make it fidget quite a lot, so it’s not as effortlessly smooth as a Volvo XC40.

Plug-in hybrid models will be best if you spend most of your time driving around town as you can cruise along silently on the electric motor. The battery offers up to 39 miles of range, which is a little bit more than similar alternatives can manage.

On the motorway

That jittery suspension does smooth out quite a bit when you bring the Evoque up to motorway speed, where you glide along rather nicely. It’s also very quiet and refined as there’s very little road noise nor wind noise.

The Evoque’s diesel engines can be noisy though, especially — once again — when you need a quick burst of acceleration. That sluggish gearbox is easily flummoxed and can be caught hesitating about which gear to offer up, though all models are brisk enough once on the move.

The plug-in hybrid is considerably quieter, but you’ll quickly eat up the battery at motorway speeds so your fuel economy will worsen quickly.

Lane-keeping assistance and cruise control are included as standard, but most models do come with adaptive cruise control that will maintain distance to the car in front.

On a twisty road

The Evoque might be a tall(ish), heavy(ish) off-road-focused SUV, but it’s surprisingly good when it comes to bendy roads. There’s very little body lean, and while the steering isn’t the quickest to respond to your inputs, it does a decent job of feeding back how much grip the front tyres have. If you really want a posh SUV that’s fun in corners, stretching your budget to a Porsche Macan would do wonders.

What about roads that don’t have any tarmac at all? Clearly, a basic front-wheel drive Evoque is going to be challenged by anything more taxing than a bumpy field, but the four-wheel drive models are about as good in the rough stuff as you’d expect a junior Land Rover to be. The 600mm wading depth (that’s just over a foot-and-a-half) is especially useful if you live in an area prone to flooding, and you can even (optionally) spec it with water depth sensors in the wing mirrors so that you don’t dive into anything that the car can’t cope with. It’s no Defender when the going gets really tough, but it’s more capable than pretty much anyone will ever ask it to be.

It’s worth knowing that entry-level models don’t get Terrain Response 2, which is useful if you regularly head off road. It lets you select different modes depending on the surface you’re driving on to help you avoid getting stuck.

Typical Land Rover practicality, and good rear seat space but the boot isn’t as big as it could be

You’d expect a Range Rover to be practical, and so it is. Up front, the Evoque gets huge door bins, and a good-sized storage bin under the front-seat armrest (which also gets two USB sockets and a 12-volt connection).

In front of that, there are two cupholders which are fine, but they come with a little lift-off cover that turns them into a storage tray. Unfortunately the tray doesn’t slide nor stow away neatly — your only option seems to be to chuck it in the glovebox, which is a bit daft. There is another handy storage area behind the heating and ventilation controls, although it’s easy to forget things that have been stashed there.

The driving position is pretty good, as you can sit fairly high to get a good view of your surroundings, and there’s loads of adjustment in the steering wheel and seat, which has electric operation on all trims. The narrow windscreen can take some adjusting to, because if you set your seat high for a commanding view you feel very close to the roof, but it doesn’t take long to get to grips with.

Space in the back seats

The Evoque’s rear doors open really wide, which is particularly useful if you have a child seat – but the door aperture is quite small which makes it a bit fiddly with larger seats. You get ISOFIX anchor points in the outer two rear seats, but they come with little pop-off plastic covers which are very easy to lose.

It’s acceptably spacious for those travelling in the back, with enough legroom and headroom (even with the optional glass roof) for tall passengers to get comfy enough, although there’s not much space under the front seats to stretch your feet out. The seats are also set quite low in the back, so taller passengers will find that their knees are in the air, which can be a (literal) pain on a longer journey.

The middle rear seat is just about useable, thanks to a relatively small transmission hump, but it is a bit perched-up, and three-across in the back is not massively comfortable. You also have to intrude on the foot space of those either side though, because it’s tricky to find space beneath the seats in front.

The rear door bins are decent, and you get nice LED reading lights and a coat hook mounted at the front of the rear door, so that a dangling coat isn’t in your face. There’s a 12-volt socket, but annoyingly no USB sockets in the back. It’s also annoying that the rear seats are fixed in place — no sliding and no reclining seatbacks. Boo. The Audi Q3 gets those on high-spec models.

Boot space

The boot of the Evoque isn’t the biggest, but at 591 litres it seems massive on paper. That’s because Land Rover quotes its official boot measurements as being loaded to the roof, whereas everybody else only quotes up to the luggage cover.

Taken in those terms, the Evoque’s boot is good but nothing special — and less special again if you go for the plug-in hybrid version, which has an official (Land Rover) measurement of 471 litres.

Comparison, for what it’s worth, indicates that the Audi Q3 is the best of the rest with 530 litres of luggage capacity in non-hybrid models, followed by 515 litres in the BMW X2 and just 452 litres in the Volvo XC40.

On non-plug-in hybrid versions there’s some handy under-floor storage, and a spare tyre is available as an option. You get some very solid tie-down points, and the boot itself is square, with no load-lip so it’s easy to get heavy items in and out. You also get a 12-volt socket and some little elastic straps for holding taller items upright, plus a netted area at the side of the boot and some pop-out hooks for bags. What’s annoying is that you can’t stash the luggage cover under the floor when you don’t need it, but it is flat so you can just put it at the bottom of the boot and load on top.

The back seats split-fold in three sections (40:20:40-style). They don’t fold 100 per cent flat, although you do get a continuous load floor so you can slide big items to the front. With the seats folded you get 1,383 litres of space, compared with 1,525 litres in the Q3.

Some nice bits of style and substance, but overall quality is mixed and the infotainment can’t match the best from the German brands

The cabin design in the Evoque is meant to be simple and uncluttered, giving off a sort of pared-back Scandi luxury hotel look, and it works for the most part. The thing is, that 2023 update went all in on the minimalist idea but fell short, so the centre console just looks a bit plain and, actually, a bit cheap. Where you used to get a crisp screen with slick, embedded dials for the climate controls, now there’s just an expanse of plastic with a gear selector looking lost in the middle.

For the most part, the choice of materials used is good, with lots of nice soft-touch surfaces, but you don’t have to look too hard to find some cheap bits.

Thankfully, there are some very good bits too, including glossy chrome trim around the big infotainment screen and on the doors. The narrow old display has been ditched in favour of a big 11.4-inch screen that sits proud of the dashboard like a big tablet.

It’s about as quick as a tablet too, responding swiftly to touches, and you get Land Rover’s smart and sophisticated graphics. It’s a shame, then, that it’s not the most intuitive system to find your way around.

You also have to put up with the climate settings being on the screen. The temperature is always visible and you can choose between sliding or tapping to change the values. But it’s not as easy to use as similar systems, such as those in an Audi, and changing things like the seat heating is more of a faff than the press-and-spin dials of old.

It’s a similar story for the drive modes. Instead of being easily accessible on the lower screen, you now have to press a button to bring up the menu on the middle screen. This also makes switching between the different energy use modes in the plug-in hybrid awkward.

A digital driver’s display is included on all models and it’s big, crisp, and displays all the information you need. It’s not as impressive as the Virtual Cockpit you get in an Audi, and it’s tricky to find your way between screens and settings, but it does a good enough job.

All models do get standard-fit Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, so it’s easy to set up your phone in the car, and there’s wireless phone charging included on every trim.

There’s a good variety of engines available for the Range Rover Evoque, with two diesel options, one petrol and a petrol-electric plug-in hybrid.

The latter will appeal to company car buyers because it has a low benefit-in-kind tax rate. This 309hp model is more expensive than the other engines though, so private buyers will have to consider whether the lower running costs offset that, including the lower first-year car tax rate. Be aware that if you can’t regularly top up the batteries, you will probably see worse economy than in the non-hybrid petrol engines.

Speaking of which, there are two petrol engines available. The P160 is offered on all but top-spec Autobiography models and has 160hp with fuel economy of 35.3mpg in official tests. It's not a particularly powerful engine for this heavy car, which is reflected in the fuel economy and high CO2 emissions.

The Evoque range opens with the D165 diesel, which has 163hp. It’s usefully economical at 43.6mpg, but is the least appealing of the bunch to drive. You'd be much better off with the D200, which has a useful chunk of extra power at 204hp with identical claimed fuel economy. It's much more relaxed, though CO2 emissions are still quite high at 170g/km.

For company car tax, only the plug-in hybrid makes reasonable sense.

The Evoque is very safe indeed — Euro NCAP crash-tested it in 2019, and it scored the maximum five-stars for safety, including a 94% rating for adult occupant protection, and 87 per cent for child occupant protection. Both are very good scores, but it is worth noting that tests have become a bit stricter since then.

Standard safety kit includes a rear-view camera, front and rear parking sensors and traffic sign recognition. Step up to Dynamic SE and you get blind spot assistance, rear collision monitor and rear traffic warning. Top-spec models get a 360-degree camera and head-up display.

Land Rover’s reputation for reliability and build quality really couldn’t be much worse, and it tends to finish well down the lists of most reliability surveys. There will always be question marks about how interiors hold up over time, and while the diesel engines have been around for a while now and are generally quite solid, concerns about faulty electrics, unresponsive touchscreens and fragile gearboxes are well placed. With that being said, it did come tenth in the 2024 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey.

The Evoque has had plenty of recalls over the years, for everything from seat belt issues to issues with fuel hoses. Make sure any work has been carried out on used models before buying, but if not, Land Rover will sort them for free.

Land Rover has promised to improve its quality and reliability issues, and the Evoque does come with a three-year, unlimited-mileage warranty, which for an extra cost can be extended out to 10 years (though this does max out at 100,000 miles if that comes first). The warranty also covers you for a hire car to get to your destination if you have a breakdown. The standard offering is similar to what the likes of Audi and BMW offer, but consider a Lexus if you want long-term peace of mind from your posh SUV – these models get up to 10 years of cover with annual servicing.