MG HS Review & Prices

The MG HS has at points been the best-selling car in the UK and it’s easy to see why. It’s a big, practical family SUV with a posh-looking interior, loads of standard equipment and a headline-grabbing plug-in hybrid engine option - but it costs about as much as most small hatchbacks.

While the old HS was definitely in the ‘cheap but not very cheerful’ category, the new model actually feels like something you wouldn’t mind driving around - it has redeeming features other than its price tag. It’s a bit like a Harvester - nobody’s ever going to look at it as a high-end option, but if you’re looking to feed the whole family on a budget, it’s tasty enough that you don’t feel punished for your penny-pinching.

The HS is a similar size to family SUVs such as the Ford Kuga, Kia Sportage and Nissan Qashqai - but with its low price tag, you might consider it on the same shortlist as much smaller SUVs such as the Volkswagen T-Cross or Ford Puma.

Two more direct alternatives are the Citroen C5 Aircross or BYD Seal U - both big SUVs that put affordability first, and have plug-in hybrid engines available.

If your main concern is space for the money, the MG HS is a great option. Despite a price tag close to something like a Volkswagen Polo hatchback, it has space in the back for a six-foot adult to stretch out, plus a 507-litre boot that’ll accommodate the whole family’s kit and clobber.

You also get a dashboard that looks pretty posh, with a dual-screen setup just like you get on a BMW X3. You don’t have to press very far to find out where MG’s saved money, though, and materials and build quality aren’t really up to the standards of more expensive cars. It’s also not the easiest to use, with very few physical switches, an awkward touchscreen interface and not much storage for smaller items.

As far as engines go, there’s a choice of two. You can have a bog-standard petrol, available with manual or automatic gearboxes - these are the more affordable options, and though they’re not particularly offensive to drive they are a bit thirsty.

The headline-grabber is the HS plug-in hybrid, which can do up to 75 miles on a charge. That figure is up there with the best PHEVs on sale, and it gives you tons of flexibility - it’s enough to do even the longest of commutes without troubling the petrol engine once. It also nudges the HS into the lowest-but-one band for Benefit-in-Kind tax, making it hundreds of pounds a month cheaper than the equivalent Kia Sportage or Ford Kuga for company car drivers.

Both of those cars are better to drive, mind you - they steer more sweetly and handle bumps better, as well as being more responsive and reassuring in the corners. The gap is narrower if you’re just cruising round town or on the motorway, though, where the HS is impressively refined and difficult to dislike.

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The MG HS starts from just a few hundred pounds more than a Citroen C5 Aircross - though it gets a long list of standard equipment making it very good value on paper. That makes it a significant amount less than any other SUV of this size, though - the Kia Sportage, Ford Kuga and Toyota RAV4 all seem very pricey by comparison.

The pricing is simple to understand, too. It’s a £1,500 jump if you’d like an automatic gearbox, and a £2,500 jump to go from basic SE trim to the range-topping Trophy.

The HS PHEV, meanwhile, does the same trick of being far cheaper than alternatives - it even undercuts the Citroen C5 Aircross PHEV by almost £4,000.

A decent engine and impressive plug-in hybrid - but the HS doesn’t handle corners or ride bumps as well as the best family cars

In town

The HS has pretty soft suspension, so it can handle bigger bumps without too much thudding - at the expense of feeling a little uncontrolled. Hit a speed bump too fast and you’ll feel the car bouncing a little. The steering is quite heavy right off the centre before becoming very light, which is a little disconcerting but doesn’t take too long to get used to.

Visibility isn’t amazing - the windscreen pillars are quite thick, and you can’t easily see the front corners of the bonnet. There’s also a big blind spot over your shoulder thanks to very chunky C-pillars.

However, all models get a reversing camera and the Trophy spec comes with a really useful 360-degree monitor which can even give a ‘transparent chassis’ effect - using the camera feeds to show you what’s underneath the car as well as around it.

The plug-in hybrid is the best engine to choose for town driving. With up to 75 miles of pure electric range - and plenty of power from the electric motor - it truly feels like driving a regular electric SUV, making it very smooth and pleasant. The automatic petrol, by contrast, is a bit jerky, while the manual has a light action albeit with a slightly rubbery shift.

On the motorway

Both the regular petrol and the plug-in hybrid HS are impressively refined on the motorway, with very little engine noise allowed to penetrate the cabin. Wind and road noise is quite well-contained as well, making the HS much quieter than many budget SUVs.

There’s ample power from either engine, but the petrol’s 169hp does rather trail the 371hp on offer from the plug-in hybrid. The former feels adequate to haul this large family SUV up to speed, but it does need working quite hard on a sliproad or to execute decisive overtakes.

The PHEV, meanwhile, has loads of power in reserve - with more than 200hp from the electric motor alone, even when it’s running as a pure EV it feels impressively peppy right up to the legal limit.

The HS’s soft suspension irons out bumps on faster roads well, but like at lower speeds it has a tendency to bounce around if it hits a sharper pothole or crevice.

MG’s full suite of driver assistance aids come with the HS, and the adaptive cruise control is a pretty good system - it works well and the alerts aren’t too annoying. More on the rest of the car’s safety assists later, however…

On a twisty road

The HS isn’t much fun to drive on a twisty road. You can go for the manual gearbox for maximum driver involvement, or the PHEV for the most power - but both have dead, lifeless steering that doesn’t communicate what the front wheels are doing, and limited grip that leads to the car washing wide in fast corners.

The body can lean quite a bit in bends, too, so for the sake of your family in the back it’s probably better to take it easy on a twisting road. A Ford Kuga is much more fun to fling about in the corners.

Lots of space in the back, but limited storage for small items and alternatives have bigger boots

Front-seat occupants in the MG HS are quite well-treated. The seats get electric adjustment and are wide and reasonably supportive. It’s a shame that they don’t adjust for tilt, though, as long-legged drivers will feel like they need a bit more under-thigh support.

There are a pair of cupholders ahead of the gear lever and a wireless phone charger ahead of it, plus a small space under the armrest. The glovebox is a reasonable size, as are the door bins - the only thing that’s really missing is a quick place to stash keys or wallets that isn’t out of sight. It’s also a shame that, while there are two USB ports, they’re USB-A and not the more modern and universal USB-C that more and more cars are including.

Space in the back seats

A six-foot passenger can sit behind a six-foot driver with room to spare, so it’s fair to say that rear seat space in the MG HS is easily on par with a Citroen C5 Aircross or Kia Sportage in this regard. The centre seat is quite narrow, but the bench is pretty flat so it doesn’t feel like you’re uncomfortably perched way up.

Rear passengers get a totally flat floor with plenty of foot room, large rear windows for a good view out and a fold-down centre armrest with a couple of cupholders. There are also door bins which can accommodate a bottle of water, plus a couple of USB-A ports in the centre for keeping gadgets charged.

Boot space

With a 507-litre boot, the new HS has addressed one of the issues of its predecessor - and impressively, despite the large battery, the plug-in hybrid doesn’t lose any boot space. That means that while the petrol’s boot is smaller than a Citroen C5 Aircross (580 litres) or Ford Kuga (526 litres), the PHEV’s is actually bigger than the equivalent version of either of those cars, which only get 460 and 475 litres of space respectively.

It’s roomy, but not very clever - you don’t get any bag hooks or tie-down points, and while the seats do fold down totally flat you have to walk around or reach through to do so. There’s a small space under the floor which can accommodate a few bits and pieces, such as the hybrid’s charging cable.

The most luxurious MG interior yet, but software still leaves a little to be desired

The HS’s dashboard looks like a million dollars compared with the old car’s - it’s modern and uses some pretty high-quality materials in places. The dash is dominated by two 12.3-inch screens, one for driver information and the other for infotainment, while other physical controls are limited to those around the steering wheel and a row of shortcut switches underneath the central display.

You don’t have to prod around for long to find cheap materials - the door cards, glovebox lid and lower part of the centre console all feel hard and scratchy, but that’s to be expected in a car as cheap as this.

The infotainment software is the same as you’ll find in the MG3 and MG4, which is to say it’s not bad but could be improved. There are too many fiddly menus to contend with, some of which don’t feel like they’re well optimised for a touchscreen.

While there are physical shortcut buttons to demist the front and rear windscreens, plus one to turn the climate control on and off altogether, we’d prefer if these took you to the car’s various menus instead as they don’t really save you too many button presses.

The driver display isn’t as good as alternatives, either. While it can display a full-screen map - which is nice - you can’t get a proper analogue rev counter, which can be annoying in manual models. There’s quite a lot of wasted space, too, with tiny readouts surrounded by big swathes of nothing.

Starting with the regular petrol HS - we achieved around 44mpg on a mixed road route, which is pretty good for a car of this size. Expect that to dip to less than 40mpg if you’re just driving through town, but prolonged motorway use might see it creep up a little further.

CO2 emissions of 168g/km for the manual and 173g/km for the automatic mean you’re unlikely to recommend this as a company car, however, as tax bills will be quite high.

The PHEV, however, has the potential for extremely low running costs indeed. Official tests peg the fuel consumption at a remarkable 672.6mpg, a product of its huge 75-mile electric range. That’s among the highest range of any PHEV on sale, beaten only by the Mercedes GLC 300e and Range Rover Sport P460e - both of which cost far, far more than the HS.

This is thanks to a battery that’s actually bigger than the one you got in a first-generation Nissan Leaf - an impressive showcase of how far PHEVs have come. It endows the HS with official CO2 figures of just 12g/km - punting it into the 5% band for company car tax. This means it’ll be a good couple of hundred pounds per month cheaper as a company car than the equivalent Sportage or Kuga PHEV.

Fuel economy obviously depends on how you drive it, but 75 miles of EV-only range is enough to encompass the overwhelming majority of journeys without ever having to use the petrol engine. And with impressive performance from the electric motor, you won’t feel the need to call on the engine just so you can keep up with traffic, either. When we get a chance to test the HS PHEV on a longer route we’ll tell you how efficient it is (or isn’t) with a discharged battery.

One slight shame is that you can’t fast-charge the HS, like you can with some other large-capacity PHEVs. At a maximum rate of 7kW from a wallbox charger, it’ll take more than four hours to charge - not a problem if you’re topping up overnight, but it means you can’t really take advantage of public charge points to replenish your batteries on a long run.

The MG HS - like the previous score - holds a full five-star safety rating from Euro NCAP. A particularly impressive rating of 90% for adult occupant protection is great to see, as is 85% for child occupants, and should quash outdated notions about MG models being behind the back in terms of safety.

The usual roster of safety equipment is all standard - autonomous emergency braking, speed limit assist, lane-keeping aids and more. Some of these systems work better than others, though. We found the lane-keeping to be unobtrusive and we were happy to keep it on, however the driver attention warning was so annoying that it actually reduced the attention we paid to the road as we frantically tried to shut it up by turning it off.

With all these systems in slightly fiddly menus within the touchscreen there’s actually more risk you might hit something while trying to get rid of them. Best to do this before you set off, then - but we wish MG would fit a shortcut button, like some manufacturers have started doing.

MG has enough faith in its cars to offer a seven-year, 80,000-mile warranty with all of them. However, the brand performs poorly in the Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, with more than a third of MG owners reporting a problem with their vehicle.

It’s too early to make a definitive call on MG HS reliability, though. The engines used in this model are all-new - which can be a good or bad thing, either remedying the problems of older engines or introducing a whole host of new ones. Time will tell.