BYD Seal Review & Prices

The BYD Seal is like one of those affordable stereos that you buy because it’s at a sensible price, but which ends up having better sound quality than a ‘name’ brand.

Although BYD has been steadily growing its awareness with the UK car buying public since it arrived here in 2023, it’s still a new brand to many, but the Seal — its first effort at a UK-friendly electric saloon — shows you just what a capable company BYD is.

It’s most obviously a competitor to the Tesla Model 3 — even looking quite like the Tesla from some angles — but the Seal also has to take on the likes of the Hyundai Ioniq 6, Polestar 2, and Volkswagen ID.7, some of which have it well-beaten for range on one charge now.

Two years on from when it was first launched, the Seal still looks great, with a drooping, almost sports car-like nose and a carefully rounded roof that drops down to a neat boot. It has a touch more oomph to the styling than the Tesla Model 3, and looks classier and more upmarket than the rather slab-sided Volkswagen ID.7.

BYD Seal: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 323-354 miles
Efficiency: 3.4-3.7mi/kWh
Battery size: 83kWh
Max charge speed: 150kW
Charge time DC: 37mins, 10-80%, 150kW
Charge port location: Right side rear
Power outputs: 313hp / 530hp

BYD has also given the Seal a seriously stylish interior, although the dramatic, swoopy styling — meant to evoke the idea of sand on a shoreline — won’t be to all tastes.

The quilted leatherette seats will be of more universal appeal though, and they’re very comfortable. The three spoke steering wheel looks sporty, but it doesn’t feel quite expensive enough, and some of the materials used — especially the soft-touch man-made suede — feel as if they will be too easily marked and scuffed. Still, it’s a more welcoming cabin than the too-minimalist look of the Tesla, and it’s far roomier than the Polestar 2.

The big 15.6-inch touchscreen in the centre of the dash is pretty slick to use, but it’s still not quite as easy as such things ought to be. It’s also annoying that there’s a totally separate screen for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, rather than being able to have that grouped with other controls.

The rotating function — which allows the screen to spin from landscape to portrait layout and back again — is also a bit pointless, especially as the phone mirroring only works in landscape.

There have been some efforts to make the screen easier to navigate — such as ‘multi-touch’ three-finger swipes that allow quick changes to the cabin temperature and fan speed from any screen, but it’s all still too distracting to use when you’re driving.

Up front, there’s plenty of space for people and anything you need to bring with you, thanks to large storage bins, but rear seat space is only okay. Rear legroom is fine, but headroom is tight, not helped by the large panoramic glass roof.

The boot is also slightly small, at 402 litres, which is about the same as you get in the Hyundai Ioniq 6 but considerably less than that of the VW ID.7. There is a handy 53-litre storage area in the nose, though, which is good for stashing your charging cables.

The Seal impresses when you drive it. The rear-wheel drive model is quick enough for most people, but the 530hp Excellence model, with two motors and all-wheel drive, is stupidly fast. The steering feels sharp, and the suspension does a good job of keeping the bumps at bay.

The range on one charge — up to 354 miles — is decent, but there are other cars in this class that can stretch a bit more out of one top-up of the battery, so it’s a shame that BYD hasn’t updated the Seal to keep it more competitive in that respect.

Still, the BYD Seal is a car that should definitely be on your shortlist. Interested? Check out our best BYD Seal deals, or get a great price on a BYD Seal lease. You can check out used BYD Seals for sale, or see other used BYD cars for sale. And remember that Carwow can even help you sell your old car when the time comes.

The Seal is actually a slightly expensive car. Or, at least, it doesn’t conform to the theory that all Chinese cars are automatically cheaper than more familiar brands.

It costs quite a bit less to buy than a BMW i4 or a Volkswagen ID.7 (although the Seal is a smaller car than the ID.7), and it’s slightly cheaper than the basic Hyundai Ioniq 6. However, the Tesla Model 3, in its basic form, is a lot more affordable than the basic Seal. Like, £6,000 in the difference, although it’s worth noting that the Seal has a slight edge on range, and is considerably better equipped as standard.

The cheapest version of the Polestar 2 is also just slightly more affordable than the Seal too, with comparable range.

The BYD Seal feels agile and fun to drive on a flowing road, and it’s refined on the motorway, but very bumpy country roads can make it feel unsure of itself

In town

The Seal impresses for the way it handles bigger bumps and road imperfections in particular, and it’s a comfortable and serenely refined way to plot your way around town.

It’s a shame there aren’t more levels of brake regeneration - you just get the normal mode and one that increases the regen, slowing the car when you come off the accelerator, but there’s no clever one-pedal driving mode as you find in the Nissan Leaf, for example, and the difference between the different modes isn’t very big. The brakes are annoyingly grabby at lower speeds, so it's difficult to come to a smooth stop.

Visibility is reasonable up-front, although the Seal does sit sleek and low, so you’ve not got an SUV-style higher driving position to enjoy. But all cars get front and rear parking sensors and a 360-degree camera, and the Seal has a decent turning circle, so there’s no excuse for getting in a mess while parking, even though the view out the back window is poor.

On the motorway

There’s an unsettled feeling at higher speeds as sometimes the car can feel really jittery beneath you on some roads, but then switch to a different piece of asphalt and it’s much more pleasant. Which is a bit odd.

Otherwise, both motor options have plenty of performance to get you up to motorway speed on a slip road, and it’s quiet and refined when you get there, bearing in mind the faster you go, the more you’re taking range out of the battery via reduced efficiency.

There’s a complete suite of assistance systems to keep you safe on longer journeys, and either Seal has a good enough range to mean you’ll probably be stopping for a break before you run out of charge. But the lower-powered Design model has an extra 31 miles of range for higher-mileage users or those most worried about range anxiety.

On a twisty road

This is where the Seal particularly impresses, proving to be surprisingly adept and nimble when the road goes tighter and twistier, which is no mean feat for a car weighing over two tonnes.

The Seal manages to minimise body roll and entices you to have fun in a way most electric vehicles don’t. It’s frustrating that you have to plot your way through touchscreen menus to switch on some of the driving modes, such as sportier settings, by which time the moment has probably passed.

It's not quite as sporty as a Tesla Model 3, and doesn't feel quite as punchy out of corners, but there's certainly plenty of fun to be had in the Seal – and in all-wheel drive guise, it actually accelerates faster than the Tesla, which is no mean feat.

There’s good space in the front of the Seal’s cabin, but slightly less so in the back, and the boot is quite tight

The Seal’s cabin initially impresses for quality and design, with a nice mix of materials making it eye-catching.

There’s a huge stowage area at floor level for stashing a decent-sized bag, and you’ll find a single USB and a USB-C in the front as well as a 12-volt socket, along with a pair of cupholders and a decent stowage area under the armrest. The glovebox is of reasonable size, as are the doorbins, but they’re not lined and are of cheaper plastic than most of the cabin, which is a shame.

The other main area where cheaper plastic is very evident is the handle you use to pull the door open from the inside, which is a really odd thing to cut cost on as you touch it every time you get out of the car. Another oddity is that the air vents aren’t adjustable for angle, but they’re illogical features of an otherwise logical and pleasant cabin space.

That said, it’s a shame the door design doesn’t properly cover the sills, so you drag your trouser leg across a damp and dirty sill when getting out of the car.

Space in the back seats

There’s a good amount of legroom in the back, and headroom is decent despite the sweeping roofline that does rob some height. That’s most noticeable for taller people that will have to duck a touch when getting in and out, but once they’re in it’s absolutely fine, and you’ll have a lovely view of the sky through the huge panoramic glass roof that stretches impressively far back behind the rear passenger. There's a bit more space in a Tesla Model 3, but not by much.

The rear seat leaves occupants in a bit of an odd position, which is down to having a slightly reclined back, combined with the car’s low profile meaning the seats are quite low to the floor. There’s no SUV-style footwell, and the end result is that your knees are sitting slightly above your hips, which isn’t the most supportive of positions. Not the end of the world, but it’s not helped by it being tricky to squeeze feet below the front seats, slightly limiting rear passenger’s range of options.

The space itself is good though, and rear passengers have a pair of power sockets to fight over - one old-style USB and a newer and more powerful USB-C.

The ISOFIX mounting points are easily accessible behind a flexible plastic flap, and the doors open nice and wide so it's easy to get a child seat in, one area where the BYD wins over the Tesla.

You also get a reasonably sized door bin on each side as well as a fold-down armrest with a pair of cupholders.

Boot space

At 400 litres, the BYD Seal’s boot is a reasonable size - enough to take the family away for the weekend while still being adrift of the other main electric saloons.

And by adrift, we mean a single litre and just five litres in the case of the Hyundai Ioniq 6 and Polestar 2 specifically, but the BMW i4 boasts 470 litres and the Tesla Model 3 a huge 594 litres, plus another 88 in the front trunk. The Volkswagen ID.7 beats all of them bar the Tesla, with a 563 litres of boot space, and that’s without even thinking of the estate version.

Unlike the VW, the Seal has a handy additional front load area, which at 53 litres is plenty to stash the charging cables away from the rest of your luggage. Or there’s also underfloor space in the actual boot.

What there isn’t is tie-down points or power sockets, but you do get a little luggage net to one side for smaller items.

The Seal’s cabin looks good, and the touchscreen seems impressive, but even with recent software updates, it’s still way too tricky to use on the move

As mentioned earlier, the cabin quality and design impresses when you drop into the BYD Seal, with the big touchscreen dominating the centre of the interior. And that screen has a hidden trick up its sleeve, switching from landscape to portrait layout at the touch of a button. This is a gimmick that BYD has used in pretty much all of its other models, but it’s being slowly phased out, as a gimmick it most certainly is.

That said, rotating the screen is handy when using the navigation in particular. In general, the 15.6-inch touchscreen looks better and is more usable in landscape form, but when using the navigation, rotating it to portrait gives greater visibility up the map. Although that’s only on the car’s in-built sat nav; Apple CarPlay or Android Auto are only usable in landscape form at the moment. (At least you get this smartphone mirroring, though, unlike in a Tesla.)

That’s where the praise of the touchscreen ends, though. Too many functions are buried too deep in the menus, taking multiple button-presses to change settings and then return to Apple CarPlay, for example. It’s just too difficult to do quickly without taking your eyes off the road for prolonged periods.

BYD has tried to smooth some of this out through over the air updates to allow for multi-touch functions. A three-finger swipe, on any screen menu, up or down will now change the cabin temperature setting, while a side-to-side swipe will change the fan speed, but there are still too many sub-menus and on-screen icons and buttons that are just too small.

BYD is far from the only culprit (anything from Tesla and the Volvo EX30 are other obvious offenders), but the constant attempts to remove buttons and replace with touchscreen functionality has gone too far in terms of being able to safely adjust settings while driving. It needs some basic shortcuts.

The dashboard itself is clear and has a good array of displays, although the left-hand third of the dash has a distracting large dial showing charge status at that moment, and the numbers jump around and catch the eye at the expense of the more relevant speedo display. At least the higher-spec Seal has a head-up display.

One bit of cleverness that is worth flagging is that you can adjust the volume of both the audio and the navigation using one of the few buttons left in the cabin. Next to the gear lever is a volume scroll, and on the touchscreen you can toggle between audio and navigation instruction volumes, making it about the simplest way to mute spoken guidance of any car on sale. Meanwhile, the 12-speaker Dynaudio stereo — standard on all models — is a bit of a belter.

There are a pair of power options with the Seal, with power being the main differentiator between the two trim levels. The cheaper car is the Design rear-wheel drive model, which offers 313hp, while the Excellence all-wheel drive car takes the power up to 530hp thanks to the second electric motor.

The more efficient is the less powerful, as you’d expect, with respective official range figures of 354 and 323 miles from the 82.5kWh battery, which equates to decent efficiency of 4.3miles/kWh or 3.9miles/kWh respectively. BYD quotes a charging time of 26 minutes to go from 30-80% at a charging speed of up to 150kW, which is reasonable if not up with the best speeds.

It’s also worth noting that a heat pump, which helps battery efficiency, is fitted as standard.

As with all electric vehicles, tax conditions are favourable compared to petrol or diesel, especially if you take it as a company car, where all full EVs sit in the lowest tax band. In theory, you get the lowest possible rate of Vehicle Excise Duty (road tax, to you and me) and you’ll have to pay the new per-mile charge for electric cars from 2028 onwards.

The Seal has been tested by safety specialist Euro NCAP, and was awarded the maximum five stars, performing well across the board but especially around vulnerable road user protection.

The list of standard safety kit fitted to every Seal is vast, with highlights including lane change assist, intelligent cruise control, blind spot detection, seven airbags and door opening warning.

As a new brand to the UK, there’s little evidence either way on BYD reliability, although it has plenty of experience of building electric cars in China. But BYD has moved to increase confidence in its products by offering a six-year or 93,750-mile warranty, double that which comes with the likes of BMW, Audi or Mercedes, while the battery and electric motor are covered for eight years, with mileage limits of 125,000 and 93,750 miles respectively. The battery’s warranty guarantees at least 70% of the original operational capacity up to those limits. BYD is still too young a brand to have featured in the Driver Power ratings for reliability and customer satisfaction.