OMODA Omoda 9 Review & Prices

The Omoda 9 is a roomy SUV that offers big car space for small(er) car money. You get loads of technology for the price as well as a smooth, efficient hybrid engine, but it’s not great to drive and the infotainment is a pain to use.

Buying the Omoda 9 is a bit like choosing a Tesco Finest ready meal. It doesn’t have the instant appeal of an established brand name, but that doesn’t mean it’s not tasty.

There are plenty of established names to consider alongside the Omoda 9. There’s the Kia Sportage, the Volkswagen Tiguan, the Toyota RAV4 and the Cupra Terramar, all offering something slightly different depending on your wants and needs.

The Omoda 9 has an imposing front end design, with vertical daytime running lights not dissimilar to those on the Rolls-Royce Cullinan, and a high bonnet line that will fill the rear-view mirror of the car ahead.

Inside there’s a hint of poshness with sleek lines running across the dashboard from the doors, along with synthetic leather upholstery. It doesn’t totally stand up to scrutiny; the leather feels a bit thin and some of the plastics feel a bit cheap, but quality is about on par with the likes of the Kia Sportage overall.

The bulky centre console and limited steering wheel adjustment mean it’s a touch cramped for the driver, but every other seat has plenty of room, and at 660 litres the boot is bigger than most alternatives can offer.

The infotainment system responds quickly, but the menus are confusing to navigate and trying to get your head around the various drive modes and settings is baffling.

It comes with loads of kit, though, such as standard-fit heated and ventilated seats – front and rear. But while the semi-autonomous driver assistance might sound appealing at this price point, it's so badly implemented you’re better off sticking to the standard adaptive cruise control so it doesn’t feel like you’re constantly fighting the car to stay centred in your lane.

Despite this frustration, in general driving the hybrid engine is excellent. The electric motors power the wheels, with the petrol engine acting more like a generator most of the time to keep the battery topped up. The result is the smoothness of electric driving more of the time, making it easy to drive around town, with none of the range concerns if you venture out onto the motorway.

By plug-in hybrid standards it has a massive electric-only range of over 90 miles – double what some alternatives can manage. That means if you have home charging and don’t do massive journeys, you’ll rarely need the petrol engine at all.

If you do head out on long motorway journeys the comfort-focused suspension makes the Omoda 9 a refined thing to while away the miles. However, this does have the knock on effect of making the body roll around quite a bit, which is particularly noticeable on winding country roads.

It takes a lot to topple the likes of the Volkswagen Tiguan and Kia Sportage among family SUVs, but the Omoda 9 makes a case for itself if you really need the extra space. Some annoying quirks mean it’s not quite as polished overall as those alternatives, though.

Still, if its value for money appeals you can check out the latest Omoda 9 deals on Carwow, or browse Omoda 9 lease deals. You can also check out used Omoda cars from our network of trusted dealers, and when it’s time to sell your current car, Carwow can help with that, too.

The Omoda 9 has a very simple pricing structure – the car starts at around £45,000 and you get all of the kit included, with the only optional extra being paint.

That means you get loads of standard equipment, from the usual Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, to more impressive kit such as parking cameras, adaptive cruise control and heated and ventilated seats all round.

Plug-in hybrid-engined alternatives, such as the Volkswagen Tiguan and Toyota RAV4, start at a fraction less than the Omoda, but similarly-specced versions cost more. The Kia Sportage has the lowest starting price at about £40,000 for a PHEV, with top-spec models around the same as the Omoda for a car that’s a bit smaller but almost identically equipped.

Smooth and economical engine is a highlight, but the suspension is too bouncy

In town

Around town the Omoda 9 drives like an electric car, because the motors drive the wheels most of the time. That means it’s quiet and smooth at low speeds, with plenty of performance for when you need to nip into gaps in traffic.

The suspension is a mixed bag, because it’s generally comfortable, but sharp impacts – such as potholes and speed bumps – create an uncomfortable jolt.

The view is fine looking forward, but the rear pillars and small rear window make visibility out of the back quite poor. Fortunately you get a surround-view camera system to help navigate tight spots, and it even shows what’s under the car.

On the motorway

Motorway speeds are where the Omoda 9 is at its best. The suspension settles down to be pretty comfortable at higher speeds, and there’s not a huge amount of wind and road noise to annoy you on a long drive.

Unfortunately though, some of the driver assistance tech frustrates. It’s great that the Omoda 9 comes with a semi-autonomous driving aid for motorway driving as standard, but the steering wheel constantly feels like it’s fighting you to position the car where it wants in the lane, switching on and off every few seconds when it senses you correct it.

Fortunately you can hold the button on the wheel that activates the system, and it switches to a more traditional adaptive cruise control, which maintains your speed and distance to the car in front with no steering input from the car. This works perfectly well.

On a twisty road

Away from smooth motorways the suspension becomes noticeable again. The constant lumps and ridges common to British B-roads cause the car to bounce around a bit so it’s never really settled.

There’s plenty of power on offer, so it can be fun to accelerate hard out of corners, but couple the bouncy suspension with the light, city-friendly steering and this is not a family SUV that encourages you to take the scenic route home.

That’s largely true of alternatives too, to be fair, though most feel a bit more planted and confidence-inspiring. Although the Cupra Terramar isn’t as comfortable the rest of the time, the trade off is that it’s one of the more fun family SUVs on a country road.

A big boot and spacious cabin are good, but the front seats don’t have much adjustability

Although you get the appealing tall driving position of an SUV, the seat doesn’t go very low at all, meaning tall drivers can feel like they’re sitting on top of the car rather than in it.

There’s also not a great deal of steering wheel adjustment, so you have to sit a bit closer than you would perhaps like. Again, this impacts taller drivers more because the centre console is large and high, so doesn’t give you much space for your left leg.

This is unlikely to be a huge issue for anyone under six-foot, though we did also find that the seat cushion wasn’t particularly wide, so your right hip is resting on the side bolster, which becomes annoying on long drives.

Storage is excellent though, with a huge covered area beneath the armrest, two cup holders – which are removable to create even more storage, all of which is also covered – and a space under the main screen for two phones. The glovebox is a useful size and it’s damped so it opens smoothly, while the door bins have room for a big water bottle.

Space in the back seats

Those travelling in the back have loads of space, with plenty of kneeroom and lots of headroom, while the seats can recline a little too. The floor is a touch high, so you don’t get great support under your thighs, and it’s a touch tight for three abreast, but we’re nitpicking – it’s comfortably above average among alternatives.

This has the added benefit of meaning you have loads of space for even the bulkiest child seats, and the ISOFIX mounting points are easy to access. They’re also under flip-up covers, so you won’t lose them.

Boot space

Practicality extends to the boot, with the Omoda 9 having one of the bigger boots of similarly priced SUV. At 660 litres it’s slightly bigger than the Volkswagen Tiguan, though it does fall behind the five-seater Skoda Kodiaq’s massive 910-litre boot, or the 952 litres you get in the Peugeot 5008 if you fold the third row of seats. Everything else is well behind – you get 591 litres in the Kia Sportage, 540 litres in the Cupra Terramar and 520 litres in the Toyota RAV4.

The space is usefully square, though it’s not particularly tall so carrying larger items could be a bit tricky. A good amount of underfloor storage means you can store valuables out of sight, though.

Folding the rear seats opens up loads of storage space, and there’s no ridge in the floor to worry about, so you can push heavy items through easily. There’s no release in the boot though, so you have to reach in or walk around to fold the rear seats.

The Omoda 9 looks pretty posh inside, but the infotainment system is a pain to use

Jump aboard the Omoda 9 and first impressions are good. The large, sweeping dashboard and synthetic leather upholstery has a more upmarket appearance than a Kia Sportage, and the bulky centre console makes the car feel more solid and substantial than alternatives.

Poke and prod around and it’s not up to the standards of the posher machinery it apes from the likes of Volvo and Mercedes – the climate dials aren’t sufficiently weighty and the plastic button for the armrest feels a bit basic, for example – but it’s at least on par with the likes of Kia and Toyota, which it is priced in line with.

You get two displays housed within a large black bezel. Both are 12.3 inches, with the one behind the wheel displaying driving information such as your speed and fuel economy, while the one to the left is your touchscreen infotainment.

It’s really quick to load menus and respond to your inputs, but navigating your way around the menus and various settings is borderline infuriating because they’re not particularly logically laid out.

And if you use Apple CarPlay and Android Auto there are no quick shortcuts in and out, meaning any changes you want to make require multiple presses to switch between these and the native system, which requires regular glances away from the road. And then the driver monitoring system will shout at you for not looking straight ahead.

The large dials in the centre control the climate settings, which is really useful so you’re not digging around in menus to change the temperature, while the middle one changes your drive mode.

The engine is the stand out feature of the Omoda 9. Under the bonnet sits a 1.5-litre petrol engine paired to a battery-powered electric motor. You get a combined 449hp, which is a hilariously huge amount of performance for a family car.

Pop the car into ‘sport’ mode and it certainly feels quick enough, if not as whipcrack rapid as the numbers suggest. But it’s best to leave it in ‘normal’ or ‘eco’, where the system runs primarily on electric power, meaning it’s quiet and smooth. If you do call on the petrol engine it’s so smooth you’ll barely notice.

After a few hours with the car it was hovering around 45mpg, which is impressive for a hybrid-powered car of this size, though this was in the setting that forces the engine to keep the battery above 70%. In its intelligent hybrid mode, expect over 50mpg even on longer trips.

That’s helped by the massive range – officially you can travel up to 93 miles on electric power alone, which is about double what most alternatives offer. If you have home charging and don’t travel too far too often, it’s reasonable to suggest you could go days without even calling on petrol power…

The other advantage to this is that having such a long electric range makes the Omoda 9 incredibly tempting for company car choosers, with a Benefit-in-Kind rate that’s not much higher than electric cars. It also falls into the second cheapest bracket for first year Vehicle Excise Duty, though it does incur the expensive car supplement for years two to six.

Although the Omoda 9 has not been safety tested by the experts at Euro NCAP, it shares some of its technology with the Jaecoo 7, which scored top marks. Further hinting at a good score for the Omoda is the extensive assistance kit that comes as standard, including emergency lane departure prevention, rear cross traffic braking and advanced cruise control. You also get four ISOFIX mounting points for child seats.

Being so new to the UK, it’s difficult to know how reliable the Omoda 9 will be, as there aren’t too many owner stories to go on and the brand hasn’t appeared in the Driver Power survey yet.

However, reassuringly it comes with a massive seven-year/100,000-mile warranty, which is one of the longest in the UK.