Smart #5 2026 review | A family-friendly EV with a dash of fashion and fun

What is the Smart #5?

Smart has transformed itself from a maker of small, two-seat city cars into a purveyor of medium-sized electric SUVs with a fashion-forward bent.

This is its latest effort, the Smart #5, and it’s intended to be the Smart for buyers that need a little more space than you’ll get in the smaller #1 and #3, but that still want to partake of the youthful, style-conscious vibe that Smart has made its own.

In pictures, it doesn’t look that big, but clever styling hides this car’s considerable bulk: at 4.7 metres long, this is the largest Smart ever made. It’s longer than a Hyundai Ioniq 5, a Nissan Ariya or a Volkswagen ID.4, and very nearly as big as Tesla Model Y. Given its surprisingly reasonable asking price, that means the #5 offers quite a lot of car for your money.

How practical is it?

The #5’s external dimensions manifest in a truly roomy interior. That tall, upright tail results in a huge boot of 630 litres, and that’s more than you’ll get even in a Skoda Enyaq, previously the benchmark for EVs of this size.

That's not all the storage space you get, though, because under the bonnet there's another storage compartment offering a further 72 litres, which brings the total amount of luggage space on offer in the #5 to a staggering 702 litres.

Rear-seat space is pretty impressive, too, and the backrest’s angle can be altered to provide either more boot space or a more reclined seating position. That said, the rear seats don’t slide like they do in the Hyundai Ioniq 5, so the #5 isn’t quite as flexible as it could be.

Up front, passenger space is just as plentiful, and the flying centre console allows for an enormous oddments tray beneath and a flip-top cubby in which you can hide smaller items. The only minor fly in the ointment, in fact, is the door bins, which are rather slim, although with 34 separate storage compartments dotted around the interior, you'll probably be able to find somewhere to stash your things regardless.

Overall, though, the #5 is an impressively spacious EV, with more than enough room for the whole family – and their things – to travel in comfort.

What's it like to drive?

There’s a choice of two battery sizes and two- or four-wheel drive in the Smart #5. That said, even the smallest battery is pretty generous, at 76kWh (this is a total figure; the usable capacity will be closer to 74kWh), and therefore gives a very usable official range of 288 miles. That should equate to around 225 miles in the real world, which is much more than you’ll get in, for example, an entry-level Skoda Enyaq.

Upgrade to the 100kWh (about 96kWh usable) battery, and that range figure increases to a particularly useful 366 miles (around 300 real-world miles). Mind you, if you choose four-wheel-drive, which is only available with that larger battery, the range is chopped back again to 335 miles, which will equate to around 285 miles of real-life driving.

You’ll have to moderate your right foot to get those figures, mind you, because the #5 is astonishingly quick. Even in base model form, you get 335bhp to play with. Move up to the higher-end two-wheel-drive models, and that increases to 358bhp.

It doesn’t end there, because the four-wheel-drive twin-motor version boasts a bonkers 580bhp on tap. But wait, there’s more, because at the top of the range sits the Ioniq 5N-rivalling Brabus version, with four-wheel-drive and an utterly unhinged 637bhp.

You might imagine that feels a tad brisk, and you’d be right; 0-62mph comes up in just 3.8 seconds. The non-Brabus four-wheel-drive model still does it in under five seconds, though, while even the two-wheel-drive cars can get there in less than seven.

We haven’t driven the quicker #5s yet – our test car was a lowly Pro model – but even this felt like it had plenty of shove to be getting along with, and we couldn’t imagine you wanting or needing much more.

That’s especially the case given the Smart is a pretty relaxed thing to drive. The suspension has clearly been set up for comfort, which is as it should be in a family SUV, and so it smothers most larger bumps pretty well. It’s not perfect, mind you; some sharper-edged ruts still catch the #5 unawares, and result in an unseemly thump and even a bit of shudder.

The pudgy suspension means the #5 lacks the sheer agility of smaller Smarts, but you shouldn’t worry too much, because it still feels pretty at home on a twisting back road. There’s lots of lateral grip, it turns in eagerly, and the steering is slow-geared but direct, which means even though you don’t get much feedback, you can pick your line with confidence and ease. The result is a car that feels surprisingly agile and reassuringly stable beneath its initial layer of softness.

Technology, equipment & infotainment

Even the entry-level Pro model comes with 19-inch wheels, faux leather upholstery, a panoramic roof, heated front seats with electric adjustment and a memory function, a heated steering wheel, ambient lighting, and adaptive cruise control: in short, most of the toys you’d usually expect to find on a top-end version of most rivals. But you do miss out on a heat pump, and the climate control is only single-zone, which is worth keeping in mind if you and your regular passengers like different temperatures in the car.

Pro+ keeps the same spec, but adds the larger battery. For more equipment, you have to move up to the Premium, which adds the heat pump and dual-zone climate control, along with 20-inch wheels, heated rear seats and ventilated front seats.

Pulse then adds the second motor for four-wheel drive and extra power, along with an off-road mode. But it doesn’t get you any extra kit: in fact, oddly, it deletes the ventilated front seats and heated rear seats that you get with the Premium.

These are then added back in if you move up to the top-of-the-range Brabus, along with a simulated engine sound, some extra, sporty drive modes, faux suede upholstery, and some sporty styling tweaks, including 21-inch wheels.

As standard on every Smart #5, you also get a suite of advanced driver assistance systems, or ADAS for short, too. Mind you, that’s not necessarily the best news, because the Smart’s ADAS is quite intrusive.

Stray too close to the white lines and the lane departure systems will beep angrily at you; turn your head away from the windscreen for just a second or two, and the driver monitoring does the same. In fact, the combination of bings, bongs and bleeps can often end up being pretty distracting in and of itself, meaning these systems' merit is questionable.

That's as may be, but they're mandated legally to switch on every time you start the car. You do get a custom shortcut key that disables most of them with just a press, but annoyingly, it doesn’t turn off the speed limit warning, so you have to delve into the menus separately if you want to disable this as well.

That touchscreen is a bone of contention, too. Well, to be precise, it’s not so much the screen itself that’s the problem: it actually works reasonably well, although it can take a while to learn your way around it.

The bigger problem is that, in Smart’s quest for a clean, button-free finish, it’s loaded almost every function the car can perform into the screen. That means having to find your way through the menus every time you want to do something: even something as simple as turning on the rear fog light. This soon gets old, especially in the winter.

The one saving grace is that there’s an always-on ‘taskbar’ running along the bottom of the screen that allows you to adjust the climate control without having to switch out of the radio or sat-nav screens. It’s not an ideal substitute for proper buttons, but it’s better than having to switch menus just to adjust the temperature.

Smart #5 running costs

The #5 doesn’t come cheap, with even the base model starting at almost £40,000. Having said that, when you look at what you get for your money – comparing the range and specification on offer with those of its rivals – it actually starts to look like pretty decent value.

This becomes less true the higher up the range you go, mind you, as the price increases to move up to Pro+ and Premium are pretty steep. Indeed, by the time you’re choosing between Premium and Pulse – both of which share the same price tag, the former giving greater range and the latter offering greater performance and four-wheel drive – you’re nearing the £50,000 mark.

And yet, the top-spec Brabus isn’t all that much more than either of those two models, which is why it suddenly starts to look like good value once again. To get into an EV with similar performance from another manufacturer, you’d have to be prepared to pay at least £10,000 or so more. In short, and weirdly, the #5’s range is bookended by its best-value models; the rest don’t look like such good deals.

It’s worth keeping in mind that almost every Smart – even the Pro if you spec a couple of options – will take you over the £40,000 threshold that incurs the ‘luxury vehicle’ tax premium. Combined with the 3p per mile EV surcharge, it all means you’ll end up paying quite a lot in tax in years two to six of the car’s life, especially if you do a high mileage.

Where the #5 does well is on efficiency. Two-wheel-drive models will get an average of 5.4 miles per kWh, while even the four-wheel-drive cars can crack 5.0 dead. Those are deeply impressive figures for a large EV with big batteries.

Smart #5 reliability

We can’t tell you an awful lot about the Smart’s predicted reliability, as the #5 and its stablemates that share the same battery technology are all too new to have been featured in any reliability surveys yet. We’ll be sure to update you when we know more.

Warranty cover runs to three years, with no mileage cap. That’s almost the bare minimum you’d expect these days, and several manufacturers of rival EVs will give you more warranty cover.