Smart #5 review

Smart seems to be dropping the word ‘premium’ into almost every sentence about the #5, and sure enough lots of the materials used on the inside are soft-touch and feel erm… smart. Heck, even on the entry level Pro trim you get ambient lighting available in 256 different colours.

The design of the interior deploys lots of rounded rectangle shapes with the largest sitting right across the dash and incorporating the central touchscreen. It’s a bright and responsive OLED screen, although it’s packed with menus and can sometimes be tricky to navigate. Thankfully shortcuts remain across the bottom of the screen at all times, but we’d still like some proper physical buttons for the climate control.

At least Smart hasn’t gone for fancy touch-sensitive buttons on the steering wheel. Worth noting the central screen also gets wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and there’s a new ‘digital avatar’ that’s a lion calld Leo. He doesn’t really do anything useful.

What kit is there?

The entry-level Pro gets heated, electrically adjustable front seats, two-zone climate control, a 360-degree parking camera, 19in wheels and an impressive panoramic roof. Pro+ adds faux leather seats and wireless phone charging (although beware that your phone will fly off the pad if you so much as look at a corner), while the big step comes with the Premium trim and its passenger screen, augmented reality head-up display, heat pump and 20-speaker Sennheiser sound system. The latter is absolutely excellent by the way, with an output of 1,190 Watts and full 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos capability.

The passenger screen is less successful, and if the person who called shotgun starts streaming a video or playing one of the inbuilt games it can become very distracting for the driver.

The top spec #5 gets plenty of Brabus badging inside plus some fake carbon fibre trim, but otherwise the materials are good with Dinamica microfibre seats and an Alcantara steering wheel.

What about space?

Legroom in the rear seats is hugely impressive, with more than enough space for a 6ft+ passenger to sit behind the same sized driver. The rear seats can also electrically recline and are heated from Premium trim upwards.

Thanks to the boxy shape, boot space is an impressive 630 litres. Oh, and the button to open said boot is hidden in the ‘a’ of Smart. For comparison purposes, the Skoda Enyaq gets 585 litres of luggage capacity behind its rear seats. The Smart also gets a 72-litre frunk if you spec the rear-wheel drive variant – which means enough space for a proper cabin-sized suitcase – although that shrinks to 47 litres if you want all-wheel drive.