2023 Chery Omoda 5 EX review

When it comes to first impressions, few small SUVs punch as hard as the Chery Omoda 5. This little urban lifestyle vehicle is no shrinking violet, from its three-tone paint job to its sparkling grille and high-tech interior. 

Then there’s the price. The Omoda 5 range starts from $32,990 drive-away, and this EX we’re testing here kicks off at $35,990 drive-away.  

So, it looks good, and the price is sharp. The question is: does the Chery Omoda 5 have the substance to beat other small SUV contenders, or is it all bling and bottom line? 

That’s what we’re going to find out.

The Chery Omoda 5 range launched back in March 2023. Two variants arrived initially, and two more were expected to follow, but six months later, were still waiting for the EX+ and EX+ AWD to join the BX price-leader and slightly better equipped EX.

Word from the importer is that the EX+ and EX+ AWD are still some months away. How long, exactly? "Our plans for 2024 have not been finalised," Chery told us.

The Chery Omoda 5 BX’s starting price of $32,990 drive-away puts it up against top-of-the-range Chinese rivals, the MG ZST and GWM Haval Jolion, and undercuts Japanese rivals like the Nissan Qashqai, Subaru Crosstrek, Mazda CX-30 and Toyota Corolla Cross. It also slips in below Korea’s Hyundai Kona but just above the Kia Seltos, which starts at $29,500 before on-road costs (or just under $32,000 drive-away).

Most of those cars carry pricing exclusive of on-road costs, unlike the Omoda 5 and the MG ZST that both include ORCs.

Our test car for this review, the Chery Omoda 5 EX, kicks off at $35,990 drive-away. Mercurial Grey paint adds $500, red paint accents another $600 and the black roof another $600, bringing the as-tested total to $37,690 drive-away. 

The Omoda 5’s strong first impression continues inside. Faux-leather covers the seats, the dashboard, the doors and armrests, and feels nice to the touch. Bronze and brushed alloy highlights on the doors and dash combine with a metallic-look plastic to deliver an upmarket vibe. 

Dual 10.25-inch digital displays add nicely to the premium appearance and give the cockpit a modern appeal. Below the central touchscreen is a reclined felt-covered pad, one half for phone charging and the other half for phone resting, or whatever else you choose to use it for. 

All in all, the cabin presents as classy and contemporary. But when you actually start to use the interior, you quickly discover how thin the veneer is. 

The armrests may be covered in leather-look material but there’s no padding between that and the hard plastic frame beneath, so elbows will get sore quickly. 

The seats lack decent support for longer journeys, and no lumbar adjustment adds to the discomfort. The steering wheel doesn’t have enough reach adjustment, which also compromises the driving position. 

Moving to the back seats, and the door aperture is low, which means you’ll need to duck your head quite a bit to get in and out.

Head and leg space in the second row are okay for adults up to six feet tall, but a hump in the floor under the front seats limits available foot room, forcing legs to be bent more than comfortable. The seat bench itself is flat and very firm, and the seatbacks have an aggressive amount of lumbar support that cannot be dialled back.

There are air vents in the back seat and a single USB-A port. There are two cupholders in the fold-down armrest, but they’re set so far back that it’s difficult to get bottles in with your nearside arm.

The boot is of a decent size, Chery quoting 360L with the seats up and 1075L with the seats folded down. Its practicality is limited – there are no shopping bag hooks or tie-down points whatsoever – but it does come with a 12V port and a hard cargo cover.

The Omoda 5 EX has an electrically operated tailgate, but its lethargic response to button pushes means you initially push twice thinking it hasn’t registered, which then stops the boot as it finally starts to move. Owners will acclimatise to this, obviously, but it’s another example of NQR execution.

The Chery Omoda 5 packages a space-saver spare wheel under the boot floor, which is enough to get you out of trouble but not as good as a full-size spare.

The 2023 Chery Omoda 5 features two 10.25-inch screens – one acting as the driver's instrument cluster and the other as the infotainment system.

Graphics are functional but not fancy, and the language is sometimes crude (presumably because it has been translated from Chinese to English), but overall the system works well enough once you get used to its initially confusing menu structure. 

However, the system is slow to respond to user inputs when in smartphone mirroring mode – if you can get your smartphone to pair, that is. On two separate drives, I was unable to get Android Auto up and running, nor would it play media back through a Bluetooth connection. It did take calls but wouldn’t let me make them… go figure.

It’s also worth noting that the 15W smartphone charging mat was not able to actually charge my Google Pixel 7 smartphone on any of the hour-long commutes I did that week. At best, it maintained the level of charge I started with, and it would make my phone hot to the touch. So hot that some of the phone’s systems went offline.

The Omoda 5 EX’s infotainment system has AM and FM radio but not digital radio. It also does not have satellite navigation, which is not a big issue if you can get your phone to pair.

Voice activation is another system the Omoda 5 purports to have, but I found it all but useless at actually doing anything. And once you awaken it with a “Hello Chery”, it lingers for an interminably long time waiting for you to retry a command before giving up and shutting down.

The Omoda 5 does not have a smartphone companion app for interacting with the car when you’re not inside it.

The Chery Omoda 5 has earned a five-star safety rating from independent safety experts, ANCAP, although ANCAP's evaluation raised questions around the effectiveness of both its passive safety systems and active safety systems.

The vehicle earned solid scores for adult occupant protection (87 per cent), child occupant protection (88 per cent) and safety assist (83 per cent), and managed an okay 68 per cent for vulnerable road user protection. 

According to ANCAP, the Chery Omoda 5 performed well in its frontal offset crash test, but the organisation said certain hard elements of the small SUV’s dashboard “could become a potential source of knee injury risk to occupants”.

ANCAP also said the Omoda 5’s side curtain airbags did not deploy "as intended" in its side impact test – resulting in a points penalty.

Despite posting good scores for upper leg impacts against pedestrians, the Chery Omoda 5’s Vulnerable Road User Protection scores are among the lowest compared to other small SUVs tested against ANCAP’s 2020-2022 criteria.

ANCAP also questioned the efficacy of the Omoda 5's active safety systems, saying it “did not respond in a small number of emergency lane-keeping test scenarios”, despite being equipped with newer software intended to fix issues found when the vehicle was tested by Euro NCAP in 2022.

"Following an update to the lane support software running in Australian-supplied vehicles from April 2023, additional emergency lane keeping (ELK) and lane keep assist (LKA) tests were conducted to assess any potential differences in safety-related vehicle performance," ANCAP said in its media release.

"The additional tests, conducted locally, showed vehicles with the updated software maintained a similar level of performance to the test results obtained in initial European testing, though the local vehicle did not respond in a small number of emergency lane keeping test scenarios and this is reflected in a reduced score," it said.

The 2023 Chery Omoda 5 features lots of safety technology, including forward and backward auto emergency braking (AEB), lane-departure warning, blind-spot assist, adaptive cruise control, traffic sign recognition, and a camera-based driver monitoring system.

But there’s a big difference between having a system, and having a system that works well. The Omoda 5 is the new king of the beeps, taking that crown from the overly zealous 2021 Mazda BT-50 and Isuzu D-Max, both of which have since been dialled back.

The Omoda 5’s active safety systems have so many beeps – and most without any accompanying visual message – that I soon mentally switched off to them. 

In addition, the lane-keeping assist (LKA) system is overly aggressive in maintaining the lane, and its constant interruptions on the steering quickly become draining. In addition, every time LKA intrudes it also takes over the driver instrument display with a 1980s computer-game-style representation of the lanes and cars around you. 

This graphic is often wrong, putting cars where there are none, showing cars merging into each other or appearing on the right when you’re in the far right already. 

The graphic also does not go away after a few seconds. So, if you prefer driving with a different display, such as fuel consumption or media playback, then you’ll need to manually switch back to that every time.

The Omoda 5’s speed sign reader is often wrong. At times it said we were in a 20km/h zone, at other times a speed unlimited zone, neither of which exists in Melbourne.  

The active cruise control can vary by as much as 6km/h in either direction for no reason. It also switched off twice over gentle freeway undulations.

The driver attention monitoring system is also overly attentive, beeping if you do a blind-spot headcheck or turn your attention to the infotainment screen. It also pops a warning on the dashboard that does not automatically go away after a few seconds. Instead it must be cleared by the driver, which is in itself an unnecessary distraction.

The Chery Omoda 5 comes with a class-leading seven-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty – Mitsubishi’s 10-year warranty is conditional, remember.  

The Omoda 5 also comes with 12 months of complimentary roadside assistance, which can be extended up to seven years at no extra cost if you continue to service at a Chery dealership.

Servicing costs are above average for the class, just. Each of the first five services is fixed at $280, with services six and seven jumping to $391 and $295 respectively. 

The only catch is that the Omoda 5 must be serviced every 12 months or 10,000km, whichever comes first. That’s okay if you don’t drive more than 10,000km a year, but the national average of 11,500km suggests more of us do than don’t.

Insuring a Chery Omoda 5 EX comprehensively costs $1475 per year at market value, which is a touch expensive for a sub–$40K small SUV. A quote obtained for a similarly priced Hyundai Kona came in at $1014, while a more expensive Honda HR-V came in at $1551.

These quotes are indicative only and have been obtained using the profile of a 35-year-old male with a good driving record living in Chatswood NSW. Individual results may differ depending on circumstances.  

Chery claims the Omoda 5’s 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine will consume an average of 6.9 litres per 100 kilometres for mixed city and highway driving. 

During our seven-day test, which covered more than 500km and was biased towards highway driving, we recorded a much higher average of 9.7L/100km, which is around 210km less from each 51L tank. It’s also far from economical in this class.

I’ve said that our first visual impressions of the Chery Omoda 5 were positive. Our first driving experience was closer to the other end of the scale. 

For starters, the smart-looking gear selector is confusing to use. P-R-N-D and M for manual are all on the one action plane, so it’s easy to end up in manual mode starting out. You’ll only realise your mistake when you’re heading down the road doing 6000rpm at 50km/h.

The lack of gearchange paddles on the steering wheel makes it hard to rectify your mistake on the fly, meaning drivers must instead fight with the transmission lever to figure out how to move from M back to D, because that same forward movement is also what drops you down a gear in manual mode.

This transmission lever also makes three-point turns fraught because finding reverse is equally challenging. If the car is still rolling forward when you try to change – even at a bee’s walking pace – it stays in D. There’s no warning beep to tell you it has refused your request, either. Which is strange, because it has warning beeps for pretty much everything else. 

During my first drive from the car collection point back to the office, the vehicle’s overly firm and terse ride made itself known. This car is not designed to soak up road imperfections, nor does it do a good job isolating the outside world from occupants. 

I had to recheck that I’d closed the door properly and that all windows were closed because the sound of the car’s tyres – and suspension – on rough roads was surprisingly invasive.

This did not change during my seven days with the car, suggesting money has been saved by using less sound-deadening material.

The vehicle’s steering is a mixed bag. It has a relatively fast steering ratio that makes tight turns quick to execute, but the weighting is all over the place. Heavy when it should be light, and vice versa. The steering is also constantly muddied by the car’s lane-keeping assist system, so much so that I ended up turning it off every time I got in. Put simply, it felt like it was constantly fighting me.

Engine response is another area that needs improvement. The Omoda 5’s 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine and continuously variable transmission have the performance to make driving easy and be competitive in the class, but its responses can be crude at times.

One example is moving from a standstill. Initially, the powertrain ignores the driver’s throttle press, then it overreacts like a startled cat. This weird initial delay can make moving out into flowing traffic challenging to judge, and the skittish lunge that follows is jolting to passengers. 

One other driving aspect I found disconcerting is the rear-view mirror. This mirror is magnified, which makes following traffic loom larger, so large that I felt like every car on the road was tailgating me. A quick glance in the wing mirror set my perception right, but again this felt like an example of Chery trying to make something better but only making it worse. Perhaps owners will acclimate over time. I didn’t.

The Chery Omoda 5 is a solid first effort for the returning brand, and offers a lot of character and equipment for the price. It’s also decently roomy inside.

It does feel like the vehicle could have used six months more development before launch, because many of the oversights and annoyances I’ve raised would be easy to rectify with a bit more thought and testing. 

Competition is hot in the small SUV marketplace today, and there are both better alternatives and cheaper alternatives, meaning the only reason the Omoda 5 stands out is for its styling.  

The Chery Omoda 5 EX is the sweet spot of the Omoda 5 range, bringing a decent amount of additional equipment to justify its $3K higher price compared to the BX, including sunroof and electric tailgate, heated front seats and steering wheel, power adjustment on the passenger front seat, and a 360-degree parking camera.

That said, none of those would be deal-breakers for the cheaper BX if you're not a fan of sunroofs and can live without the 360-degree camera.

Chery tells us that anyone interested in buying one today will not have to wait long, unlike with some other brands that are struggling with supply issues. "There is plenty of stock available with dealers," we're told.

The next steps on the purchase journey are to check the Chery website for stock of your preferred Omoda variant. You can also find Cherys for sale at Drive.com.au/cars-for-sale.

We strongly recommend taking a test drive at a dealership before committing because personal needs and tastes can differ. Find your nearest Chery dealer via this link. We’d also recommend test-driving the Hyundai Kona, Honda HR-V and Nissan Qashqai because these vehicles will provide a good benchmark against which to compare the Chery.

If you want to stay updated with everything that's happened to this car since our review, you'll find all the latest news here.