Chery Tiggo 4 2026 review | Affordable SUV from China

What is the Chery Tiggo 4?

The Chery Tiggo 4 is a small SUV that competes in an overcrowded and intensely competitive area of the car market. It joins the fray alongside perennial best-sellers such as the Ford Puma and Nissan Juke, but seemingly countless rivals also contend the class, and talented rivals at that, such as the Toyota Yaris Cross, Hyundai Kona, Honda HR-V, Volkswagen T-Cross, Skoda Kamiq, Seat Arona, Peugeot 2008, Renault Captur, Suzuki Vitara, Citroen C3 Aircross, Vauxhall Frontera, and many more besides.

So, in the face of all that competition, how does this unfamiliar Chinese offering stand out? Well, in a couple of ways. First of all, it’s offered exclusively as a self-charging hybrid. That certainly doesn’t make it unique in the class, but it does trim the set of direct competitors down quite considerably.

Where the Tiggo 4 distances itself from pretty much all the competition, though, is on price. It undercuts most mainstream rivals by several thousand pounds, and yet provides more standard luxury and safety equipment than pretty much all of them. On that score, its closest rival is arguably the MG ZS Hybrid+, which offers a similar high-value appeal, but the Chery undercuts even that car by a good few grand.

How practical is it?

Climb into the Tiggo 4 and you’ll instantly be struck by how good the interior looks. Most of the surfaces on show are pleasing to look at, and the colours and textures are mixed tastefully. There are a few panels - such as the rather plasticky glovebox lid - which don’t quite live up to the rest of the cabin, but that’s true of pretty much any car in the class, and is as such utterly forgivable, especially given the car’s low price.

That said, plenty of those panels emit a small creak or squeak when prodded with a finger, so the materials possibly aren’t quite as substantial as they are lustrous, but even so, there’s very little to complain about.

As is the norm these days, you’re faced with a pair of digital screens, which give a reasonably high-tech feel. At the base of the centre console sits a piano black plastic panel - which looks a little chintzy if we’re honest - that houses touch-sensitive controls for the air-conditioning system. These aren’t as easy or as intuitive to use on the move as physical buttons would be, but it’s still great that these controls aren’t buried deep within touchscreen menus, a trait that’s becoming all too common.

The steering column has both reach- and rake adjustment, but some drivers - especially taller ones - might wish for a bit more travel in both directions. That said, even with the driver’s seat set as low as it’ll go (this is done manually in the Aspire and electrically in the Summit), the Tiggo 4’s driving position is quite elevated, which many SUV drivers will love, and the large windscreen and slim front pillars also help give you a good view of the road ahead. It’d be even better if there weren’t a chunky box at the top of the windscreen - that houses the rearview mirror on the inside and the car’s ADAS cameras and sensors on the outside - which protrudes into your view a little.

By contrast, the rear visibility is pretty poor, with a small rear window that’s flanked by very chunky sections of bodywork. And because the car’s window line is relatively high, and rises further towards the back of the car, things can feel a little dark and gloomy in the back seats.

Having said that, you shouldn’t be wanting for space back there. While many cars in this class feel rather tight for headroom and legroom in the back, the Tiggo 4 does really well on both counts, with more than enough for a pair of lofty adults of well over six feet tall to sit in complete comfort. Things won’t be so comfortable if you try to squeeze a third passenger in, because the cabin is rather narrow and so is the middle seat, but the floor in front of that middle seat is almost flat, meaning more foot space when all five seats are needed.

The boot is a decent - if unexceptional - size for the class at 430 litres, but the access to the space is great and there’s virtually no boot lip to negotiate when loading heavy items. There is, however, a rather strange lump in the floor on the right-hand side of the loadbay, which has to be there because the 12-volt battery that sits beneath it wouldn’t fit otherwise. To be fair, it looks very odd, but doesn’t get in the way too much.

The rear seats drop in a 60/40 split to extend the Tiggo 4’s cargo capacity to a maximum of 1,155 litres, but while the folded rear seats go pretty flat, there is a small step up to them from the boot floor.

What’s it like to drive?

The Tiggo 5 is available solely as a self-charging hybrid. It uses a naturally aspirated 1.5-litre petrol engine paired with an electric motor to produce a total of 201bhp, just 94bhp of which comes from the internal combustion engine. The nature of the hybrid system means that it won’t do vast distances on electric-only power, but it also means that you don’t have to bother plugging it in. The 0-62mph performance benchmark stands at 8.9 seconds, while the top speed is given at 93mph.

The character of the powertrain depends on which of the two drive modes - Eco and Sport - is selected. In Eco, which is the default mode, the level of performance on offer feels gentle but entirely adequate, and the power delivery is smooth and consistent. The engine also stays reasonably quiet unless you absolutely floor the accelerator pedal, and even then the noise made by the powertrain is quite distant.

If you switch to Sport mode while on a constant throttle, you immediately feel the car go a little bit faster. The engine becomes much keener to work harder in response to every throttle input, giving a more frenetic feel, but ultimately, it doesn’t make the car go all that much faster: it just serves to make the engine noisier and more raspy-sounding. What’s more, Sport mode does little to remedy the extremely slow throttle responses that are a constant fixture.

There’s plenty of noise in other departments, too. Road noise is the most prevalent, becoming an issue at even very moderate speeds, and at the national motorway limit, it’s pretty loud, yet not enough to drown out the fair old flutter of wind noise that joins it. At least the engine stays settled - in Eco mode, at least - on a constant throttle at motorway speeds.

There are other ways in which the driving experience doesn’t feel particularly sophisticated, too. The ride feels jittery and unsettled at all speeds, even on seemingly flawless road surfaces. The suspension actually isn’t too bad at absorbing larger, sharper-edged bumps, but it really struggles to deal with small, high-frequency ones. It’s not intolerable, but you may well be prepared to sacrifice a level of dynamic polish given the car’s low price, but you certainly need to try it out before buying to make sure you can live with the low levels of everyday comfort.

Having said that, the handling isn’t too bad. You feel a bit of body roll as the car changes direction, but it does feel unreasonable, and the car generally feels tidy. That said, the Sailun ERange low rolling resistance tyres that come as standard don’t generate a huge amount of grip, so if you enter a corner a little faster than you intended, you might find your front end washing wide earlier than it would in rivals. The steering, meanwhile, is perfectly adequate. It’s lighter in Eco mode and heavier in Sport mode, and while it never delivers much feel, it’s responsive enough.

Technology, equipment & infotainment

As the driver of the Tiggo 4, you’re faced with a pair of digital screens, both 12.3-inch items, one behind the steering wheel to act as your driving instruments, and one in the centre of the dashboard to take care of the car’s various infotainment functions.

The former is large and has clear graphics, but the fonts used on the screen are rather small regardless, and there’s a lot of empty space around them, so the vital bits of information are still a little harder to read than they should be. You might expect more configurability, too. Hitting a button on the steering wheel scrolls you between three different layouts, but it’s only a small cluster of stats on the right-hand side of the screen that changes, and in each case, the stats that are displayed are largely useless anyway.

The central screen is a little hit and miss. Again, the graphics are sharp and the screen transitions are quick and slick, but the screen sensitivity is a little unreliable, so you’ll often find yourself jabbing your finger at an on-screen icon two or three times before it registers.

And yes, the ecosystem of menus and submenus within the system is rather complex, so it’ll take you plenty of time to familiarise yourself with the finer points of the system. That said, it’s not as complex as some such systems we’ve seen, perhaps by virtue of the fact that it doesn’t have to deal with quite so many features, so at least you have a fighting chance of getting to grips with it. As we mentioned, the air-con controls are separate from the screen (although there is still a menu within the screen for those functions as well), which we love.

There are two trim levels offered, each with a very generous level of standard equipment. Even the entry-level Aspire trim comes with luxuries including dual-zone climate control, 17-inch alloy wheels, heated and electrically adjusting door mirrors, electric windows, fabric upholstery, LED external lighting, keyless entry and start, adaptive cruise control, reversing camera, and rear parking sensors. The standard infotainment setup includes the twin 12.3-inch screens, DAB radio, intelligent voice control assistant, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and four-speaker audio.

To that little lot, the higher-spec Summit adds power folding door mirrors, rear privacy glass, powered driver’s seat adjustment faux-leather upholstery, heated faux-leather steering wheel, 360-degree cameras, six-speaker audio and wireless phone charging.

Chery Tiggo 4 running costs

As with most Chery products, the purchase price is the big headline. This is a compact yet family-friendly SUV that has a hybrid powertrain and is piled high with standard kit, and at the time of its launch (April 2026) it can be had from just under £20,000 in entry-level Aspire form. Upgrading to the range-topping Summit trim costs you just £2,000 more.

Let’s put that into some context. The benchmark car in the class, the Ford Puma, starts at £27,000, but that’s for a car that doesn’t have a fuel-saving hybrid system (well, not a proper one, anyway). The Renault Captur, and Nissan Juke start at around £23,000 and £24,000, respectively, but again, these aren’t for the hybrid versions. Both are available as hybrids, but so specced, they cost a minimum of around £25,000 and £30,000, respectively.

The Toyota Yaris Cross and Honda HR-V are competitors that are hybrid-only, but prices for these start at around £27,000 and £33,000, respectively. And with all the rivals mentioned, they come with much less standard kit and significantly less power and performance than the Chery Tiggo 4.

With some Chery Group products, your initial saving on purchase price is offset to a degree by high running costs, but the Tiggo 4’s hybrid drivetrain means that shouldn't be the case here. Yes, the official WLTP fuel company figure of 53.2mpg isn’t quite as much as a Toyota Yaris Cross or Renault Captur will give you, but it’s not half bad, and is actually better than the figure returned by the Honda HR-V, which costs £13,000 more.

VED road tax is paid at the standard annual rate, and the low pricing and availability of only one optional extra (one of five paint colours if you don’t like the standard Arctic White) means that you’ll never be in danger of incurring the premium rate. We haven’t yet seen insurance groupings for the car, but we’ll update this review as soon as we do.

Service intervals for the car are every 12 months or 10,000 miles, which is pretty par for the course.

Chery Tiggo 4 reliability

Chery as a brand hasn’t been around in the UK long enough to feature in any of our go-to reliability surveys, so how mechanically dependable its cars are remains a little unclear at present. However, the company has sold 15 million cars worldwide since being founded in 1997, so this is no fly-by-night start-up outfit, and you’d hope the firm knows how to build a reasonably reliable car by now.

A big attraction to potential buyers will be the standard seven-year, 100,000-mile warranty, which sounds very generous indeed, troubling the market-leading arrangements out there. However, before you go believing the hype, we need to advise a little caution here.

Delve into the Ts and Cs of Chery’s warranty, and you’ll find that the cover on a list of certain items quietly expires after a mere three years or 40,000 miles. This in itself isn’t unusual, and similar things often happen with the warranty of other manufacturers. With Chery’s cover, however, the list in question is uncommonly long, and there are some properly big-ticket items on it (examples include all rubber bushes and ball joints, shock absorbers, brake calipers, timing belt, water pump, oil pump, fuel pump, fuel injectors, alternator, starter motor, air-con compressor, catalytic converter, the entire exhaust system, and the infotainment unit) that you really would expect to be covered for longer.