Denza Bao 5 2026 review | A premium SUV with rugged underpinnings that doesn’t stack up

What is the Denza Bao 5

Good question. It’s an SUV, clearly, but it’s not the usual electric crossover we’re used to seeing from Chinese brands.

Instead, BYD sub-brand Denza’s first SUV to arrive here in the UK has a rugged body-on-frame construction, which means that the body is bolted to a strong, thick chassis that absorbs most of the stresses and strains of the car’s motion out on the road. This is by contrast to most modern cars, in which the chassis is part of the body – what’s known as a monocoque – thereby spreading the loads around the entire car.

A body-on-frame construction is usually used in pick-up trucks and heavy-duty off-roaders, because it’s tougher off-road and better for towing. So you’d think the Bao 5 is intended to be a workhorse. But Denza is pricing and marketing the Bao 5 as a premium product, with a lavish interior and an equipment list longer than the Great Wall.

Which is a bit like what Mercedes has done with its G-Class, albeit at double the price. So perhaps Denza wants the Bao 5 to be seen as a more affordable version of Merc’s off-road hero.

Trouble is, Land Rovers are pretty capable off-road, too, and a Defender – now a monocoque, and therefore much more refined to drive on the road – won’t cost you much more. Against such storied competition, the Bao 5 may well turn out to be a tough sell.

How practical is it?

You get 475 litres of boot space in the Bao 5. Not bad, you might think, until you realise that the car itself is 4.9 metres long.

That makes it about the same size as a BMW X5, which gives you 175 litres more of boot space; a Hyundai Santa Fe, meanwhile, offers around 150 litres more than the Bao 5, and also gives you the option of a third row of seats to carry seven people: something the Bao 5 does not.

The rear seats split and fold in a 60/40 format, which is pretty ordinary, and they don’t do any clever sliding or tumbling to increase versatility. You don’t even get a ski hatch, so if you want to carry longer loads, you’ve no choice but to fold a portion of the rear bench down.

Access to the boot is compromised, too, by the side-opening boot lid, which will make it difficult to get things out if you’ve reversed into a parking bay with a wall at the end.

It also opens the wrong way for UK roads; the hinge is on the left side, so if you’re parallel parked on the correct side of the road, you have to stand close to the traffic flow to unload, then stand in the road itself to close the door, before you make your way back to the safety of the pavement.

So, where has all the boot space gone? Well, perhaps into the back seats, where usually Chinese SUVs offer plenty of legroom. And while there’s enough in the Bao 5 for you to get comfortable, it isn’t quite as capacious as you might expect. That's a by-product of the high floor that’s needed in a ladder-frame car, which impinges on legroom and forces your knees into a more upright position.

This high seating position is great when it comes to buckling children in, as it means child seats are at eye level. But climbing aboard if you’re less mobile might be tricky, simply because you’ve got to climb up so high. Thankfully, there are grab handles and a neat, automatically extending side-step to help with this.

Up front, you sit imperiously high, peering out over the flat, bluff nose, with a good view of where it ends. The big, tall windows mean visibility is good to the sides, too, though it’s a shame the huge external spare wheel carrier blots out some of the view to the rear.

What’s it like to drive?

There’s only one powertrain available in the Bao 5 for now, and it’s a plug-in hybrid that consists of a 148bhp 1.5-litre petrol turbo engine and a pair of electric motors, one for each end of the car, fed by a 31.8kWh battery. That gives the Bao 5 an electric-only range of 54 miles (officially; reckon on 40 or so in the real world).

The majority of the time, the petrol engine acts as a generator, charging the battery while the electric motors do most of the work of hauling the car around.

The total maximum power output of the engine and motors combined is a hefty 536bhp, which is enough to get the Bao 5 to 62mph from rest in just 4.8 seconds (5.0 seconds in the heavier, higher-spec Ultimate model). For the money, no other car of this type can come close: a similar outlay on a Defender gets you a 6.1-second 0-62mph time, for example.

The only trouble is that the Bao 5 rarely feels as fast as its figures suggest. There’s a lot of weight to get moving here, and a lot of suspension travel to take up, and while there’s no doubt that this car is quick, it doesn’t feel like a car that can hit 62mph in less than five seconds.

Perhaps that’s compounded by the fact that every bout of rapid acceleration is something of a heart-in-mouth moment. The trouble lies in the construction; while body-on-frame cars are rugged, they’re also notoriously vague and sloppy to drive on the road, and the Bao 5 is no different.

The steering has so much deadness around the straight-ahead position, in fact, that you can wiggle it from side to side while you’re going in a straight line, and the Bao 5 won’t change direction.

What this means is that actually keeping the Bao 5 going the direction you want it to requires constant corrections, all the more so when you’re accelerating hard.

As you might imagine, then, cornering is something of a crapshoot; the Bao 5 leans over heavily when you turn in, and any time you adjust the accelerator mid-corner, its line alters, meaning you have to adjust the steering to correct.

Then there’s the ride quality, which is distractingly jiggly, allowing all sorts of bumps and imperfections to shudder their way up through the car to your backside. Big divots and ruts, meanwhile, cause the car to buck and jolt.

The overall effect is that of riding a slightly recalcitrant camel; bumpy, mildly uncertain, and occasionally comical. And when you arrive, you’re mainly relieved that you got it to go where you intended to, and that you can now get off.

What about off-road? Well, in theory, that’s where the Bao 5 should be at its best. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a chance to try it out on anything more taxing than a gravel car park yet.

That said, the signs are promising. Ground clearance, and approach and departure angles, are on a par with the best off-roaders in the class. There are three locking differentials, and in the top-of-the-range Ultimate, there’s a fancy hydraulic suspension system that allows the body to stay flat even if one wheel is completely off the ground.

What’s more, Denza boasts of 16 distinct off-road modes designed to cope with all sorts of different surfaces and terrains.

Mind you, many people buy cars with body-on-frame construction not for their off-road prowess, but for their towing capacity, which is usually pretty impressive, as a by-product of the sturdy chassis.

The Bao 5 can haul 2,500kg, which isn’t bad, but neither is it really good enough to justify all the downsides of this type of construction. After all, if you're going to live with wobbly suspension and imprecise steering on the road in order to haul heavy loads on a regular basis, the towing capacity had better be worth it.

For context, most body-on-frame vehicles, like the Ineos Grenadier, can haul 3,500kg, which is the maximum legal limit for a normal driving licence. The same goes for the Land Rover Defender, which is a monocoque.

If you don't need any more than the Bao 5 can offer, meanwhile, then the Kia Sorento can tow just as much. And it's cheaper, roomier, more practical, and much nicer to drive.

Technology, equipment & infotainment

There are only two versions of the Bao 5, but both come absolutely laden with toys. Even the entry-level version, the Elegance, gets heated- and ventilated front seats, heated rear seats, a panoramic sunroof, leather upholstery, a passenger touchscreen (more on that shortly), and an 18-speaker sound system developed in tandem with French acoustic engineers Devialet.

Upgrade to the Ultimate model, and you get that trick hydraulic suspension system, Nappa leather upholstery, ventilated rear seats, a digital rear-view mirror, and a hard-shell case for the spare wheel mounted on the back of the car.

Climb aboard the Bao 5 and you’ll notice immediately that the interior is dominated by screens. There’s one in front of the driver, which displays driving information, and a huge central touchscreen, which allows control of most of the car’s functions. Unusually, however, there’s also a touchscreen in front of the passenger.

We didn’t get much time to try this out during our short test-drive. But we did note that the main touchscreen, while large and crisp in appearance, has a lot of work to do, as it houses so many of the car’s main functions.

That means a labyrinthine menu layout, which can make it distracting to use on the road. BYD has also followed the fad of making the climate control systems accessible only via the touchscreen, and while these do get an always-on taskbar along the lower edge of the screen, this isn’t as intuitive to use as simple, physical controls.

What’s odd is that BYD has included some nice buttons and switches for other functions, such as driving and off-road modes. This is great, but they’ll likely be used only very rarely, and while the car is at a stop. It therefore feels as though the space would have been better served by installing switches for functions that are frequently used on the move, something more mainstream car makers like Renault and Vauxhall are leading the way on.

Denza Bao 5 running costs

The Bao 5 is a thirsty beast. Granted, its official fuel consumption figure of 68.9mpg might sound pretty good, but remember that that’s starting with a fully charged battery; by the standards of plug-in hybrids, it’s really nothing to write home about.

And it won’t take long for the battery to be fully depleted, at which point the Bao 5 will manage just 26.4mpg. On longer journeys, then, diesel rivals like the Defender will use much less fuel.

Given that most Chinese cars are priced at the value-focused end of the spectrum, you might expect the Bao 5 to be pretty affordable. But, with its list price starting at around £69,000, it’s anything but.

That price tag puts it toe-to-toe with the Land Rover Defender, and while it’s true that you get more kit for your money with the Bao 5, the Defender’s vastly better driving dynamics and greater towing ability mean it’s the car you’d rather be driving.

Denza will follow BYD’s service intervals, which means its cars will need servicing every two years or 20,000 miles, whichever crops up first. That’s about par for the course these days, though some manufacturers still require plug-in hybrids to be serviced annually, which means the Bao 5 will better them for maintenance costs.

It’s also worth noting that the petrol engine uses a timing chain, rather than a rubber belt, which is what some rivals are equipped with. As a result, the Bao 5 doesn’t need a costly belt change every few years.

Denza Bao 5 reliability

Trying to tell you how reliable a Denza product will be right now is like holding a finger in the air. The brand has only just launched in the UK, so it’s impossible to know for sure. And even though parent brand BYD has been selling cars here for a while now, it hasn’t done so in large enough numbers for us to have any quantitative reliability data to go by.

All we can really tell you, then, is that Denza offers a six-year, 93,750-mile warranty on its cars, just like parent company BYD. That bodes well, but if you want to buy a Bao 5 right now, you need to go in with your eyes open to the fact that its reliability is entirely unproven.