Honda HR-V Mk3 Review (2021-present)
Honda HR-V cars for sale
3.0
Expert review
Pros
Clever Magic Seats in the rear
Lots of standard equipment
Low running costs
Cons
Small boot by class standards
Hybrid powertrain feels unresponsive
Cramped rear headroom
The CarGurus verdict
There’s plenty to like about the latest Honda HR-V SUV, not least its comfort, its quality, its generous luxury and safety equipment and its fiendishly clever back seats. Seriously, they’re a real work of art, and once you’ve used them, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without them.
However, while the HR-V hits the mark in many areas, it misses in just as many others. Performance is too limited, refinement is poor and cramped rear headroom and a small boot hamper its overall practicality. Overall, it’s a decent car that’s worthy of your consideration, and if your heart is set on the Honda, it’ll cost you a very similar amount to most of its key rivals, both to buy and to run. For most carbuyers, though, we think that are better all-rounders on offer elsewhere in the small SUV market.
What is the Honda HR-V?
The Honda HR-V is the Japanese firm’s offering in the hugely congested and even-more-hugely competitive small SUV sector, slotting into the range beneath the bigger Honda ZR-V and Honda CR-V. Sizewise, it kind of straddles two classes, meaning it competes with smaller SUVs such as the Ford Puma, Hyundai Kona, Kia Stonic, Nissan Juke and Renault Captur, but also bigger ones including the Nissan Qashqai, Seat Ateca and Skoda Karoq.
As such, it really has its work cut out in standing out from the crowd. The fact that it’s one of the relatively few cars in the class to be offered only in petrol-electric self-charging hybrid form helps on that score, as does the smart-yet-subdued styling and generous equipment.
The current HR-V went on sale in 2021 and was given the lightest of facelifts in 2024 (think slightly re-profiled nose and a redesigned cubby for smartphone charging).
How practical is it?
It’s a mixture of positives and negatives here, and we’ll start with the positives. It’s no great surprise that you have all the space you could want in the front seats – most cars do these days – and in the rear seats, you get absolutely bags of legroom, so there’s space for long limbs to stretch out. However, rear headroom isn’t correspondingly generous, probably partly due to the low-slung roofline, and if your passengers are six feet tall or above, then they’ll find their scalp scraping the ceiling. Headroom is in even shorter supply for whoever ends up in the middle seat, because the cushion they sit on is raised quite a bit, and the fact it’s also hard and narrow means it’s not as comfortable as the seats either side. At least there’s an almost-flat floor in front of all three, meaning plentiful foot space.
Where the rear seats really impress, though, is in their cleverness. The HR-V has the same ‘Magic Seats’ as the Honda Jazz supermini, and in design terms, they’re an absolute work of art. They fold down in a 60/40 split to boost your cargo space, and because the bases cantilever down underneath the backrests as they drop, the extended loadfloor you get is low, flat and perfectly level. The really clever bit, though, is that you can also flip the seat bases upwards against the backrests and lock them in place (see the video above for a demonstration), which allows you to carry particularly tall and bulky items in the rear footwells.
The boot also comes with a handy under-floor storage area, and there’s not much of a load lip to get in your way when you’re loading heavy items. However, the boot itself is pretty small for the class at 319 litres, and if you go for the poshest versions, you get even less space because a little bit is taken up by a stereo subwoofer.
In general, the cabin is built very solidly and has a grown-up, sophisticated design. However, while some of the materials and finishes look really nice, there are some places where you expect to find squishy soft-touch surfaces, only for your fingertips to be met by harder, less appealing ones.
What's it like to drive?
Again, we have a mixture of positives and negatives in this area, so again, let’s begin with the positives. Firstly, there’s the suspension, which has an impressive amount of polish. There’s a slight patter to the ride quality at low urban speeds, but the suspension is really good at absorbing bigger bumps and potholes, and it also feels settled and civilised on the motorway. True, that suppleness, plus the weight of the hybrid equipment, means this isn’t a car that likes to change direction in too much of a hurry, so it’s better to take things slow and steady. However, there’s lots of grip to call upon, so things usually feel pretty secure, and the steering has a pleasantly meaty weighting, even if it can feel a little slow to react.
The hybrid powertrain, however, is a bit less impressive. Granted, you wouldn’t expect a small hybrid SUV to be the last word in performance, but even when measured against those modest expectations, the HR-V feels like a very slow car. You’ll often find yourself needing to bury the throttle pedal just to keep up with the ebb and flow of traffic, at which point the engine revs soar way up to the redline, causing a loud, harsh-sounding noise and lots of vibrations through the main controls. And even then, your pace doesn’t pick up all that much, certainly not enough to justify the severity of the soundtrack. You’ll also hear the engine droning away noisily when you’re trying to maintain motorway pace, and it’s also joined by a large amount of road noise at anything above moderate speed.
And its off-roading abilities? Well, despite its SUV looks, this isn't a car that's designed to go off-road, so don't even think about it.
Technology, equipment and infotainment
This is an area in which the HR-V goes quite a long way towards redeeming itself, because it is very well equipped as standard. Even the entry-level Elegance versions get climate control, heated front seats, alloy wheels, automatic lights and wipers, adaptive cruise control, front and rear parking sensors and a reversing camera. You also get an infotainment system with a 9.0-inch touchscreen, navigation, Bluetooth, DAB, Android Auto and wireless Apple CarPlay connectivity.
Happily, it’s much better than the infotainment system found in the previous HR-V, which had a user interface that was nothing short of dreadful. This time around, you have more logical menus, a clearly marked menu button, better graphics and quicker responses.
Upgrading to Advance trim earns you part-leather upholstery, heated leather steering wheel, a powered tailgate, LED front foglights and two extra speakers, while Advance Style trim adds a premium audio system with subwoofer, wireless phone charging, roof rails, a two-tone roof and styling enhancements inside and out. The very minor facelift in 2024 saw the introduction of a new Advance Plus trim grade, but this amounted to little more than a handful of styling upgrades.
Meanwhile, standard safety kit included across the board includes automatic emergency braking, lane keep assistance, traffic sign recognition, electronic stability aids and a shedload of airbags, while Advance and Advance Style cars also get a blind spot monitor and a cross traffic monitor.
Honda HR-V running costs
In terms of purchase prices, the HR-V looks reasonably competitive with many of its most comparable rivals, but don’t go expecting it to be a steal. Bear in mind, too, that because the HR-V is hybrid-only, many rivals that also offer more conventional drivetrains will have cheaper starting prices, which could well be a factor if having a hybrid isn’t a deal-breaker for you.
That hybrid drivetrain allows the car to return an official MPG figure of around 52mpg. That’s similar to the fuel economy return you get from the Toyota C-HR – it’s slightly less that you get from the 1.8-litre version, but slightly more than you get from the 2.0-litre – and a good deal better than most petrol-powered or petrol mild hybrid rivals. The few diesel rivals left on the market, however, will go further on a gallon.
The tax incentives for choosing a hybrid are nowhere near as compelling as they once were, either on VED road tax or Benefit-in-kind tax for company car drivers, but you will still make a small saving compared with a purely petrol-powered car.
Honda HR-V reliability
Once upon a time, Honda's record for reliability was the envy of the motor industry, with the brand perpetually placing on - or near - the top of any reliability survey you cared to look at. That glittering reputation has taken a bit of a bashing in the last few years, with some uncharacteristically below-par performances in such studies, but it seem like things are finally taking an upward turn once again. Honda placed fourth out of 31 carmakers in the overall manufacturer standings of the latest What Car? Reliability Survey, putting the Japanese carmaker back among the industry's elite in this area.
It's slightly interesting, then, that in the Small SUV category of the same survey, this latest version of the HR-V placed 12th out of 23 models considered. However, this was a little worse than the previous iteration of the HR-V, which placed ninth, and this was a car that came from the company's supposed wilderness period for reliability.
- The hybrid system in the HR-V works a bit differently to those in most other self-charging hybrids. Essentially, it has three driving modes, Electric-only mode, Hybrid mode and Engine Drive mode. Electric-only mode is self-explanatory, but the car spends a vast majority of its time in Hybrid mode, where the petrol engine is running, but it’s merely generating electricity to top up the batteries, and it’s the electric motors that are driving the wheels. That’s unless you ask for maximum acceleration, where the wheels are driven by both the motors and the engine for maximum boost. Engine drive mode is when the engine drives the wheels on its own, and it’s used when driving at constant high speeds, because Honda says that this is the most efficient way to achieve that objective.
- Slightly confusingly, as well as the three hybrid modes, the car has three switchable driving modes. Sport mode gives you sharper throttle responses, Econ mode backs them off a bit to maximise efficiency and also adjusts the air-conditioning for the same reason, while Normal balances these factors for a compromise between increased drivability and maximum efficiency. In practice, though, you’ll do well to notice the difference between the three modes.
- Fancy yet another driving mode? Well, the HR-V delivers. Select the B setting on the gear selector rather than D for Drive, and the car increases the amount of regenerative braking, which means how much energy it recycles through the brakes when decelerating that would otherwise be lost. Within B mode, the amount of regen' can be adjusted in several stages using paddles behind the steering wheel. At its most severe, the experience isn’t quite the one-pedal driving experience you get in some electric cars and hybrids, but there is a significant difference in sensation between the top and bottom ends of the scale.
- If you have your heart set on the Honda: All HR-Vs have exactly the same powertrain, so there’s no choice to make there. Your only real choice concerns how much kit you want and whether you’re willing to pay for it. For our money, mid-range Advance trim probably provides the best balance of kit versus affordability, but you’ll make up your own mind about which of the various trim levels and specs suits you best.
- If you want a bit more style: The Toyota C-HR looks the absolute business, even in a class of car that’s so focused on style, and that’s part of the reason why it’s proving so popular. It’s arguably also the HR-V’s closest rival in terms of size, price and the fact that it’s hybrid-only. The Toyota is enjoyable and comfortable to drive, very solidly built and comes with a very strong warranty package.
- If you want to follow the crowd: Can’t be bothered to think too hard about which compact family SUV you want? Then you might as well do what everybody else does and buy a Nissan Qashqai. This was the car that arguably started the ball rolling on the small crossover revolution, and it’s become pretty much the default choice in the sector. Happily, it’s also a very sound choice, being stylish, comfortable, solidly built and competitively priced.
- If you want the fun-to-drive choice: This isn’t the class of car that immediately attracts the keen driver, but if you are one of those people that wants or needs a small SUV but you fancy having a few laughs along the way, then the Ford Puma is the car for you. Not only does it handle sharply, but it also rides comfortably and comes with some practical, family-friendly touches.
