2026 MG HS Hybrid+ Essence review

You may be forgiven for thinking MG stands for more goodies in the Hybrid+ Essence. There are more soft-touch surfaces, more screen real estate, more warranty, and safety (and audible safety reminders) to sink the proverbial ship.

On paper, its long list of features and goodies look to undercut segment stalwarts like the GWM Haval H6 and the Toyota RAV4. Step inside, and it's clear the cheap and cheerful (and sometimes rattly) ghosts of MG's past have been exorcised with a spray of soft-touch surfaces, plush synthetic leather and pile carpets that feel far more expensive than its $44,990 drive-away sticker suggests.

Backed by the big 10-year/250,000km warranty, it nails the family SUV brief with an interior that offers surprising sophistication, a flat rear floor and room for three big kids in the back, and a responsive hybrid powertrain that sips fuel at a respectable sub-six litres per 100 kilometres.

However, in the high-stakes world of mid-size SUVs, looking the part is not even half the battle. It is absolutely brimming with tech, but like many modern contenders, the move toward a minimalist, screen-heavy dashboard is a double-edged sword, and the HS occasionally trips over its own ambition with overbearing safety systems and distracting menu sorting.

It is a tech-forward hybrid that that offers plenty of 'more'... but sometimes less is better. Unless you're talking about physical buttons on dashboards.

Moving outside of the Chinese price war, the costs rise markedly for similar kit. For example, the excellent Hyundai Tucson Hybrid in Elite spec with the N Line package is $50,850 plus on-roads, or the Toyota RAV4 Cruiser FWD Hybrid at $56,990 plus on-roads.

The Hybrid+ (closed-loop hybrid) powertrain sits above a standard 1.6-litre turbo variant and beneath the plug-in "Super Hybrid". The range comes in three trim options including the Vibe, Excite and Essence nameplates.

The top-shelf Essence swaps the Excite's basic reversing camera for a 360-degree surround view, and adds the safety nets of rear cross-traffic alert and rear cross-traffic brake to haul you up if you’re about to reverse into a stray shopping trolley (or worse).

On the outside, you get fog lights and 19-inch wheels that fill the arches better than the Excite’s 18s.

Inside, fabric is traded for synthetic leather, the seats are heated (though not ventilated), and both fronts have power adjustment versus the manual levers for the passenger on the mid-spec Excite. The driver's seat also gets electric lumbar adjustment and a memory function and it's linked to the side-mirrors' positioning, which are also electrically folding.

The top spec also gets dual-zone climate control and an air filtration system, and the interior is further opened up and lightened by a long panoramic roof with an electric sunroof for the front row and a sun blind to shade the lot. Though on a warm Aussie day, even with the sunblind up and lighter interior, the big airy glasshouse can still heat up and make the air-con work a little bit harder.

Our test car had the $700 Arctic Blue Metallic paint option, which gave it the nickname in the office of The Smurf.

The MG HS pulls off the clever visual trick by not looking quite as imposing as its measurements suggest. While its 4670mm length is fairly standard for the class, its 1890mm width requires a little caution when threading into tighter car spots. That extra girth pays dividends once you climb inside, particularly in the second row, which can seat three adults quite comfortably.

You sit quite high in the HS, and while the driver’s seat offers power adjustment, memory, and lumbar functions, it can take a bit of wiggling to find the sweet spot as under-thigh support adjustment isn't independently controlled.

In this Essence grade, almost every surface your hands or feet touch, from the dashboard and centre console to the floor, is wrapped in something soft and textured.

The synthetic leather-look seats carry that theme forward, looking sharp and feeling impressively plush. The front passenger is treated to similar luxury with seat heating for both sides.

The perforated leather-like steering wheel is squared off and offers good tilt and reach, though the rim is a bit chunky and the stalks are spaced for larger hands.

The gear selector is fat and short, shifting lightly between its three states, but it is set in a mix of piano black trim and brushed steel. In this 4000km-old test car, the black trim was already showing signs of scratches, while the steel can reflect the sun like a laser to the face.

Practicality is a game of two halves. Door pockets and the glovebox are generously sized, and you get two cupholders and a wireless charging pad with two USB-C ports, but the centre console bin is surprisingly small for a mid-size SUV.

As mentioned before, the rear is where the larger footprint really pays off. Passengers over six feet tall (183cm) can sit comfortably behind a driver of the same height with knee room to spare, though the panoramic sunroof does eat into the head room for tall occupants.

The floor is nearly flat, making the middle seat more usable than most, and rear passengers are treated to their own air vents and USB ports.

As for the boot, the 507-litre capacity is about average for the category, but the space itself is well designed and, even better, the boot floor hides a space-saver spare tyre. With the 60:40-split second row down, it has a flat load area measuring 1484L, which is again about average for the segment.

The power tailgate opens high, though you will notice the height from the ground to the boot lip is on the higher side when loading in heavy or bulky gear.

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are both wired or wireless, but there's a catch: your phone will take over the entire screen, including the touchscreen shortcuts that usually sit on the right-hand column of the interface.

There is a row of five physical quick-access buttons under the display, which are for the front and rear demisters, hazards, air-conditioning (on or off), and a home screen shortcut, but any other controls require the driver to exit screen mirroring via the Home button, then a second tap into the display you want.

This means two or three taps for vital air-conditioning elements like fan speed, recirculation, and temperature. Then one must again exit the menu and tap CarPlay or Android and reset the screen mirroring. It's unnecessary and distracting.

The individually tailored 'star' shortcut button on the steering wheel can be set to bring up the climate-control screen, so there is a workaround, but it's a stop-gap solution that would be solved by a dial or two.

The buttons buried in the touchscreen doesn't just affect the driver either. If the passenger wants to turn down the music, say, to answer a phone call or yell at the kids in the back, they have to ask the driver to do it – or do it through the drop-down menu.

The wireless charging pad fore of the centre console is in a good spot, and there are two front and two rear USB ports for charging devices.

MG's connected service, iSMART, is available now on the HS and is complimentary for a year before costing $50 each year to continue. It allows remote locking/unlocking, AC control for pre-cooling and heating, seat heating, location tracking, and vehicle status, but note the public reviews for the app are average on Apple (2.4/5) and less than optimal on the Google store (1.9/5).

The MG HS earned a five-star ANCAP safety rating back in 2024. Additional front offset and pole testing was conducted at the time for the hybrid models to confirm the integrity and safety of the dual-motor system.

The HS range received scores of 90 per cent for adult occupant protection, 87 per cent for child occupant protection, 83 per cent for vulnerable road user protection, and 74 per cent for safety assist technology.

The last score was lower due to a zero score on driver monitoring, which the Hybrid+ has, so it is plausible that this model could score slightly higher if tested today.

The safety specification on the Hybrid+ Essence reads like an exhaustive inventory of modern automotive acronyms, and the execution of said systems is a bit of a mixed bag.

The active systems include forward and rear collision warnings, front and rear cross-traffic alerts and braking, active emergency braking, blind-spot detection and door opening warnings, and the list goes on.

The more intrusive elements of the safety suite prove to be the primary irritants. They function less like a wise, silent partner and more like a nervous, vocal passenger. Between the lane-departure warning, emergency lane-keep assist, and the ever-watchful driver monitoring and warnings, the car is constantly auditing the driver’s performance.

It's a dense, high-spec safety package that prioritises constant vigilance, even if the calibration of the speed limit assist and lane-keep functions lack the subtle touch of more established rivals. Alerts can be silenced, but faithfully reactivate every time the car is restarted.

On the highway, the HS combines adaptive cruise with intelligent cruise assist and lane-change assist, though these systems often feel more like they are suggesting a path rather than definitively holding one. Wander over the line, and the slap on the wrist is immediate and accompanied by the petulant steering wheel rumble.

However, on test when deliberately letting the car waft left or right, it brought the car back to centre and beyond, and needed steering correction to get back into the lane. Granted, most of us would pick up the steering once the car has corrected us anyway, but there are more finessed systems out there.

On the positive side, the inclusion of a 360-degree camera on the Essence spec is excellent, and is very useful given how sloped the slippery design of the bonnet is, as it makes it harder to ascertain the car's corners.

One touch will stretch the camera view to the full width of the screen, and the proximity countdown is exactly that, with reverse and front images showing how far you are from the nearest object in a sliding ruler of centimetres.

The MG HS is covered by an immense 10-year/250,000km warranty, though the condition is that all servicing is through an MG dealer. Stray to your local mechanic, and the warranty drops to a still-respectable seven-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty.

MG's roadside assist is complimentary through the lifetime of the warranty.

Service intervals are every 12 months or 15,000km, whichever comes first, and amount to $1040 over three years/45,000km, or $2166 over five years/75,000km.

A year of comprehensive insurance coverage with a leading provider costs $1835, which is pretty good. This is based on a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.

MG claims the 1.5-litre turbo-petrol HS will sip 5.2 litres per 100 kilometres on a combined cycle, dropping as low as 4.2L/100km in urban environments where the hybrid drivetrain does the heavy lifting. Predictably, that figure climbs to a claimed 5.8L/100km once you hit the highway and ask the engine to actually do some work.

Our testing, which included the usual mix of suburban crawls and highway stints, settled right at that 5.8L/100km mark across the board. This was also with medium regenerative braking and sport mode for a portion of the time.

It’s a respectable result, though savings at the pump are slightly undermined by the requirement of 95-octane premium unleaded.

Based on our real-world average, it would be feasible to travel for up to 900km on a tank, provided most of those kilometres were done in the city or suburban streets.

The combined outputs of 165kW and 340Nm do not look like world-beating figures on paper, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story here.

The combined 1.5-litre turbocharged engine and electric motor delivers a punchy, rather effortless shove. It is well matched to the dedicated two-speed hybrid transmission, offering surprisingly responsive reactions to throttle inputs in the daily around-town grind. It feels urgent when you need to jump off the line or find a gap in traffic, and is smooth and quiet on the highway.

It has three drive modes: Eco, Normal and Sport. Eco dulls the drive down a touch, but it isn't too restrictive, while Normal and particularly Sport give the car a more eager throttle response (but not much else).

The steering is suitably light for city driving in its standard mode, with more weight on-centre but no obvious quickening of the turn-in when set to Sport.

While the engine can emanate a bit of a thrum under load, there is always enough performance when you ask for it, and the cabin acoustics are impressively quiet – the engine is far louder from outside the car than in. Engine, tyre and wind noise are well isolated in the cabin, even at higher speeds on coarse-chip roads.

The suspension leans toward the firmer side in this segment, focusing more on rebound control than soaking up bumps. The HS is a big machine and carries its fair share of body roll if you really haul it about, but undulations are taken in stride with laudable tautness and control.

The flipside is a mildly fussy ride over patchy and uneven surfaces, and somewhat jarring hits over sharper bumps.

The ride is also aided by the fat Bridgestone Alenza rubber around its 19-inch rims, something again commendable where some rivals cut corners on the car. However, the initial power delivery can occasionally overwhelm the front wheels, particularly on a rainy day if you aren't judicious with the right foot.

Importantly, the brake pedal and regenerative energy harvesting are well tuned and easy to drive smoothly, even in the highest of the settings. The latter is almost a one-pedal-style experience, though it won't brake the car to a stop.

The hybrid HS is a proper leap forward for the HS model and for MG. It is a shame, then, that this mechanical success is occasionally shadowed by its own digital ambition.

In the rush to eliminate physical buttons and pack in safety tech, MG has created a minimalist dashboard that is nice to look at, but frustratingly distracting to use when you actually start driving.

The digital interference, ranging from buried menus to overbearing safety bongs and that poorly calibrated lane-centering (see safety technology, above), is a real dent in what is otherwise a capable family hauler.

The MG HS can tow up to 1500kg braked or 750kg unbraked, which means a loaded trailer, a tinny or a camper trailer would be feasible, but nothing more. Of course, it would lean on the petrol engine component and should bump up the efficiency accordingly.

A payload of 445kg, which is the maximum weight of passengers and cargo combined, is enough for five adults and luggage. The roof racks are also at the better end of the weight scale being able to hold 75kg of weight when on the move.

The 2026 MG HS Hybrid+ Essence is a textbook case of an overachiever that hasn't quite learned when to stop helping.

With a $44,990 drive-away price, massive 10-year warranty, super fuel/energy efficiency and luxe cabin, it makes a loud argument against the segment stalwarts. It is practical, surprisingly posh, and affordable all at once.

However, the 'more is more' philosophy is the double-edged sword. While you get more features, you also get more digital interference. Between the screen-heavy menus and the over-eager safety bongs, the car micromanages your commute.

If you can live with the software’s quirks, it's one of the more compelling value propositions in the current mid-size SUV market.

Samantha has been obsessed with cars and combustion engines for most of her life, and has spent the past 25 years deep in the automotive and motorsport industries. An automotive awards judge, rally driver and motorsport tragic, she spends weekdays writing about cars and weekends off-road, off-grid or running amok at the track.

Read more about Samantha Stevens