Hyundai i20 Review 2024

If you’re not swayed by badges, a sporty drive or try-hard posh interiors then, yes, the Hyundai could be the car for you. Its pair of large infotainment screens make it feel very high tech and even the basic model has plenty of equipment. 

Factor in the spacious interior and Hyundai’s excellent five-year warranty, and this is a car that could give your family half a decade’s worth of fault-free motoring.

When it comes to small hatchbacks, there's no shortage of choice with some excellent cars on the market. There’s the fun-to-drive Ford Fiesta, classy Volkswagen Polo, spacious Skoda Fabia, full hybrid Toyota Yaris, stylish SEAT Ibiza, trendy MINI five-door and many more. It pays to test drive as many cars as possible to find the one that suits you best. 

Interior quality isn’t one of the Hyundai i20’s strong points. None of its plastics are soft to the touch like in a Volkswagen Polo, Ford Fiesta or Toyota Yaris. 

Sure, you get some interesting ribbed trims that intersect between the air vents and lighter plastics in the lower half of the cabin help brighten it up. But this doesn’t make up for the large swathe of plastic that sweeps across the bottom of the dashboard and looks like it had a past life as chocolate box packaging. 

The design itself is also a bit plain with neither the high-tech feel you get in most Polos or the sculpted shapes found in a Yaris. If plain and simple works for you, though, the Hyundai i20 will be just the ticket. 

While its not the prettiest looking, the Hyundai i20's infotainment is very good. Even the basic model comes with an eight-inch central touchscreen and a 10.25-inch digital instrument binnacle. You also get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto so all the apps you love on your phone – like Google Maps and Spotify – work on the car’s big screen.

Go for the Premium model and you swap the eight-inch central touchscreen for a 10-inch version. It comes with a five-year free subscription to Hyundai’s connected service so you can do things like check on the car’s location and open it remotely using Hyundai’s Bluelink app. 

The infotainment’s graphics have a blue hew that looks a bit 90s hi-fi, and the graphics themselves aren’t the sharpest. But while it looks a little dated, its quick reactions and recognition of gestures such as 'pinch' and 'swipe' mean it is one of the slickest systems to use that you'll find fitted to a car of this size. 

Ultimate models go a step further than the rest of the range by swapping the weedy standard stereo for a Bose system with eight speakers including a subwoofer, though we’ve yet to sample how good it is in practice.

In the front, the Hyundai i20 has all the room tall adults need and the cabin is wide enough that you don’t have to worry about bashing your passenger's knee when you’re changing gear. 

The front seats slide far back on their runners so even if you're tall, you’ll have room to spare and the seats' flat squabs make them comfortable on long journeys. 

The biggest revelation comes in the back seat where your six-foot passengers will find they have plenty of knee room even if you're a similar height sitting in front of them. Again, the width of the car means two people in the back have loads of elbow and hip room and you’ll squeeze a third passenger in the middle without hearing too many grumbles.

Small rear doors mean squeezing a child seat into place is a little tricky and because of the Hyundai’s low body, you’ll have to lean down to get it located into the car’s ISOFIX points. But that’s also true of all the i20's rivals.

The Hyundai i20's boot space is also comparable to the competition: the i20’s 352-litre load capacity is just three litres smaller than you get in the Volkswagen Polo and its square shape makes it easy to fill. With the adjustable boot floor in its highest setting, you get a tiny load lip to lift luggage over and with the back seats folded down total capacity sits at a healthy 1165 litres. 

If you're buying a small hatchback to fit in a small garage or narrow parking space, you'd be interested to know the Hyundai i20 is 4040mm long (exactly the same as a Ford Fiesta), 1775mm wide (not including door mirrors) and 1450mm high.

Hyundai only offers the i20 with one engine, but it’s a high-tech 1.0-litre three-cylinder that’s boosted by a turbocharger to produce 100PS and 172Nm of torque. That gets it from 0-62mph in 10.4 seconds in six-speed manual form, or 11.4 seconds if you go for the optional seven-speed dual-clutch automatic.

Keep the gears low – the i20 does 70mph in second – and you’ll be rewarded with reasonable performance, although the i20 doesn't have the lazy mid-range you get from other small turbocharged petrols like this and it's also more noisy than tuneful when you give it some revs. 

The gearshift is surprisingly tight and precise, though, so stirring the gears is no hardship. Okay, so you get some throbbing vibrations through the steering wheel and pedals, but that’s true of most three-cylinder engines. 

Also worthy of note is the Hyundai i20's fuel-saving 48V power supply and oversized starter motor. It’s a combination that means the i20 can turn off its engine before you’ve come to a stop, coast on the motorway and can even provide a boost of power getting off the line. Don't expect to bimble around town under electric power alone, though - this isn't a full hybrid setup.

The Hyundai i20 doesn’t quite give you the big-car refinement you’ll find in rivals like the Volkswagen Polo and Toyota Yaris, but it’s still pretty civilised.

Alright, so you get more tyre noise than in the aforementioned competition – we’d advise going for a car with 16-inch alloy wheels instead of the 17s fitted to our test car – but there’s not much wind noise to speak of. Engine noise, meanwhile, is noticeable under acceleration, but settles down once you're cruising.

The i20’s list of standard safety kit wouldn’t have looked out of place in a flagship Mercedes S-Class brochure from 10 years ago. 

Under Hyundai’s umbrella of SmartSense safety features, you get six airbags, automatic emergency braking, a blind-spot warning system, and eCall which can call the emergency services and share your location if you’re involved in a serious accident.

It’s also available with Hyundai’s active cruise control. It can brake the car when there’s slower-moving traffic in front before returning to a preset cruising speed when the way is clear, but it can also use information from the sat-nav to slow for corners and read road signs to adhere to the speed limit. 

This version of the i20 was tested for crash safety by Euro NCAP in 2021, and earned four (out of five) stars. 

Hyundai makes some very reliable cars, backed up by a transferable five-year, unlimited-mileage warranty.

While the latest i20 is too new for us to have any concrete reliability data, its predecessor proved to be a very dependable little car. In the HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index, it scored an impressive 9.42 out of 10 for reliability.

Depending on the trim level you go for (not including the N hot hatch), the Hyundai i20 will sit between insurance groups 12 and 16. It won't be the cheapest of superminis to insure, then, but it won't break the bank, either.

The i20 is taxed at the same flat rate as all other modern petrol and diesel cars, because its mild hybrid system isn't sophisticated enough to qualify it for the discount reserved for alternative fuelled vehicles. That means you annual road tax bill will be £180.

One of the Hyundai i20’s most obvious strengths is its extremely generous level of equipment.

Standard kit on the outside includes 16-inch alloy wheels and LED daytime running lights with fog lights that light up corners at night. Inside, you get an eight-inch centre touchscreen and 10.25-inch digital instrument binnacle, plus air conditioning, cruise control, reversing sensors, a rearview camera and electrically adjustable and heated door mirrors. 

The  Hyundai i20 Premium looks more sporty thanks to its larger 17-inch wheels, tinted windows and chrome trim. The i20 Premium also gets bright-shining LEDs front and rear, which look prettier than the filament bulbs on basic SE Connect (later renamed Advance) cars. 

Inside, you’ll find handy features such as a dimming rearview mirror, automatic wipers and climate control that maintains a set cabin temperature automatically. It looks nicer inside thanks to the glowing mood lighting and you also get heated seats and a heated steering wheel that help take the sting out of a chilly winter morning. Finally, the infotainment screen is updated with a 10.25-inch touchscreen, which you can connect to remotely using Hyundai's Bluelink app to do things like check the car's location and unlock it remotely.

The ultimate trim level is called, well, the Hyundai i20 Ultimate. It gets a two-tone paint job as standard, while inside, kit includes keyless entry, wireless phone charging and an eight-speaker Bose stereo.