BMW X3 (2021 - ) review

Monthly PCP finance payments may cost you a bit more than those for rivals like the Audi Q5, Volvo XC60, Land Rover Discovery Sport or Porsche Macan because the X3's residuals aren't quite as strong all things relative. Like all of the above it’s also got a hefty sticker price, but for those determined to buy a BMW, it's a case of no pain, no gain. Day-to-day BMW's petrol and diesel engines are pretty fuel efficient, but the plug-in hybrid version will be even better if you do short runs throughout the week on electric power alone from a home charging point with a suitable off-peak tariff. Company car drivers will also benefit hugely from the tax break provided by the super-low emissions of the hybrid version, the electric iX3 even more attractive by this measure.

We're willing to ignore BMW's poor reliability record at brand level, because the X3 actually fares very well in most owner satisfaction surveys, especially the petrol version which came top in What Car?'s reliability survey with the diesel in third. BMW also scores extra points for offering unlimited mileage with its three-year warranty, rather than the industry-average 60,000 miles. If you plump for the plug-in hybrid, the battery is covered by a separate six-year warranty.

Unsurprisingly, Volvo's XC60 beats the X3 in safety testing but the BMW still scores well, with six airbags, tyre-pressure monitoring and emergency braking as standard. We are forever disappointed, however, when interventions to steer you out of a collision course with an unseen vehicle in your blindspot aren’t included as the same. You do get alerts as standard and BMW includes this excellent safety feature in its optional Driving Assistant Professional package but, given it’s actually more useful than the intrusive lane departure and collision warning systems typically included as standard, you shouldn’t have to pay extra. The Driving Assistant Professional pack also gives you active cruise control, cross-traffic alert, parking camera and so on.

A point deducted for the ridiculously shallow boot in the plug-in hybrid version, which is raised up to accommodate electric innards and charging lead storage. It leaves you without enough room for large items, despite this being a family SUV. Apart from that, the X3 is a very comfy car, with supportive sports seats offered from mid-way up the trim line, a broad panoramic sunroof letting in plenty of light, ‘acoustic’ glass giving the interior plenty of sound deadening and lots of legroom for rear passengers. We’ll caveat the latter by saying the seats are quite low, making it tricky for some children to have a good view out. The Comfort Plus pack costs nearly £2,000 extra and includes heated steering wheel, electric seats with memory setting, and lumbar support, which seems like quite a lot of money for not much.

It's all here for the taking, it just depends how much you want to pay. We'd say don't bother with the clever gesture control, on the basis it's not clever enough. In theory you should be able to adjust the media volume and move on to the next track by waving your hand at the screen. While that mostly works once you get the hang of it a careless prod of the screen to access another function often results in muting the audio. It's annoying, in other words. This system was part of the optional Technology Pack on our test car, which also adds a head-up display projecting essential driving info onto the windscreen, wireless phone charging and fancy Harmon Kardon speakers A thumbs up, too, for one of the few sat-nav systems in the car world that's almost as good as Google Maps.

You get that wonderful BMW steering with plenty of weight and precision, as well as great handling, spirited petrol engines and smooth diesel engines. The plug-in hybrid is capable of about 25 miles on electric power (BMW claims a maximum 30 miles), which is average in this sector. Those drivers looking for serious performance from their family wagon can spend extra on the M40i petrol or M40d diesel; both have great balance and tuck tightly into corners, but you'll pay for that extra acceleration and explosion of fuel in the tailpipes at the pumps. From our experience we’d go for that xDrive30e plug-in hybrid model on the basis that 25 miles of electric range proved enough for the school run, shopping trips and working from home environment for our entire week with the car.