Skoda Octavia Estate review

The vehicular embodiment of sensibleness. Yep, it’s the Octavia Estate, the family car you really ought to buy instead of that spangly crossover you’ve had your eye on. And as of 2024, it’s been newly facelifted. Hooray!

Let’s start with the looks. Already, it was sharper styled and more sophisticated than the (very good) third generation, but now it gets redesigned front and rear bumpers and lights plus an updated grille. Inside there’s new tech (more on that below), plus new upholstery, trim and door panel designs. Very smart it is too.

Rivals include the (related) Seat Leon Estate and VW Golf Estate - both of which it shares its MQB platform with - and also the Peugeot 508 SW, Toyota Corolla Touring Sports and Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer. If the Ford Focus Estate hasn't been axed by the time you read this, it soon will be.

The Octavia is now a whole 9mm longer than before and remains available as a hatch too. Oh, and the all-important boot space figure stands at a gargantuan 640 litres.

What's the rest of the cabin like?

This is where things start to get interesting. With the arrival of this generation, Skoda largely did away with most of the touch buttons. There’s a strip of them under the nice, wide infotainment screen (which is more than you get in the latest Golf and Leon), but the climate controls vanished into the touchscreen.

At this point, we’d love to tell you that Skoda has made a swift U-turn as part of the facelift, but it’s not to be. Instead, it gets a new 13in infotainment display – the largest ever offered – as standard. But the user interface and menu structure has been redesigned to include more shortcut buttons. You win some, you lose some.

What about power?

The engine line-up currently consists of two 1.5-litre TSI petrol engines, optionally available with mild hybrid technology, and two 2.0-litre heartland diesels.

The 1.5-litre turbo is available in 114bhp and 148bhp outputs, paired with a six-speed manual gearbox. The mild hybrid variants add a 48V starter-generator and battery (plus seven-speed DSG gearbox), which support the engine under acceleration and allow it to shut down under deceleration for improved economy.

The two diesel options come in 113bhp and 148bhp flavours, the former of which gets the six-speed manual gearbox, the latter the DSG. To give you a flavour, 0-62mph times range from 8.6s to 10.5s.

A more powerful 2.0-litre four-cylinder 201bhp petrol is set to join the range in the not-too-distant future. The vRS – full details of which can be found by clicking these blue words – is now up 20bhp for a total output of 261bhp. 0-62mph in that takes 6.5s, on the way to a top speed of 155mph. Golly.

Give me something I can impress my friends with...

Well, there are lots of those clever little touches scattered about the cabin, as is Skoda’s USP. We’re talking umbrellas in the front doors, the ice scraper hidden behind the fuel filler cap, a USB port conveniently located for plugging in a dash cam, the smartphone storage pockets in the backs of the front seats, and more.

The all-important asking price is £27,755 for the base-spec 1.5-litre petrol engine, £29,795 for the mild hybrid, and £30,300 for the lesser powered diesel. All of those prices are only around £1k more than the equivalent hatch.

You don’t need a crossover. You just don’t. An estate like the Octavia is better to drive, more economical and just as practical as the vast majority of them. And the newly facelifted Skoda happens to be very good indeed.

It’s now smarter looking, clear thought has been put into addressing our tech complaints, and it feels more upmarket inside. OK it still might not be much fun to drive, but it's comfortable and practical. And these are the only things you'll care about.

There really isn't much wrong with it, save for the lack of physical switchgear. And given how everyone is ramming stuff into the touchscreen these days, we can probably forgive it for that.