2025 Audi Q3 Review: There’s A Decent Car Beneath The Gimmicks

You probably don’t notice it much, but the Audi Q3, like so many other small-ish, posh-ish SUVs, has quietly become a rather important car for its maker. The general public just flipping loves cars like this. The third-generation car sails right into a segment full of popular stuff like the BMW X1, Mercedes GLA, Volvo XC40 and Range Rover Evoque, plus all the similarly-sized options from less ‘premium’ brands.

It sits on the same MQB Evo underpinnings as countless other respectable VW Group cars, and you’re well-covered for powertrains. There are various front- and all-wheel drive mild-hybrid petrols, a diesel and a plug-in hybrid. No EV, though – you’ll want the unrelated Q4 E-Tron for a similarly-sized electric Audi. Regardless of engine, you get a dual-clutch automatic, with seven gears in everything except the PHEV, which makes do with six.

Per modern Audi SUV conventions, there are also two body styles on offer – a traditional SUV silhouette, or a sloping-roofed Sportback for those who like their cars to be lightly confusing. 

Audi says it’s supposed to be the sportiest Q3 yet (disregarding the old turbo five-pot RS Q3 – don’t bet on that making a return for this gen), with features including trick two-valve adaptive dampers and progressive steering that alters its weight and feedback depending on speed. These are both optional on most cars, although the kitted-out Edition 1 spec gets the progressive steering as standard, as do all the Sportbacks. For reasons we can’t even begin to fathom, you won’t find the dampers as a standalone option – instead, they’re bundled in with the £4550 Sound and Vision Pack Pro, despite having nothing to do with either.

Inside, it’s very familiar from other modern Audis, with a big curved unit housing an 11.9-inch instrument display and a 12.8-inch infotainment screen. The biggest interior change comes in the form of the new ‘steering wheel control unit’. This replaces traditional indicator and wiper stalks, instead giving you a big fixed unit sitting behind the steering wheel. Indicators and gear selection are handled by little movable sections at either end, with wiper controls also on the left-hand side.

We sampled three powertrains on the Q3’s launch, starting with the one you’re probably most interested in: the 2.0-litre, 261bhp four-cylinder turbo from the VW Golf GTI, paired with all-wheel drive. Despite its hot hatch sourcing, though, it’s no RS Q3-lite – the figures are respectable, with 0-62mph taking 5.7 seconds and a 149mph top speed, but it always feels merely spritely rather than properly quick. 

The diesel – a 2.0-litre with 148bhp and 266lb ft – is likely to be the minority seller among the range, but it actually suits the fairly little Q3 rather well. It feels gutsy and muscular, pulling strongly from the word go, but never feels rough or clattery in the way that smaller diesel cars sometimes can. 

Finally, the plug-in hybrid, pairing a 173bhp 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine with a 113bhp electric motor for a peak output of 268bhp. It handles the transition from electricity to petrol impressively smoothly, and left to its own devices, it’s pretty smart when deciding which power source to run on. It’s not perfect, though – since it’s front-wheel drive only, the full complement of 268bhp can sometimes overwhelm the front wheels and make things a bit scrabbly out of a wet junction or tight bend, and the brake pedal has a noticeably duller response than other powertrains.

Whichever version you opt for, though, you’re getting a decent setup. The only major mark against any of them is the occasional unresponsiveness of the otherwise slick S-Tronic gearbox, made even more frustrating by the general throttle lag that’s been baked in (far from a Q3-exclusive issue).

All our test cars were highly-specced, coming with the S-Line exterior package as well as the adaptive dampers and progressive steering. The dampers work nicely, soaking up the undulations of some lumpy Scottish roads, but that’s rather cancelled out by the 20-inch wheels fitted to these cars, which send jolts up into the cabin over potholes and bumps.

The progressive steering is… progressive. It does gain a bit more weight as speed increases, but despite Audi’s claims, anyone expecting a truly sporty drive is going to be disappointed. The steering’s accurate but hardly bristles with feedback – generally, the Q3 just corners with utter neutrality, which is really all you can ask for in a car like this. It’s not exciting, but it’s far from being actively unpleasant.

Whether people will actually bother speccing any of this stuff is another story, and we’d have to try a car without the fancy dampers and steering before making a call on whether they’re worth it. We can say one thing, though – save yourself £1500 and don’t bother with the bigger wheels. Your neighbours really won’t care.

Interior quality has been a bit of a mixed bag with Audis of late, but the Q3 generally takes steps in the right direction. The fixtures and fittings feel nicer than they do in bigger, more expensive cars like the new A5 and A6, and it’s nice to find some proper physical buttons beneath the screen, if a little disappointing to discover that, on a top-spec car from a premium-angled brand in 2025, one of them’s blanked off.

The infotainment itself is a bit messy to navigate, but you’ll most likely mirror your phone and be done with it – if you want to access things like ADAS, there’s a hard-keyed shortcut button. The instrument screen has a weird aspect ratio, but it works when you’re peering through the steering wheel – although if you favour a high-wheel, low-seat position, the bottom bit of the display can get cut off from view.

Generally, it’s a decently laid-out, nice-feeling place to sit, but the new control system? That’s something we’re seeing more and more of in the car industry – a solution to a problem that didn’t exist. It takes a bit of getting used to, and though you do adapt, there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the established way of doing things. Other VAG products with a column-mounted shifter have already figured out a not-too-messy way of integrating light and wiper controls onto a single stalk.

There’s one more headline feature to speak of, again optional, and that’s Audi’s new LED matrix headlights. As well as doing the usual adaptive main beam stuff – a technology that Audi generally gets right – they project little graphics onto the road to warn you of upcoming bends, or if you’re drifting out of your lane or about to carve someone up on the motorway. Sounds like a gimmick, and it is – it looks showy, but doesn’t really add anything that you couldn’t already work out by, y’know, just using your eyes and paying attention like people have been doing for decades.

Things like the needlessly reinvented stalks and the tricksy lights feel like attempts to make the Q3 stand out in a crowded class. The thing is, it doesn’t really need to. As long as it does everything expected of an Audi, decently well-off buyers will hoover these things up – and basically, it does. It’s entirely pleasant to drive, has an interior that’s heading in the right direction, and features all the tech the modern crossover buyer needs (and some, frankly, that they don’t).

You just need to be careful with the spec – starting at £38,995, it’s already a couple of grand more than most (admittedly older) rivals, and it’s easy to start bumping that even higher. You can spend £3000 alone on going for the Sportback body and 20-inch wheels, neither of which you need. Keep it sensible, though, and you’ll find the Q3 to be a well-rounded package – just not a particularly exciting or revolutionary one.