BYD Seal Review & Prices

The BYD Seal is a bit like the kid who joins the school halfway through Year 11 and yet finishes the year as rugby captain, prefect and top of the exam tables. You see, while BYD has only been selling cars in the UK since summer 2023, the Seal is an electric saloon car that displays maturity and ability that you’d expect from a highly established European manufacturer.

In fact, in many ways it’s actually an improvement on the Tesla Model 3 and Hyundai Ioniq 6 which constitute its two closest alternatives. Other electric cars you might consider are the Polestar 2 and BMW i4.

While BYD may have launched the Sealion 7 and Seal U in the years since, the Seal is still a better car than either. Ignore the slightly odd naming convention for a while, though, and focus for a second on the styling - which is great. The Seal is a similar shape to the Tesla Model 3, being a saloon car with a dropped snout and rounded roofline - but it has more intricate detailing around the headlights and a neat lightbar at the rear. It’s a bit less anonymous than the Tesla without being too glam.

On the inside, though, it’s like BYD’s stylists took one look at Tesla’s minimalist approach and simply said ‘no, thank you’. The dashboard is very distinctive as a result, with air vents that seamlessly mould into full-width panels running across the cabin. There are posh quilted seats and a panel of switchgear in the centre. It all feels quite upmarket, if unconventional.

BYD Seal: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 323-354 miles
Efficiency: 3.4-3.7mi/kWh
Battery size: 83kWh
Max charge speed: 150kW
Charge time DC: 37mins, 10-80%, 150kW
Charge port location: Right side rear
Power outputs: 313hp / 530hp

Even more unconventional is the infotainment screen, which is a huge 15.6-inches across. BYD’s party piece is that the screen physically rotates from portrait to landscape at the touch of a button. The company says this is because things like the sat-nav are better in portrait mode, but as the standard-fit Apple CarPlay and Android Auto only works in landscape you’ll probably leave the rotating trick as a once-in-a-blue-moon showoff rather than a regular feature.

The interface isn’t quite as good as you get in a Model 3 or Ioniq 6, either. The BYD Seal’s screen is bright, clear and responsive, but common functions are buried just a few menus too deep with buttons that are too hard to hit on the move.

Drivers and front passengers of all sizes will be able to get comfy up front in those squashy, quilted leather seats, and there’s good stowage for smaller items too. The back seats are a bit more of a squeeze, with decent legroom but headroom that’s limited by the huge panoramic glass roof.

Boot space of 402 litres matches the Ioniq 6 but trails the Model 3. There is a handy front boot for storing charge cables, though. Just note that, as a saloon car, the Seal isn’t as practical for large items as a Polestar 2.

To drive, the Seal is deeply impressive. Even the standard rear-wheel drive model is quick, but performance from the all-wheel drive, 530hp Excellence version is mind-bending and, unlike a Tesla, totally repeatable. Responsive and accurate steering, plus suspension that strikes a great balance between comfort and cornering, means it’s even a good amount of fun on a twisty road.

Competitive range figures of 323 - 354 miles are the icing on the cake, though it’s a shame there’s no super-long range version to challenge the best Tesla Model 3.

Still, the BYD Seal is a car that should definitely be on your shortlist. Interested? Check out our best BYD Seal deals here, or get a great price on a BYD Seal lease. You can check out used BYD Seals for sale, or see other used BYD cars for sale. And remember that Carwow can even help you sell your old car when the time comes.

There are two BYD Seal options, with the Design RWD and Excellence AWD options divided more by power and driven wheels than by extra equipment, though there are a couple of differences to help maintain the £3,000 gap between them.

The rear-wheel drive Design model is the cheaper of the two, offering 313hp and a 354-mile range. Stepping up to the all-wheel drive Excellence cuts the range figure to 323 miles as the second motor boosts power to a hefty 530hp. In addition, the Excellence also gets a head-up display and clever suspension system, but the majority of the benefit of going up to the higher trim level is the stonking performance.

Put up against the Tesla Model 3, the Seal has a higher entry price but the Excellence AWD undercuts the Model 3 Performance by more than £10,000. For the performance, in fact, the Seal Excellence is just about the best value this side of an MG4 XPower - you’d have to pay £55,000 for a Polestar 2 Performance Pack, or over £70,000 for a BMW i4 M50.

The BYD Seal impresses with its nimbleness and composure on flowing and twisting roads, although rippled surfaces can have a surprisingly unsettling impact on the comfort

In town

The Seal impresses for the way it handles bigger bumps and road imperfections in particular, and it’s a comfortable and serenely refined way to plot your way around town.

It’s a shame there aren’t more levels of brake regeneration - you just get the normal mode and one that increases the regen, slowing the car when you come off the accelerator, but there’s no clever one-pedal driving mode as you find in the Nissan Leaf, for example. And the brakes are annoyingly grabby at lower speeds, so it's difficult to come to a smooth stop.

Visibility is reasonable up-front, although the Seal does sit sleek and low, so you’ve not got an SUV-style higher driving position to enjoy. But all cars get front and rear parking sensors and a 360-degree camera, and the Seal has a decent turning circle, so there’s no excuse for getting in a mess while parking, even though the view out the back window is poor.

On the motorway

The odd unsettled feeling over some road surfaces manifests itself most strongly at higher speeds, so sometimes the car can feel really jittery beneath you on some roads, but then switch to a different piece of asphalt and it’s much more pleasant. Which is a bit odd.

Otherwise, either model has plenty of performance to get you up to motorway speed on a slip road, and it’s quiet and refined when you get there, bearing in mind the faster you go, the more you’re taking range out of the battery via reduced efficiency.

There’s a complete suite of safety and assistance systems to keep you safe on longer journeys, and either Seal has a good enough range to mean you’ll be stopping for a break before you run out of charge. But the lower-powered Design model has an extra 31 miles of range for higher-mileage users or those most worried about range anxiety.

On a twisty road

This is where the Seal particularly impresses, proving to be surprisingly adept and nimble when the road goes tighter and twistier, which is no mean feat for a car weighing over two tonnes, and helped by BYD’s latest tech that builds the battery into the shell of the car, rather than attaching it to the body.

The Seal manages to minimise body roll and entices you to have fun in a way most electric vehicles don’t. It’s frustrating that you have to plot your way through touchscreen menus to switch on some of the driving modes, such as sportier settings, by which time the moment has probably passed.

It's not quite as sporty as a Tesla Model 3, and doesn't feel quite as punchy out of corners, but there's certainly plenty of fun to be had in the Seal – and in all-wheel drive guise, it actually accelerates faster than than the Tesla, which is no mean feat.

Decent practicality and space up front, although the boot space can’t match the best electric saloons

The cabin initially impresses for quality and design, with a nice mix of materials making it eye-catching.

There’s a huge stowage area at floor level for stashing a decent-sized bag, and you’ll find a single USB and a USB-C in the front, along with a pair of cupholders and a decent stowage area under the armrest. The glovebox is of reasonable size, as are the doorbins, but they’re not lined and are of cheaper plastic than most of the cabin, which is a shame.

The other main area where cheaper plastic is very evident is the handle you use to pull the door open from the inside, which is a really odd thing to cut cost on as you touch it every time you get out of the car. Another oddity is that the air vents aren’t adjustable for angle, but they’re illogical features of an otherwise logical and pleasant cabin space. Although it’s a shame the door design doesn’t properly cover the sills, so you drag your trouser leg across a damp and dirty sill when getting out of the car.

Space in the back seats

There’s a good amount of legroom in the back, and headroom is decent despite the sweeping roofline that does rob some height. That’s most noticeable for taller people that will have to duck a touch when getting in and out, but once they’re in it’s absolutely fine, and you’ll have a lovely view of the sky through the huge panoramic glass roof that stretches impressively far back behind the rear passenger. There's a bit more space in a Tesla Model 3, but not by much.

The rear seat leaves occupants in a bit of an odd position, which is down to having a slightly reclined back, combined with the car’s low profile meaning the seats are quite low to the floor. There’s no SUV-style footwell, and the end result is that your knees are sitting slightly above your hips, which isn’t the most supportive of positions. Not the end of the world, but it’s not helped by it being tricky to squeeze feet below the front seats, slightly limiting rear passenger’s range of options. The space itself is good though, and rear passengers have a pair of power sockets to fight over - one old-style USB and a newer and more powerful USB-C.

The ISOFIX fixing is easily accessible behind a flexible plastic flap, and the doors open nice and wide so it's easy to get a child seat in, one area where the BYD wins over the Tesla.

You also get a reasonably sized door bin on each side as well as a fold-down arm-rest with a pair of cupholders.

Boot space

At 400 litres, the BYD Seal’s boot is a reasonable size - enough to take the family away for the weekend while still being adrift of the other main electric saloons. And by adrift, we mean a single litre and just five litres in the case of the Hyundai Ioniq 6 and Polestar 2 specifically, but the BMW i4 boasts 470 litres and the Tesla Model 3 a huge 594 litres, plus another 88 in the front trunk.

Unlike the BMW, the Seal has a handy additional front load area, which at 53 litres is plenty to stash the charging cables away from the rest of your luggage. Or there’s also underfloor space in the actual boot.

What there isn’t is tie-down points or power sockets, but you do get a little luggage net to one side for smaller items.

It’s a very pleasant cabin environment and the touchscreen looks good but unfortunately is horrendously difficult to use on the move, and almost every function is buried somewhere in a menu

As mentioned earlier, the cabin quality and design impresses when you drop into the BYD Seal, with the big touchscreen dominating the centre of the interior. And that screen has a hidden trick up its sleeve, switching from landscape to portrait layout at the touch of a button, as already seen in the Atto 3 and Dolphin models.

Though it’s largely theatre rather than usefulness, rotating the screen is handy when using the navigation in particular. In general, the 15.6-inch touchscreen looks better and is more usable in landscape form, but when using the navigation, rotating it to portrait gives greater visibility up the map. Although that’s only on the car’s in-built sat nav; Apple CarPlay or Android Auto are only usable in landscape form at the moment. (At least you get this smartphone mirroring, though, unlike in a Tesla.)

That’s where the praise of the touchscreen ends, though. Too many functions are buried too deep in the menus, taking five or six button presses to go into the climate or driving function menus to change settings and then return to Apple CarPlay, for example. It’s just too difficult to do quickly without taking your eyes off the road for prolonged periods. BYD is far from the only culprit (anything from Tesla and the Volvo EX30 are other obvious offenders), but the constant attempts to remove buttons and replace with touchscreen functionality has gone too far in terms of being able to safely adjust settings while driving. It needs some basic shortcuts.

The dashboard itself is clear and has a good array of displays, although the left-hand third of the dash has a distracting large dial showing charge status at that moment, and the numbers jump around and catch the eye at the expense of the more relevant speedo display. At least the higher-spec car has a head-up display.

One bit of cleverness that is worth flagging is that you can adjust the volume of both the audio and the navigation using one of the few buttons left in the cabin. Next to the gear lever is a volume scroll, and on the touchscreen you can toggle between audio and navigation instruction volumes, making it about the simplest way to mute spoken guidance of any car on sale.

There are a pair of power options with the Seal, with power being the main differentiator between the two trim levels. The cheaper car is the Design rear-wheel drive model, which offers 313hp, while the Excellence all-wheel drive car takes the power up to 530hp thanks to the second electric motor.

The more efficient is the less powerful, as you’d expect, with respective official range figures of 354 and 323 miles from the 82.5kWh battery, which equates to decent efficiency of 4.3miles/kWh or 3.9miles/kWh respectively. BYD quotes a charging time of 26 minutes to go from 30-80% at a charging speed of up to 150kW, which is reasonable if not up with the best speeds.

It’s also worth noting that a heat pump, which helps battery efficiency, is fitted as standard.

As with all electric vehicles, tax conditions are favourable compared to petrol or diesel, especially if you take it as a company car, where all full EVs sit in the lowest tax banding. But Vehicle Excise Duty is also at the lowest level if you drive an EV, although won’t be exempt from 2025, and you dodge the VED penalty in years two through to six for cars costing over £40,000.

The Seal has been tested by safety specialist Euro NCAP, and was awarded the maximum five stars, performing well across the board but especially around vulnerable road user protection.

The list of standard safety kit fitted to every Seal is vast, with highlights including lane change assist, intelligent cruise control, blind spot detection, seven airbags and door opening warning.

As a new brand to the UK, there’s little evidence either way on BYD reliability, although it has plenty of experience of building electric cars in China. But BYD has moved to increase confidence in its products by offering a six-year or 93,750-mile warranty, double that which comes with the likes of BMW, Audi or Mercedes, while the battery and electric motor are covered for eight years, with mileage limits of 125,000 and 93,750 miles respectively. The battery’s warranty guarantees at least 70% operational capacity.