Jaguar XE review

The Jaguar XE's steering wheel has plenty of adjustment options, and the fact that the driver's seat is electrically adjustable in 12 directions, which includes the lumbar support, makes it easy to tweak your driving position. R-Dynamic HSE trim has 16-way adjustment and lets you save your preferred seat settings and recall them at the touch of a button.

The standard analogue dials fitted to S trim are easy to read, but the digital dials that are standard from R-Dynamic SE add more functionality. You can, for example, display the sat-nav map across the entire screen if you want. A head-up display is an optional extra.

The optional ClearSight gadget can display a live video image on the driver's rear-view mirror so you can see what's going on behind you, even with three tall rear passengers blocking your sight-line.

All XEs come with powerful LED headlights as standard for great visibility at night. They have an automatic high beam function so you don't need to worry about dazzling other drivers. Options include matrix adaptive LED headlights and a heated windscreen, which clears condensation and ice quickly.

Every XE is fitted with Jaguar’s 10.0in touchscreen Privi Pro infotainment system. It's not as good as BMW's iDrive set-up – mainly because there’s no physical interface and touchscreens can be distracting to operate while driving – but the software is responsive and the icons are a reasonable size. The menus can seem complicated at first, but you get used to them quite quickly.