Seat Arona review

The original Seat Arona was the Spanish car maker's second foray into the world of SUVs, following up on the success of the Ateca – a former category winner at our Car of the Year Awards no less. 

The Arona is a small SUV based on the Seat Ibiza small hatchback and (in case you were wondering) gets its name from a small municipality in Tenerife.

To help keep the Arona relevant, Seat has given the range a mid-life facelift. The changes made were mostly to the interior, fitting it out with softer materials, a more advanced infotainment system and, in higher trim versions, digital dials. 

It's a bit pricier than some of its peers, but still cheaper than the premium models in the small SUV category, which also includes the Audi Q2, the Mini Countryman and the VW T-Roc. That makes the Arona look rather good value, as it has a lot in common with the Q2 and T-Roc (both being from the same Volkswagen Group stable) including a similar range of petrol engines.

So are the latest updates enough to equip the Seat Arona with the tools it needs to stack up against its key rivals in this competitive class? That's what this review will tell you. We'll be comparing it with the similar sized Ford Puma and T-Roc as well as the slightly longer Countryman and Skoda Kamiq. We'll also tell you all about its performance, interior quality and running costs, and our preferred engine and trim.  

Once you've decided which make and model is right for you, you can find the best prices on hundreds of cars by searching our free What Car? New Car Deals pages. They features lots of excellent new small SUV deals.

The Seat Arona engine range kicks off with the 94bhp 1.0 TSI 95. It can feel a bit sluggish at low revs, but once you’re up and running, there’s enough power to sit comfortably at motorway speeds. Officially, it’ll get from 0-62mph in 11.5sec, which is ever so slightly quicker than the VW T-Cross (0.1sec, if you care about such things) and nearly two seconds slower than the entry-level Ford Puma.

The extra power that the mid-range 108bhp 1.0 TSI 110 has makes it our chosen engine. It doesn’t cost much more but pulls better from low revs and feels more energetic in every situation. If you choose SE or SE Technology trim, it'll be paired with an automatic gearbox that flicks through the gears quickly and smoothly. Higher trims give you the choice of a manual or auto.

At the top of the range is the 148bhp 1.5 TSI Evo 150. Its extra power helps deliver much quicker acceleration than either of the 1.0-litre units, but it pushes the Arona's price into the territory of the VW T-Roc and other larger, more grown-up cars.

The Arona rides well on 17in alloy wheels (the smallest available), confidently soaking up the bumps and potholes you typically find in most towns and cities. It’s more comfortable than the Citroën C3 Aircross, Kia Stonic and Mini Countryman. The same can be said when you reach motorway speeds, where the Arona proves to be a settled and comfortable cruiser. 

If you opt for FR trim, you get firmer sports suspension, while FR Sport pairs the sports suspension with larger 18in alloy wheels. With the larger wheels and stiffer suspension fitted, the Arona is noticeably less settled over craggy roads, although it stops short of being uncomfortable – a Nissan Juke for example is generally more agitated over all surfaces.

The top-tier Xperience Lux trim gets 18in rims but not sports suspension. As a result, it’s a little more settled than the FR Sport, but still thumps a little over larger abrasions. If comfort is high on your list of priorities, we’d recommend taking a look at the softer Skoda Kamiq or the T-Cross.

One of the strengths of the larger Seat Ateca is how fun it is to drive – a rare quality among SUVs, especially at this end of the market. The good news is that, on the whole, Seat hasn’t dropped the ball with the Arona.

In fact, because it’s lighter and a bit lower to the ground than its bigger sibling, the Arona changes direction with a bit more gusto and leans less doing so. It’s more agile and entertaining than most of its direct rivals, especially the C3 Aircross and Renault Captur. The Arona isn’t the cornering king of this class, though. The sweet-handling Puma undoubtedly takes that title.

The sports suspension you get as standard with the FR and FR Sport trims results in even better body composure. On top of that, they also add a Drive Profile switch that allows you to adjust the weight of the steering. We tend to leave it in Normal mode, as the steering builds weight progressively as you turn the wheel. That's an improvement over the overly light (yet still precise) steering of the regular models.

​​The Arona's 1.0-litre TSI three-cylinder engines are relatively smooth and make a nice thrummy engine note as you cruise along. If you work them harder, you'll feel a few vibrations filtering up through the steering wheel and pedals. 

The four-cylinder 1.5 TSI 150 is the smoothest engine in the range, but pushes the Arona's price into the territory of more premium small SUVs. Road noise is fairly well contained in all models, but you’ll hear more wind noise above 50mph than you would in the T-Roc. 

The Arona's manual gearbox and clutch might not be quite as well-weighted as a Puma’s, but they’re more precise than those in the C3 Aircross and Juke. The dual-clutch automatic gearbox can be a bit jerky in stop-start situations, but on the move it’s smooth through the gears.

You shouldn’t find it difficult to get comfortable in the Seat Arona. The driver’s seat has plenty of adjustment and the steering wheel can be moved up, down, in and out. The only demerit we’d give the Arona is that, unlike in the Ford Puma and VW T-Roc, you can’t have adjustable lumbar support.

If you long for a lofty driving position in your small SUV, the Arona might not be the best car for you. As with the Skoda Kamiq, you’ll barely feel any higher up in it than you would in a hatchback. If that's a deal-breaker, have a look at the Puma, the Nissan Juke or the VW T-Cross – they all have you sitting quite a bit higher up.

The Arona’s interior is well laid out, with the infotainment system sitting high up on the dashboard. Digital instruments are standard across the range, replacing traditional dials with either an 8.0in or 10.0in driver display that can show full-screen navigation maps and other information. Lower down the centre console you’ll find clearly labelled buttons and knobs to control the air conditioning, all of which are angled towards the driver to make them easier to operate.

The Arona’s eye-catching looks haven’t come at the expense of forward visibility. The windscreen pillars don’t obstruct your view too much – even when pulling out of junctions – and it’s easy to judge where the car’s extremities are, certainly compared with the challenge of doing so from the more enclosed interior of the Peugeot 2008.

The Arona’s heavily styled rear end does make it trickier to see out of the back when parking. However, all trim levels except entry-level SE come with rear parking sensors, while range-topping Xperience Lux models also get sensors at the front of the car, a rear-view camera and parking assist.

All versions of the Arona come with automatic LED headlights, but the power varies depending on whether you go for the entry-level SE and SE Technology trims, which both get Eco LED headlights, or FR and above, which get full LEDs. Regardless of trim, all are bright enough to give great visibility at night.

Every Arona has a touchscreen infotainment system, DAB radio, and wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay smartphone mirroring. We’ve yet to try the 8.25in screen you get with entry-level SE trim but we have used the larger 9.2in screen that comes with all other trims, including our favourite, SE Technology.  

The display is crisp and bright, and responds quickly to your prods. In fact, it’s one of the better systems out there, keeping everything simple with a small number of menus. You do get some touch-sensitive shortcut buttons on the left side of the screen but it’s predominantly a touchscreen-based unit, which does make it more distracting to use when you're driving than the rotary-dial iDrive system that you’ll find in the Mini Countryman.

SE misses out on built-in sat-nav, but the smartphone mirroring on all trims lets you use a navigation app on your phone through the car's touchscreen. SE Technology and above get sat-nav as standard.

The interior of the Arona has improved tenfold since its original launch. Many of the hard, scratchy plastics across the dashboard have been replaced with soft-touch materials and convincing fake-metal trim pieces to make it a far more pleasant place to be. That’s not to say there are no cheap-feeling plastics, but you have to search lower down in the interior to find them.

All versions of the Arona come with a leather flat-bottomed steering wheel and a leather gear knob and handbrake, and they all look and feel good. 

As a whole, the interior of the Arona feels well screwed together and is a step up in quality compared with older versions. Even so, it still doesn’t quite live up to the kings of quality in the class, the Audi Q2 and Mini Countryman.

Even if you’re well over six feet tall, you won't feel your hair brushing the Seat Arona’s high roof lining and the seats slide back far enough to accommodate anyone with long legs. Shoulder room is good too, making the Arona feel as spacious as some cars from the class above. The VW Taigo is similarly impressive in this regard, but the bigger VW T-Roc will suit you better if you're very tall.

The front door bins are not the biggest but they do have room for a large water bottle, and there are also two smaller cupholders. In front of the gearlever, you get a cubbyhole that doubles as the area for wireless phone-charging on SE Technology trim and above. There's also a decent-sized glovebox, a small recess for loose change and a large cubby behind the handbrake.

The top-of-the-range Xperience and Xperience Lux trims get a Storage pack that adds a central armrest, a drawer under the driver’s seat, a mounting feature in the luggage compartment and a document holder under the front passenger seat.

Yes, the Arona is a small SUV but you might be surprised how roomy it is in the back – especially considering Seat’s history of prioritising chiselled looks over practicality.

There's more leg room than there is in the back of the Citroën C3 Aircross and Hyundai Kona for example, so a couple of six-footers will fit. That said, the VW T-Cross has even more space, while the Skoda Kamiq is cavernous, with greater leg room than some larger family SUVs.

Carrying three people in the back of the Arona is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a bit of a squeeze for all concerned. If you’ll regularly need to do that, the wider T-Roc is a slightly better bet.

Don’t expect the Arona to have any clever practicality tricks up its sleeve, such as sliding rear seats or a folding front passenger’s seat. Both are available on some rivals: the Renault Captur and the T-Cross get a sliding rear bench, and the rear seats in the Mini Countryman slide and recline.

The Arona's rear bench folds down in a 60/40 split, but there are no release handles in the boot to make this process easier. Instead, you have to open the rear doors and press a button next to the rear head restraints – a bit of a faff.

Regardless of which trim you go for, both front seats are height adjustable and, if you go for FR Sport or Xperience Lux trim, they’re heated too.

The Arona's 400-litre boot is a match for the Captur's and beats the Kona and the Kia Stonic for storage. To give you an idea of how much space the Arona gives you, we were able to fit five carry-on suitcases into its boot, the same as the VW Golf will take. 

Even so, if carrying lots of cargo is something you do regularly, you might want to take a look at the champions of the class – the Ford Puma and the Kamiq. They're capable of swallowing up to eight and seven cases respectively below their parcel shelves.

A height-adjustable boot floor comes as standard on all Arona trim levels. In its highest setting, it removes the lip at the boot entrance so there’s no annoying step in the floor of the extended load bay when the rear seats are folded down.

The Seat Arona gets off to a good start with doors that open to a pretty wide 66 degrees, while a generous gap of 720mm from the seat cushion to the top of the door aperture means that you won’t have to contort yourself too much when getting in and out. 

However, at 430mm above the ground (30mm higher than a Hyundai Kona), the tops of the door sills are quite a long way up, so there’s a bigger step up than with a regular hatchback. There’s also a drop of almost 120mm between the tops of the sills and the floor of the car, which is another obstacle to navigate when exiting the vehicle. 

Both front seats are height-adjustable regardless of trim level, and in its lowest setting the driver sits 610mm from the ground, so you move across on to the seat as opposed to falling down into it, which makes life easier.

The boot in the Arona is of the Ronseal variety, in that it offers a decent 400 litres of space, but without anything flash to back that up. So it is more than capable of carrying a folded-up wheelchair with the rear seats in place, and if you fold the back seat down flat, it will accommodate an unfolded wheelchair. 

There’s also an adjustable-height floor, which makes the load area entirely flat when it’s in its highest position, and which also means you don’t have to lift heavy items over a lip to get them into and out of the load bay.

It’s a bit of an irritation that you can’t fold down the rear seats from the boot, and the door pockets aren’t terribly big, but at least there are other storage areas dotted around the interior. However, if you choose an Xperience-trimmed model, it comes with a storage pack, which includes a drawer under the front passenger seat, enhancing practicality.

You have a couple of options if you want an Arona with an automatic gearbox. First up, there’s a 108bhp 1.0-litre three-cylinder engine, which provides comparatively sparkly performance and an official average economy figure of up to 47.9mpg. Not to be sniffed at. If you like to get from here to there in a slightly shorter time, the 1.5-litre four-cylinder produces 148bhp but is a little less economical at up to 44.8mpg.

Even entry-level SE models come with cruise control, hill-hold control and automatic emergency braking. There’s also a small 8.25in touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone mirroring. SE Technology and above adds a larger and easier to read 9.2in screen with in-built sat-nav as well as rear parking sensors. Moving further up the range adds a self-dimming rear-view mirror and a larger digital driver’s display.

Range-topping Xperience Lux models also come with a Park Assist system that gives the car the ability to park itself, removing all need for neck-twisting.

The entry-level Seat Arona is at the more affordable end of the small SUV spectrum, although the Nissan Juke just undercuts it. The downside is that it's not expected to hold on to its value over three years as well as the more expensive rivals, including the Ford Puma and Skoda Kamiq.

That said, most buyers won’t be buying with cash – they’ll be signing up to a PCP finance deal – and the Arona offers competitive monthly repayments, although these will vary as manufacturer promotions come and go. To find out how cheap the Arona (or any model) is to finance or buy after our Target Price discounts, take a look at our New Car Deals pages.

Fuel economy is good, too. The 1.0 TSI 95 averaged a very credible 45.9mpg in our real-world True MPG tests and the more powerful petrols don’t drink like fishes, either. The mild-hybrid petrol engines in the Puma are generally even more fuel efficient, though. Official CO2 emissions are comparable with those of the Puma, Skoda Karoq and VW T-Cross (which is useful to know if you'll be paying company car tax).

Entry-level SE trim includes 17in alloys, cruise control, air conditioning, a contrasting roof colour and metallic paint. Our favourite trim level is SE Technology, mainly for the better infotainment system and rear parking sensors. 

The FR and FR Sport trims are the sporty options, with enhanced styling and a few extras, including climate control and power-folding door mirrors. They’re also the only versions with firmer sports suspension. 

The two luxury choices, Xperience and Xperience Lux, add some fancier details like the Storage Pack and high-beam assist (and the additional parking sensors on Xperience Lux) but we’d avoid them because of their price tags. 

The Arona ranked 15th out of 25 small SUVs in our 2022 What Car? Reliability Survey. That’s ahead of the Puma, Kamiq and T-Cross, but behind the Audi Q2, the Mini Countryman and the Juke.

All versions of the Arona come with a three-year warranty that covers you up to 60,000 miles. That’s pretty average for the market, and certainly not as impressive as the seven-year warranty you get with the Kia Stonic.

Europe-wide breakdown cover is included for two years, and you can pay extra to have your warranty extended if you plan to keep your Arona for longer.

Every Arona comes with automatic emergency braking (AEB) and tyre-pressure monitoring, while upgrading to Xperience trim gets you blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert.

The Arona was tested for safety by Euro NCAP in 2017, and has since been retested in 2022 under a more stringent regime. In both cases, it was awarded five stars out of five, which is more than can be said of the Puma, which was downgraded to four stars. The Arona has an emergency call system – which the Puma doesn’t – and does a better job at safeguarding against neck injuries.

Disappointingly, you have to upgrade to FR trim or above to get an alarm, which is standard fit on many of the Arona's rivals.

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