Skoda Enyaq 85 Edition review: Beating Audi at its own game

December 5, 2025 George East

The VW Group’s ‘budget brand’ continues to shame its more expensive stablemates with its all-round superstar

There have been some truly great non-vRS Skodas over the years. The Yeti manifested the Czech carmaker’s signature charm and practicality, and ushered it into the 21st century. Ask any Škodàk, and they’ll tell you that the first-generation Kodiaq was considered to be one of the finest Skodas in its 130-year history. And the original Enyaq won worldwide plaudits when it arrived in 2021.

After a week with the recently updated Enyaq, I’m happy to say that Skoda’s first purpose-built fully-electric car is a more than worthy addition to Mlada Boleslav’s Hall of Fame.

Great looking inside and out, well-built, and enjoyable to drive, the 2025 Skoda Enyaq looks set to continue the original car’s success story for years to come.

It’s more than capable of taking the fight to the likes of the Tesla Model Y, Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Nissan Ariya, and Ford Mustang Mach-E, as well as leaving its Audi Q4 cousin thoroughly in the shade.

Skoda Enyaq 85 Edition design, interior and technology

Skoda’s Modern Solid design language is what stands out here. Up front, the previous-gen Enyaq was dominated by a huge wide grille, which – depending on your definition of taste – could also be specced with a light-up ‘Crystal Face’. The new ‘Tech Deck’, with its slim black bar and running lights at either side, runs the width of the Enyaq’s front end. Beneath it sits a pair of LED Matrix headlights.

Like its slightly shorter bob-tailed cousin, the Skoda Elroq, these are housed in an angular piece of handiwork, bringing together the fenders and the bumper, and results into some of the best car design around. Unfortunately, photos don’t do it justice, so I urge you to go out and look at this for yourself.

The Skoda Enyaq rides on the Volkswagen Group’s MEB platform. This means something in German I can’t pronounce, but it translates roughly as ‘modular electric-drive toolkit’ and is shared with everything from the Elroq to the Cupra Tavascan and Audi Q4 e-tron. In my mind, the ‘Modern Solid’ design makes the Enyaq the aesthetic pick of the MEB crop. It’s not as forgettable as the VW ID.4/5 twins, as blobby as the Audis, or as ‘out there’ as the Cupra.

Measuring 4.6 metres, Skoda’s new design direction hides the car’s length – it is, however, worth noting that the optional Olive Green Metallic colour (that’s an additional £1,065, please) and optional 21-inch Supernova alloys (that’s an extra £1,180) do some heavy lifting here.

The Enyaq’s no small car, and finished in the wrong colour it can look a tad overweight. Yet paired with the silver doorsills and the sporty two-tone wheels, the deep green paint scheme is broken up elegantly and – visually at least – appears to slim down some of the Enyaq’s 2.1-tonne heft. Forget green over tan. Green over silver is now it. In this colour scheme, the Skoda Enyaq is a very handsome – even spectacular looking – car.

Inside, the Enyaq Edition 85 is trad Skoda. The design is nowhere near as flamboyant as the Peugeot e-3008/e-5008, but the Czech car is still a very pleasant place to be. A noted lack of piano black is much welcome, as is the use of what Skoda calls ‘Recytitan’ – a 78% recycled clothing PET blend – and ‘Technofil’ – a material regenerated from old fishing nets – throughout the cabin. Borrowed from the Elroq, Skoda is particularly proud of how it has used these materials, as they reduce the latest Enyaq’s carbon footprint during production and over its lifespan.

Our Enyaq Edition 85’s black dashboard trim comes paired with the ‘Lounge’ interior. This introduces a dashboard trim finished in ‘Silver Square Haptic’ flecked with – you guessed it – small silver squares. It’s actually not dissimilar to what you’d find in the Volvo EX30, albeit with a matte effect and a slightly ridged finish. The synthetic Alcantara seats are a very soft, very welcome addition to proceedings, and the soft, mint green green stitching adds to the overall feeling of calm in the cabin.

As with all Skodas, the steering wheel feels huge and is the reverse of Peugeot’s teeny-tiny iCockpit configuration. In the Czech car, this does, however, allow you to look straight through it at the 5.3-inch driver display. It may sound small, but you get used to it in no time. I did, however, miss the augmented reality head-up display that came on our recently-reviewed Elroq vRS.

The two-spoke steering wheel is standard kit on the Edition trim, and gets physical buttons to control the sound system and car functions such as cruise control and drive modes. Being a Skoda and not indulging in such frippery as haptic climate control buttons, adjusting how warm or cool you want the cabin is done via physical toggle switches below the manually-operated air vents in the centre of the dash.

Being a Skoda, the Enyaq retains Skoda’s practical touches inside and out including its signature umbrella in the driver’s door, the windscreen-mounted clip for parking tickets, and the ice scraper… except this time it’s found on the inner lip of the boot instead of the rear-mounted charging port cap. This is because EVs charge with the cap open, and the more light-fingered among us could be tempted to the steal the ice scraper. See. Simply clever.

Something I’m still not sure about, though, is why Skoda offers two ways of turning all the ADAS off. While there’s no designated button to disable the systems at once, you can bring up a list within two pushes on the touch screen to make your choice. There’s also a somewhat bubble-shaped option of doing this… but it is most un-Skodalike as it doesn’t make much sense. Thankfully, Skoda’s driving assists are some of the least-intrusive in the business and on more than one occasion I honestly forgot to turn them off.

Despite being a handful of inches shy of the Peugeot e-5008, there’s no seven-seat option for the Enyaq – you’ll have to wait until next year for an all-electric Skoda seven-seat SUV. Still, given it’s a tall family SUV, Mlada Boleslav has been generous with the boot space: with the rear seats up, the Enyaq has 585 litres’ worth; fold them down, and this expands to 1,710 litres making the Enyaq one of the most practical C-segment SUVs around.

Battery, motor and performance

Our Skoda Enyaq 85 Edition had a 282bhp rear-mounted electric motor paired with a 77kWh battery returning a real-world range of around 280-310 miles. This is some way off of Skoda’s official quote of 359 miles on the WLTP cycle, but don’t forget that I live in a region where the landscape is undulating, the weather terrible, and the roads even worse.

All things considered then, and the Skoda’s real-world capacity was nothing to be ashamed of. What’s more, the ‘Yaq returned an average of 3.9 miles per kilowatt hour, which lies firmly within Skoda’s quoted consumption figure of between 3.7 and 4.1 miles/kWh. This could, however, be my insistence of driving in ‘Eco’, because I couldn’t feel a huge amount of difference between this most rabbit-friendly driving setting and ‘Normal’ mode.

Being a Skoda, the Enyaq is naturally a very comfortable, cosseting car. Even with the larger 21-inch wheel fitted, it floats over the Peak District’s narrow and oft-potholed roads, and its linear acceleration and progressive-feeling brakes make long-distance motorway driving a relaxing affair.

It does, however, also pack a bit of a punch. It’s not a crazy amount of oomph, but the 282 electric horses are paired with 402lb ft of torque in a heavy car. The Edition 85 is a regular cooking Enyaq, so unlike the sporty vRS models, this means that Skoda has done absolutely no chassis work here and is sending all of its power through the rear wheels – get too heavy with your right foot and you’ll light them up in no time.

Still, you can get stuck in here and flick the Enyaq into ‘Sport’ mode, the steering is way more entertaining than you’d imagine from a car that tips the scales at just over 2,100 kilograms. What’s more, the steering is definitely not affected by that elastic sensation that seems to blight cheaper EVs from China. If, though, its warm SUV thrills you’re looking for, then definitely have a nose around the range-topping Enyaq vRS or the slightly more compact Elroq vRS.

Price and specification

The Skoda Enyaq is priced from £39,010 for the entry-level SE L 60 model. The mid-tier Enyaq Edition 85 starts at £44,450. Factor in our car’s £680 metallic Olive Green finish, the £1,300 Lounge interior pack, and the £1,180 21-inch Aquarius alloys, and things total up to £47,710.

The SportLine model is more expensive and sits below the flagship vRS in the Enyaq hierarchy. Both also usher in all-wheel drive, but this extra grip comes at the expense of range – Skoda says that the AWD SportLine manages up to 334 miles on a single charge, while the vRS fares slightly better with a 345-mile range.

Both are also more expensive than the Edition model. The Sportline is priced from £47,260 for the front-wheel drive car and £48,760 for the AWD version. The vRS, meanwhile, comes with a £51,960 price tag.

When it comes to striking a balance between design, price, range, and power, the Edition 85 is the sweet spot in the Skoda Enyaq range.

Skoda Enyaq 85 Edition verdict

If you’ve made it this far, you’ll remember that at the start of this review that I said the Enyaq 85 is one of the greatest non-vRS Skodas of all time. It cherry picks the brand’s long-established qualities of practicality, timeless aesthetics, solid build quality, and great value, then wraps them up in a highly competent all-electric package.

But I was wrong in my assessment. I’d go as far to say that given how immensely likeable and capable the Enyaq Edition 85 is, it’s the best non-vRS EV Skoda has produced yet. Most importantly, it’s as easy to live with as the Tesla Model Y, a car that’s consistently ranked as the UK’s best-selling all-electric SUV.