Nissan Micra 2026 Review

Exterior Design

The Nissan Micra has much more of an external resemblance to the Renault 5 that it shares a platform with than previous Renault-Nissan collaborations. That's no bad thing, because almost everyone loves the Renault 5’s retro looks. The new Nissan Micra is cute too, albeit with a more modern sense of quirk.

There are still a few echoes of previous petrol Micras, particularly the third generation K12. That car is a bit of an acquired taste, but this new Micra is much more appealing, with more balanced proportions and a maturer sense of style. In fact, like the Renault 5, it's a great-looking car. The rounded front lights are endearingly quirky, and the overall sense is fun.

These are reiterated in the rear of the car. Like the Renault 5 (and the Zoe before it), the rear door handles are hidden in the rear quarter windows, so the car looks like a two-door when in fact it has four doors. With the two-tone black roof, the Nissan Micra gives off plenty of sporty vibes.

Interior Comfort

The Evolve comes with a choice of Audacious or Chill interiors, both of which are cloth but with a nice balance of colours. If you go for either of the two lower trims you only get a black Modern option. Whatever seat upholstery you choose, the seats are manually adjusted, but with the top trim you get heating for both the front seats and the steering wheel. The front seats are quite comfortable and the raised side bolsters hold you in with a sporty feel.

The central console has a wireless phone charger, then you have a cubby and cupholder behind, plus a little bit more space under the armrest. The glove compartment looks bigger on the outside than it is on the inside, because you don't get the full width of the door. It’s still enough for one or two pairs of gloves, though.

The first obvious downside with the Micra comes when you get in the back. Just like the Renault 5, there isn't a lot of room for adult rear passengers. This is more of a family car where the people in the back are your kids. There is at least a middle seat, unlike some cars in this class such as the BYD Dolphin Surf, so you can safely transport five people when you need to.

Only the two outer seats have ISOfix points, however, although the front passenger seat does as well. The central seat back doesn’t fold forward to create an armrest, either, and there are no central air vents for rear passenger or phone charging ports.

Storage and Load Carrying

Rear seat passenger space is a bit cramped, and there's not a huge amount of luggage capacity with the Micra either. The basic capacity is 326 litres, and the lip of the boot is quite high too. If you drop the rear seats forward, which have a 60/40 split, the capacity only rises to 1,106 litres.

That's more than some small electric hatchbacks on the market, but you won't be bringing a sofa you bought in Ikea home in this car. Still, it will be enough for a weekly shop or a few more demanding luggage carrying requirements. The Micra can allegedly also tow 500kg, braked or unbraked, which is a surprise for a small electric family hatchback.

Now we come to one of the things we found the most confusing about the Micra, at least initially. The steering wheel is conventional, and there's a convenient button to change drive power from Eco, to Normal to Sport and then the personalised option. However, the right-hand side is bristling with stalks. The top one takes you from Drive to Neutral to Reverse but doesn’t have a park button on the end as with most stalks of this nature. Then below that is a stalk for the windscreen wipers.

But there’s also a third stalk, which is easy to miss. This could be unfortunate if you like music because it has all the volume and media controls. It works fine once you've realised it's there, but you will be puzzling about how to turn the sound up until you discover it. It’s also easy to accidentally turn the windscreen wipers on when you meant to engage drive or reverse, because these two stalks are too close together.

On the left is a stalk for lights and indicators, and with the Advance and Evolve trims, you also get paddles either side for varying the level of regen. The step after the fiercest option is single-pedal mode. However, the lack of the park button means you must stick the car in Neutral and hope the Autohold has kicked in or engage the electronic parking brake yourself.

On the plus side, there is a full complement of controls for the air conditioning, so button fans will be happy, although a few features are on the touchscreen, such as the heated seats. There's a decent digital instrument screen, which is 7in on the cheapest trim and 10.1in on the higher ones.

Even though the infotainment screen is also 10.1in, there’s not a huge amount of space for the interface. The navigation comes from Google Maps, which will hit the spot for most people. By default, there’s a panel to the right of this showing your current audio source and phone connection. The Google Play store is available so you can add functions. Once you enter the car settings, the layout is easy to navigate. This isn’t the giant infotainment screen now de rigueur on premium EVs, but for an affordable car it’s perfectly adequate.

Performance and Driving

The Renault 5 surprised a lot of reviewers with just how much fun it is to drive, despite not being hugely quick. The Micra is pretty much the same. The more powerful version takes 8 seconds to hit 62mph, while the less powerful one takes 9 seconds. However, the manageable size of the car and general responsiveness of the steering put the fun above what you'd expect from the specs.

About town and on A-roads it's perfect. It's not too bad for stints on the highway either. Ride quality is decent too, which is handy with all the urban potholes in the UK. While this car is aimed primarily at city use, particularly the version with the smaller battery, it’s great for enjoying twisty country roads.

Range and Charging

Nissan describes the Micra as a city car, and the relatively small battery options put it mostly in that category. The 40kWh battery delivers 196 miles of WLTP range, but the larger 52kWh unit ups that to 257 miles. The Extended Range version we reviewed got quite close to the rated efficiency, too, hitting 4.1 miles per kWh, and 3.7-3.8 miles per kWh with more motorway use. The 4.1 figure would equate to 213 miles of real-world range.

For the Extended Range car, DC charging tops out at 100kW, although it's a little lower for the smaller battery at 80kW. That means a 15-80% charge takes about half an hour in either case. Note that while the larger battery is NMC, the smaller one is LFP so will tolerate 100% charging more often. You could probably do a couple of motorway hours before you need a charge, so long distance isn't out of the question, but really long distance will be irritating for the Standard Range car and just about doable with the Extended Range so long as it’s not too often.

Running Costs

Even if you only manage the lower efficiency figure we did of 3.7 miles per kWh, this will be an economical car to run. With cheap overnight home charging it will cost less than 2p a mile. The insurance groups of 19-22 depending on version will also make this aspect reasonable. The warranty is typical, providing three years or 60,000 miles in general, but eight years or 100,000 miles for 75% capacity on the battery and five years or 60,000 miles on the powertrain.

Safety

Like the Renault 5, the Nissan Micra only managed four stars in Euro NCAP. This still indicates good crash protection, just not completely excellent. However, the BYD Dolphin Surf got give stars, as did the Mini Cooper electric.

All versions of the Micra have automatic emergency braking and driver attention monitoring. There's lane-keeping and departure assistance.  Although all cars also have cruise control, you need the Advance trim or above for this to be adaptive. On top of that, you need the top Evolve trim for the full ProPILOT system with Navi-Link. A decent reversing camera is included alongside parking sensors front and rear, but no front camera or 360-degree view.