Audi A5

As one tester said, “This may be the high point for the car.” The A5 has quick (though not darty) responsive steering that’s nicely weighted. There’s a good deal of feedback sent through the steering wheel, giving the driver information on how much grip the tires have. One tester said they thought the A5 had better steering feel than most recently tested BMWs.

There’s very little body roll, and what does rear its head is nicely contained and controlled, no matter how quick the pace. While overall handling is more competent and precise than out-and-out “sporty,” the A5 is easy to drive quickly through corners, and inspires the driver to push the pace where appropriate.

At one time, Audi’s small turbocharged four-cylinders sounded like they belonged in agricultural equipment rather than under the hood of a sporty car. The A5 doesn’t suffer from that problem. The engine and exhaust notes have a polished sound and, when driven hard, the full 268 horsepower can scoot the car along with little delay.

Once underway, most upshifts and downshifts are smooth and timely, though the transmission can be a bit hesitant to downshift. Putting the transmission in “S” mode speeds things up, although it will also stay in a gear longer before upshifting than if it were in “D” mode to make the power more accessible.

Fuel economy seems good anecdotally, with one tester reporting 30 mpg in mixed driving. Of course, we will conduct our own measured fuel economy tests.

A majority of our testers praised the front sport seats, which are included with the optional warm weather package. They have a wide variety of adjustments for both the driver and passenger, including four-way lumbar support. The sport seats have firm, supportive bolsters to keep the occupant from sliding about in turns, and the front of the bottom cushion has a manual extension for additional thigh support.

Most drivers found the seats on the firm side, although that didn’t affect comfort. Nearly everyone mentioned that the angle of the tall, fixed head restraint was slightly uncomfortable and oddly pronounced.

One tester said that while the shape of the sports seats was good, the firm cushions weren’t to their liking. Consumers should try out both the standard and sport seats before making a purchase to see whether one style suits their body type better.

The Audi’s Adaptive Cruise Assist feature works very well in stop-and-go traffic. As one tester said, “It acts like how a person would drive.” The system speeds up and slows down appropriately to maintain position with the traffic flow, and it deals very well with merges and people cutting in at the last second.

The lane centering assistance (LCA) system was similarly praised. It kept the A5 centered in the travel lane without any ping-ponging between the lane markers. The system gives fairly aggressive steering assistance to keep the A5 centered in the lane, but it allows the driver to steer in turns without feeling as if they’re fighting the car. One tester did say that the system tries hard to take what feels like the most optimal line through a turn, and the result is that the car makes a lot of small movements and corrections that are felt as the steering wheel moves.

Another tester said it’s a “very effective L2 system that does a great job at lane centering. Also deals very well when another car cuts in front of you, gradually slowing down instead of abruptly slamming on the brakes. LKA (lane keeping assistance) is very effective and keeps the vehicle from hitting the lane lines even on curvy sections of road.”

In general, the A5 has a composed, refined, and comfortable ride. It also has the “quintessential” tautness that’s a hallmark of German vehicles. On well-maintained roads and even ones that have gone multiple years since being repaved, the suspension does an effective job of absorbing bumps without any harshness. Body motions are well-contained. There are occasional rebounds and pitching motions when going over repeated bumps—such as a washboardlike surface—but the motions aren’t very large and they’re quickly dampened.

However, sometimes the taut ride can transmit single impacts, such as a random pothole or a recessed manhole cover, as a big hit. Some of this can be attributed to the 19-inch wheel and tire package and some to the suspension. Most people who drive in suburban and some urban areas will find it tolerable. But drivers who primarily drive on city streets may want to spend time test-driving an A5 in that environment and sampling both the 18- and 19-inch wheel and tire packages.

Some drivers said they’re shocked that Audi is using a dual-clutch transmission on the A5. These transmissions are often used in performance sports cars and aren’t always well-suited for low-speed driving, rolling stops, and just starting up from a full stop. It’s no different with the A5.

It would be fine if it worked well, but it doesn’t. The transmission is often indecisive about which gear it wants to be in, particularly at times when the car is slowing and then the driver gets back on the throttle, such as at a yield intersection or when approaching a red light that changes to green. The transmission is usually in a higher gear than it should be, because it hasn’t dropped down to first or second gear yet. The result is that as the driver presses down on the accelerator and the engine spools up, the transmission hesitates. Then it kicks into a lower gear and the car launches forward, particularly if the turbo boost has built up.

Modern transmissions “learn” from repeated use, and early drivers noticed a greater number of incidences of this lurching than later drivers. But every driver did experience this situation. We’ll see whether it gets any better by the time the A5 is ready for testing.

About three days after we took delivery of our A5, it developed a host of technology-related teething pains. First, the touch-sensitive controls on the right side of the steering wheel stopped working, then the blind spot warning indicator on both sides would randomly illuminate (it would notify the driver for a few miles that the Front Assist system—Audi-speak for automatic emergency braking—needed to initialize after starting up, and the rear-seat occupant warning would consistently alert us that someone was sitting in the back seat unbuckled even when the seat was empty or folded flat. A few times, the A5 abruptly turned off LCA and adaptive cruise control for the rest of the drive, seemingly without cause.

While these problems won’t affect our testing or reliability ratings, it’s troublesome to see them appear on a brand-new car.

A number of members of CR’s YouTube community asked us about the appearance and quality of the A5’s interior. In short, it’s not as much of a low point as the one in the Q6 E-Tron, but it’s not impressive.

At first glance, the A5 has a well-constructed interior. Everything fits together very well, with solid-feeling panels on the doors and dash. There aren’t any signs of creaking when closing the doors or driving over bumps and ruts. But dig a bit deeper, and there are some ill-fitting panels where the dashboard and door meet, and there’s foam sticking out where the seat belt is anchored to the floor.

What’s worse is the cabin’s dour, plain feeling. Like the Q6, some of this is because the first model we could get our hands on had a black interior. The Pearl Beige and Nutmeg Brown interiors are lighter and have more contrast with the black door and dash panels.

Many of the materials used are out of place in a $60,000 luxury car. There’s an overabundance of plastic and hard surfaces. While the upper speaker grilles are metal, the lower ones are plastic. The climate vents feel incredibly flimsy because they flex beyond their upper and lower limit stops.

Just as many automakers are ditching shiny piano black trim, Audi has it all over the cabin. The result is a lot of reflection and glare on sunny days, and that trim attracts fingerprints and scratches easily. Premium and Premium Plus trims don’t come with the digital touchscreen display that’s located in front of the passenger in the top Prestige trim, so the big piano black panel that fills the space is insubstantial and looks utterly out of place.

To add insult to injury, every exterior color other than Arkona White is a $595 option.

Audi’s decision to place several controls on an angled panel under the driver’s door handle and in front of the window switches continues to feel like a move in the wrong direction.

In addition to the lock and unlock buttons and mirror controls that typically occupy this space, Audi added seat memory, child lock, and headlight buttons. All are touch-sensitive.

But this pushes the window controls farther back along the armrest, making them awkward to access, particularly if you sit closer to the steering wheel. There’s little delineation between the buttons. For example, it’s easy to brush against the child lock buttons and accidentally engage them, locking rear-seat passengers in when you arrive at your destination. Similarly, drivers may inadvertently fold the side mirrors, which at best is a distraction (their motion takes your eyes away from the road) and at worst, dangerous because they could be folded at the moment you need to use them.

The touch-sensitive steering-wheel controls are similarly frustrating. The only separation between the “buttons”? Small, Braille-like lines. And because the controls are touch-sensitive surfaces on a single plane, they can’t be operated by feel.

The A5 is the most recent model with the Digital Stage infotainment system. It consists of an 11.9-inch display in front of the driver and a 14.5-inch center-mounted touchscreen for infotainment, climate, navigation, and other controls. They’re combined into what looks like a single display screen, with the right side curved toward the driver. Prestige trims also include a 10.9-inch screen for the front-seat passenger.

As with your phone, it’s possible to move the icons for functions and group them into one tile or menu. That way, you can have your most-used features in one place. There’s a left rail with common apps; this, too, can be customized. Functions can be accessed via the app icons, voice commands, or even using handwriting on the screen itself. Suffice it to say that there are numerous ways to navigate through the various functions, but there are so many that it takes a long time to find them.

We like the simple information display on the instrument cluster, but accessing different data via the steering wheel controls isn’t particularly intuitive. But the displays are clear, and Audi uses a simple black background and white coloring for icons and text, which makes for good contrast and ease of reading. The system is less convoluted than the one in the Q6. For example, the A5 has a more conventional head-up display, not the distracting Augmented Reality system as in our Q6.

Our testers were mixed on the driving position, with many of them finding both pros and cons. The A5 sits low, and the rake of the windshield pillars forced some testers to sit quite low to avoid feeling too hemmed in. The controls on the driver’s door panel and the center console intruded into the knee space of some testers. In addition, the steering wheel significantly interfered with the top of the gauge cluster in front of the driver and the left side of the infotainment screen.

Still, drivers of all sizes said they had easy access to the controls, could see all the key parts of the gauge display, and appreciated the padded center and door armrests. The power-adjustable steering column helped them fine-tune their driving position.

The A5 is the most recent vehicle in our test fleet to feature an electrochromic panoramic sunroof that turns opaque with the touch of a button. (The Volkswagen ID.Buzz in our fleet also has this feature.) Many new vehicles have a fixed glass panel with some level of tint instead of a retractable hard or soft panel to block sunlight. Eliminating the opening mechanism helps in many ways: It saves weight, reduces complexity, prevents water and air leaks, and increases headroom.

In theory, this lets light in while preventing the sun from heating up the cabin. Too often, that just doesn’t work very well on bright, sunny days.

The Audi (and VW) answer is a panel that can adjust opacity by pressing a button on the headliner. The entire panel can be darkened, or the driver can choose to darken certain sections to let some light in. So far, the jury is out, with some testers finding it gimmicky and others wishing for a roof that opened to allow air to vent. We hope this doesn’t turn out to break easily and end up being a costly or impossible-to-repair panel like the folding “Revochromic” roof on the Ferrari 550 Superamerica.

The A5 comes standard with automatic emergency braking, blind spot warning, rear cross traffic warning, lane departure warning, adaptive cruise control, rear parking assistance, and driver attention monitoring.