• Lots of hard plastics on show
• Physical heating controls are a welcome sight
• Seats aren’t good for long trips

How is the quality and layout?

The term cheap and cheerful might be cliche, but it sums the Suzuki Swift’s interior up perfectly. Everywhere you look and feel there are scratchy hard plastics, but some interesting shapes stop it looking like a sad hire car. The use of light-beige plastics throughout the interior also helps make the interior feel large and airy. There’s no flimsiness either. Suzuki is renowned for nailing its cars together properly and the Swift demonstrates that.

Next to plusher superminis like the Renault Clio, however, it does look like its from a different generation. It isn’t particularly stylish next to the fabric-wrapped Clio, but it feels purposeful and hard-wearing.

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The layout of the Swift’s dashboard is nice and logical, with all the major controls easily within arm’s reach. Physical controls for the heating below the infotainment display have a reassuring quality and tactility to them. The buttons on the steering wheel are smartly integrated and easy to master on muscle memory. The switches for answering or rejecting phone calls do require some wheel shuffling though.

Only the infotainment screen, which looks unceremoniously plonked on top of the dashboard, is a bit of a stretch. Thankfully most controls for the infotainment are easily accessed via the steering wheel, and voice recognition comes as standard.  

Infotainment and tech

This is where the Swift falls behind its rivals, chiefly because of the lag from the nine-inch touchscreen. Once it’s up and running it’s largely fine and reliable, but there is such a delay when the car is first turned on. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are a standard feature for the and work a lot quicker than Suzuki’s own system.

A smaller LCD screen nestled between the dials offers little snippets of information. There’s a nice mix of telemetry to scroll through including mpg, map directions and a digital speedo right through to a g-force meter and power curve graph. We wish it would show directions from a connected smartphone however. You’re stuck with the infotainment display for that.

Is it comfortable?

• Decent adjustment for the wheel and seats
• Seats aren’t well-suited to longer trips
• Ride quality is far from best in class  

Long drives aren’t going to win the Swift any friends. This supermini is far better on shorter journeys – a combination of an unsettled ride and upright seats mean discomfort and even backache after an hour of driving isn’t uncommon.

The front seats have a good level of manual adjustment, as does the steering wheel, but there’s no way of negating the fact you’ll sit fairly high in the Swift. The fabric material feels akin to the type you often find in inexpensive cars like the Swift – utilitarian and coarse to the touch, but not unpleasant to look at.

Both road and wind noise bellow throughout the cabin, especially at motorway speeds. This is more forgivable when you factor in the low weight of the Swift, at a featherweight 949kg.