Renault Austral - Interior, design & technology
The interior is a mixed bag of some neat touches, and a few quality issues. The standout part is the infotainment system
The Renault Australs is a handsome-looking five-door mid-size SUV, although not as adventurously styled as rivals such as the Hyundai Tucson or Kia Sportage. There are some neat details like the wrap-around C-shape headlights and tail lights, though.
Entry-level Techno trim is restricted to just five colours: white (free), diamond black, shadow grey, flame red, and iron blue. Mid-range Techno Espirit Alpine and above can be ordered with a contrast black roof on all shades (apart from black, obviously) or a matte version of shadow grey.
What is the Renault Austral like inside?
Renault has been on form recently when it comes to cabin design, which shares plenty in common with the electric Renault Megane E-Tech and Renault Scenic. It’s dominated by screens: a 12.3-inch display in front of the driver, and another 12-inch touchscreen that’s hung portrait-style over the dashboard. The former deals with speed, trip, and autonomous safety tech, while the latter looks after everything else, from infotainment to climate controls.
Unlike numerous rivals in the class that have gone all in on touchscreens, you’ll still find some physical controls in the Austral, with a bank of physical climate control keys below the main touchscreen allowing for quick adjustment of the temperature while on the move without having to delve into a menu on the screen.
What is the interior quality like?
The interior looks smart with flashes of metallic-looking finishes, lots of piano black trim, and a decent amount of soft-touch plastic. You must plump for mid-range Techno Esprit Alpine and above to get flashes of blue ‘esprit Alpine’ trim and stitching across the seats. It looks to be up to class standard in terms of quality, but hard plastics are used lower down on the dashboard and door cards, and the air vents are needlessly flimsy.
Sat-nav, stereo and infotainment
Every version of Austral comes with a 12-inch central touchscreen that runs an impressive Google-powered infotainment system called OpenR Link – the same system featured in the Megane E-Tech. Powering the large central screen is a speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which helps make this the slickest running infotainment system we’ve yet come across in a Renault. Its fast reaction times to inputs are mirrored by the standard sat-nav mapping that’s provided by Google software.
It works superbly, with the voice control offering the usual intuitive integration we've come to expect from the software giant’s systems – you can even control items in your home from the car using voice control. The graphics are sharp, and the interface looks smart in areas where the Google link is obvious (mainly the mapping on both the main display and the digital dash). Overall, it’s one of the better infotainment systems in the class.
We’re yet to try the standard eight-speaker sound system, but the upgraded 12-speaker Harman Hardon system fitted to the range-topping Iconic Esprit Alpine model we drove sounds excellent.
