DS DS 4 interior
Style
We reckon the DS 4’s cabin is a much more successful design than its smaller sibling, the DS 3 Crossback, and gives the premium German alternatives a run for their money.
It’s clearly a very design-led interior, which is apparent from the moment you open the door. There’s dramatic looking sweeps across the door tops, a wraparound dash swathed in leather or Alcantara and a trio of screens, all of which make it clear that this is not just a Citroen in a fancy frock.
There’s also a number of neat details including window switches hidden as part of the door’s design flourish, an invisible centre air vent that’s neatly adjustable, premium stitching and leather designed to look like a watch strap and, on Premium Line models, a piece of forged carbon inserted into the steering wheel. Some may consider it a bit OTT, but design matters on cars such as this.
The non-conventional approach means some things take getting used to. For example, the window switches on the door tops are a bit fiddly, while the digital drivers’ display is a bit over-styled. Thankfully, there are some physical buttons for essential controls such as heating and ventilation that are pleasingly easy to operate.
If you start running your fingers around the lower parts of the dash you’ll encounter some scratchier plastics, too. But on the whole, this is a very upmarket cabin for the money.
- Cash
- £24,446
- Monthly
- £309*
Infotainment
Base versions of the DS 4 will come with a simple 10-inch touchscreen, offering Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and a reversing camera, combined with a seven-inch digital instrument cluster. We’ve yet to try that, but all variants above that come with the more advanced ‘DS Iris’ system.
This combines that 10-inch touchscreen with a small secondary touchscreen mounted just in front of the gear selector. This serves as a kind of gesture control system; that lower screen displays key shortcuts of your choosing to different functions (such as navigation, climate functions or your favoured apps), so all you have to do his swipe upwards on the icon you want and the top screen displays it or does what you’ve requested.
It’s a little confusing at first if you’re used to a single touchscreen. But as the interface is customisable, you can make it work for you and would get used to it over time. We can see how, when combined with the central touchscreen which is much quicker and more responsive than older DS systems, it helps make things more accessible on the move.
The DS Iris system also brings 3D navigation with various connected services, and a natural voice control function as another alternative to controlling some of the car’s features. Sadly, on our early test car this feature wasn’t working quite as well as it should be.
Another thing we’ve yet to test in finished form is the augmented reality head-up display. In practice, it will project arrows and directions on the screen to help guide you along your route, among other things. Sadly, ours was flickering so much it was distracting, but DS is still smoothing off the rough edges ahead of production.
The digital drivers display might be standard on most models, but it’s quite small relative to other alternatives – particularly the big dual-screen system of the A-Class. Still, when combine with a fully functioning head-up display we can see how it would work.
- Cash
- £24,446
- Monthly
- £309*
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*Please contact the dealer for a personalised quote, including terms and conditions. Quote is subject to dealer requirements, including status and availability. Illustrations are based on personal contract hire, 9 month upfront fee, 48 month term and 8000 miles annually, VAT included.