The Atto 2’s interior has the big picture covered. There’s a good-sized, split-level boot, whose capacity is rated at 50 litres greater in the Comfort than in the Boost, for reasons that BYD has yet to explain, but it is an ample size either way.
The second-row seats have enough leg and head room for adults, and plenty of useful storage around them.
Up front, there’s a matching roomy feel and mostly good comfort and adjustability from the driver’s seat – all except for the non-adjustable integrated-style head restraint, which tends to poke taller drivers annoyingly in the nape of the neck.
Material quality is mixed. There’s plenty of synthetic ‘leather’ trim around the place, and the majority of the car’s fixtures and fittings feel solid and secure. But there are also some dull, hard plastic mouldings and unconvincing material imitations in conspicuous places to mar the overall impression a little – and none of the more eccentric inclusions (guitar-string storage straps, anyone?) of the bigger Atto 3 to lift a pretty drab and unremarkable ambience.
Multimedia system
Every Atto 2 gets an 8.8in digital instrument screen, which is accompanied by a 12.8in infotainment touchscreen. It supports over-the-air software updates and is equipped with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and voice command,. The smartphone mirroring connection is a little annoying because it won’t connect to your device automatically while your handset is locked. Instead, it needs to be connected manually in advance of every trip.
The large instrument display and infotainment display both have good clarity, but the latter takes some getting used to.
The screen is responsive and suffered no software glitches during our time with it. The Android-based software pleases the eye with soft, light-coloured graphics, but the menu structures are a bit haphazard, and the individual icons around the periphery of the screen are too small and fiddly to hit at arm’s length. They also look very similar to each other, making it more challenging to use while driving.
Thankfully, BYD has resisted the temptation to put every secondary control on the touchscreen. There are a number of physical buttons on either side of the gear selector, including for the air-con, audio volume, regenerative braking and windscreen demister.
A quick-access menu for control of the ADAS is accessible with a downward swipe from the top of the screen and can be configured to give reasonably easy access to deactivative the car’s lane keeping and speed limit warning alarms. Annoyingly, BYD continues to keep the controls for its driver monitoring system somewhere else, though – buried pretty deeply in the vehicle settings menu. And you’ll want to turn it off, because it’s an especially sensitive system with a habit of reminding you, in a spoken voice, to look at the road, even when that’s already precisely what you’re doing.
BYD still isn’t on the same level as rivals with the integration of these systems and doesn’t offer a ‘custom’ ADAS mode that allows you to configure the car’s mandatory active safety nannies with a couple of quick presses of a physical button. More’s the pity, they won’t be able to add one of those with a software update, either.
