Mercedes-Benz E-Class Estate Review 2025

The estate car might have fallen out of favour with the average SUV-obsessed car buyer but that hasn't stopped the German 'big three' — Audi, BMW and Mercedes — keeping the flame alive. So of the wagons made by the trio, how does the one with the longest history fare? Find out with our full Mercedes E-Class Estate review. 

In some ways it's a surprise that the Mercedes E-Class Estate is still a thing given the way people have moved away from big-booted cars like this and flocked towards SUVs. But the E-Class Estate is very much still here and isn't some token effort. It's available in myriad trim levels and with a dizzying array of engines, ranging from simple mild hybrid four-cylinder petrols to an AMG-fettled plug-in hybrid with nearly 600PS — and yes, some diesels are slotted in between.

Compare that with the BMW 5 Series Touring and Audi A6 Avant line-ups, which have been drastically slimmed down for the latest versions of each. You can't even get the BMW as a diesel — that seems a big miss for a large estate car. Then there's the Volvo V90, which was unceremoniously binned from the UK range before being awkwardly reintroduced, albeit only as a plug-in hybrid. 

The E-Class already looks like a strong option even before we get into the fact that it has the biggest boot of all these upmarket options — that's despite being able to waft along nearly as well as a Mercedes S-Class. 

Inside the E-Class is similarly classy to look at, not to mention awash with the kind of materials you should expect in a mid-to-upper-range Mercedes. It's a little too reliant on its giant touchscreen, though, plus we reckon the Superscreen 'upgrade', which turns almost the entire dashboard into a giant combine of three separate displays, is best avoided.

While doing a brilliant job of whisking its occupants around in quiet comfort, the E-Class Estate is a surprisingly satisfying steer on twistier roads, traditionally something reserved for the BMW 5 Series Touring. It's also supremely quick in Mercedes-AMG E53 guise, yet we're expecting an even faster E63 to arrive further down the line. 

The stand-out model in the range isn't the AMG, though — it's the E300de, which is something of a rarity in the car world as a plug-in hybrid diesel. This makes a great deal of sense as you can make the most of its impressive electric-only range of up to around 70 miles when driving on shorter stints, while still enjoying typical diesel economy on longer jaunts once the battery is depleted. 

Prices start at around £60,000, so the Mercedes E-Class Estate isnt cheap, but neither is the competition, once you start ticking-off your choice of options. Interestingly there aren't that many extras to add with the E-Class, with equipment choice mostly dictated by the many trim levels. 

All things considered, the Mercedes E-Class Estate is the best-rounded of all the premium wagons and yes, we reckon it's a far better choice than a similarly sized SUV. What a shame that most will ignore that advice...

So far we've only tested the E300de version of the Mercedes E-Class Estate, which is 355kg heavier than mild hybrid E220d version. You're aware of its 2325kg heft when hustling along a country road but the levels of grip and traction remain commendable.

Body roll is well-contained, especially in the adaptive suspension's firmest settings, plus the steering has a natural, well-weighted feel to it. The brake pedal in the PHEV takes some getting used to, we assume due to the calibration of the regenerative braking system. It can be quite hard to modulate them, particularly when coming to a complete stop. 

It's not as fun to drive as a BMW 5 Series Touring but it's not all that far off, while being supremely comfortable when eating-up motorway miles. The ride is deliciously smooth and refinement is excellent, with wind, road and engine noise all kept to a minimum. 

There's plenty of choice on the engine front with the Mercedes E-Class Estate, which is a rarety in itself these days, all of which are fitted with a nine-speed automatic transmission.

The range starts with the E200 featuring a 2.0-litre mild hybrid-assisted petrol, which develops 204PS and 320Nm of torque for a perfectly acceptable 0-62mph time of 7.8 seconds.

The E300e plug-in hybrid combines the same petrol engine found in the E200 with a more powerful electric motor, providing a total output of 313PS and 550Nm of torque. That trims the 0-62mph time down to 6.5 seconds. 

Continuing with petrol-powered PHEVs, there's then a big jump in performance — and price — to the Mercedes-AMG E53 4Matic+, the only non-diesel with four- rather than rear-wheel drive. Its 3.0-litre engine and beefier electric motor together produce up to 612PS in Race mode, but only 585PS the rest of the time. Maximum torque of 750Nm results in a 0-62mph time of just 5.9 seconds. 

It's pleasing to see that there's still a healthy choice of diesel options for the E-Class Estate, starting off with the E220d. This entry-level diesel uses a mild hybrid 2.0-litre engine producing 197PS and 440NM of torque, with a resulting 7.9-second 0-62mph time. 

That same engine combined with a more powerful electric motor blesses the E300de with 313PS and 700Nm of torque, enabling a 0-62mph time of 6.6 seconds. 

The E300de feels effortlessly quick, with the electrical assistance doing a great job of making the car more responsive. It's smooth for an inline-four diesel engine, too. The downside is that sometimes the transitions between the car's power sources are on the clunky side. 

For ultimate diesel clout, you'll want the E450d 4Matic, which uses an even smoother 3.0-litre, six-cylinder engine producing 367PS and 750Nm of torque. It'll do 0-62mph in 5.0 seconds dead, while remaining very economical at motorway cruising speeds.

Euro NCAP hasn't crash-tested the Mercedes E-Class Estate specifically but the E-Class Saloon achieved the maximum five-star score when assessed in 2023, with an impressive 92% rating for adult occupants. 

As standard, the E-Class Estate comes with lane-keeping assistance, a driver attention monitor, evasive manoeuvre support and traffic sign recognition. The lane assistance gets annoying, though, due to the steering wheel sensors being over-sensitive, often asking you to keep both hands on the wheel, when they already are.

All versions of the Mercedes E-Class Estate can tow braked trailer loads of up to 2100kg, including the AMG E53s.

The Mercedes E-Class Estate rules the posh load-lugger roost when it comes to boot space, despite a slight decrease in capacity relative to the previous-generation model. It offers 615 litres of capacity with the rear seats up, compared with 570 litres in the BMW 5 Series Touring and a mere 503 litres in the style-conscious new Audi A6 Avant. 

There is a caveat to this — the plug-in hybrid E-Class Estates only offer a far more modest 460 litres in five-seater mode due to the location of the battery pack. That's disappointing when the PHEV-equipped 5 Series Tourings don't lose any capacity compared with their combustion engine-only counterparts. 

Dropping the rear seats increases the total load space in the Mercedes to 1830 litres, or 1675 litres in plug-in hybrid models. That compares with 1700 litres in the BMW and 1564 litres in the Audi.

At the other end of the cabin, there's a decent-sized cubby with a sliding cover under the infotainment screen, in which you'll find two USB-C ports plus a pair of cupholders, one with a neat rotating holder to accommodate various sizes of drinking receptacles. There's also a deep, lidded cubbyhole under the central armrest with a further couple of USB-C ports. 

The low-slung nature of the E-Class Estate means headroom isn't supplied in abundance but it doesn't feel unduly cramped either. 

For the most part, the Mercedes E-Class Estate's interor quality is great, with posh-feeling wood, nicely stitched leather and a general feeling of solidity. As you'd hope for the price, there are no rough edges or ill-fitting bits of trim.

The air vent controls feel on the flimsy side and that large standard touchscreen will remain covered in conspicuous fingerprints unless you can be bothered to wipe it down every day, but these are our only complaints.

The Mercedes E-Class Estate features a 14.4-inch touchscreen infotainment system as standard. It's an easy system to operate and more than responsive enough, but we'd have happily had a smaller display giving room for some physical climate controls beneath, rather than having to use the screen for that. 

Another annoyance is the smartphone integration. When using Android Auto, we noticed the screen isn't anywhere near filled, with a large blank portion to the right-hand side.

You can, if you want, spec the Superscreen, which adds a 12.3-inch display for the front passenger and encases it in one massive unit, but this feels like a poor way to spend £1495 on trims where it's optional — even more of the dashboard to be covered in fingerprints. 

On a more positive note, the Burmester sound system fitted to pricier versions is excellent. 

Starting prices of £59,720 makes the Mercedes E-Class Estate seem rather punchy, especially when you consider that the BMW 5 Series Touring can be bought from £55,345 and an Audi A6 Avant from £53,285. There's more to it than that, though, with Mercedes taking a different approach with its cars in terms of optional extras — or rather, a lack of them. 

There's more of a sense of what you see is what you get in the E-Class Estate range, with equipment levels largely dictated by the specification choice, with few opportunities within each to clobber your bank balance further on expensive options. 

That aforementioned entry-level price gets you into the petrol-powered E200 AMG Line. Upgrading to the E200 AMG Line Premium bumps the price to £64,595, while it's the same price for the more classically styled E200 Exclusive Premium. It's then a jump to £71,470 for both the E200 AMG Line Premium Plus and E200 Exclusive Premium Plus.

If you'd rather go diesel, the E220d costs from £60,650 for the AMG Line, £65,525 for an AMG Line Premium and Exclusive Premium, increasing to £72,400 for AMG Line Premium Plus or Exclusive Premium Plus. There's also the punchier E450d alternative — £83,345 buys you the AMG Line Premium or Exclusive Premium trims, while for £90,220 you can have the AMG Line Premium Plus or Exclusive Premium Plus versions.

Plug-in hybrids are available in petrol and diesel forms. The former, the E300e, costs from £67,970 as the Urban Edition, £73,095 for both the AMG Line Premium and Exclusive Premium specs and £79,970 for AMG Line Premium Plus and Exclusive Line Premium Plus models.

The E300de diesel PHEV is slightly more expensive across the board — £69,970 as the Urban Edition, £75,095 as both AMG Line Premium and Exclusive Premium or £81,970 for the AMG Line Premium Plus and Exclusive Premium Plus pair. 

Things are nice and simple for the Mercedes-AMG E53, with only two trim levels available — the £94,370 Premium and the £100,245 Premium Plus Night Edition.

Large cars such as the Mercedes E-Class Estate used to be very expensive to run, even with the least powerful engines, yet today's models are far more bank balance-friendly.

The E200 petrol is reasonably frugal, offering 39.2-41.5mpg on the WLTP Combined cycle but if you want low fuel costs, the 53.3-56.5mpg-rated E220d is the way to go. Yes, that pales in comparison with the astounding 470.8mpg and 565.0mpg claimed by the E300e and E300de plug-in hybrids, but there's a big, fat caveat with both of these models. 

Such figures will only be remotely achievable while heavily relying on battery power. Granted, you can potentially do over 60 miles of electric driving in either — more like 30-40 miles in reality, we reckon — so if you can keep the battery topped up at home, you might rarely need to wake up the engine part of the equation and start burning fuel. On the flipside, if you're on a longer journey and run the battery out, the fuel efficiency figures will soon tumble. With an empty battery, we tended to average nearer 50mpg with the E300de we tested.

The E450d looks like a great compromise between performance and economy. It's not much slower than the range-topping AMG model, yet it can return up to 42.8-44.8mpg. Speaking of AMG, the E53 is another PHEV, so the same caveat we mentioned earlier applies to its official economy figure of 282.5mpg. Fully exploit its performance, and you'll get a fraction of that number. 

Vehicle Excise Duty is currently charged at a flat rate of £195 a year from year two onwards but all versions of the E-Class Estate are comfortably over the £40,000 threshold for the government's Expensive Car Supplement — also known as premium car tax. That means there's a £425 annual surcharge to pay from years two to six. This is based on the original purchase price including options and it's transferred through subsequent ownership, so buying used doesn't get you around it.

The PHEV models are the clear favourites for company car users. All of them, even the AMG E53, are charged at 9% Benefit in Kind (BiK) for the 2025/26 tax year, rising to 10% for 2026/27.

The Mercedes E-Class Estate range appears bewildering in the online configurator, with no less than eight trim levels, although your choice is narrowed somewhat as not all engine choice are available across each of them. The trim level hierarchy starts with AMG Line and progresses through Urban Edition to AMG Line Premium and Exclusive Premium, the latter having a more classical than sporty appearance. Next are AMG Line Premium Plus and Exclusive Premium Plus, while the Mercedes-AMG versions are Premium and Premium Plus Night Edition.

Mercedes E-Class Estate AMG Line is the foundation to the range but only pairs with the E200 and E220d only. Standard eqipment includes:

• 19-inch AMG alloy wheels
• AMG body styling
• Open-pore ash trim with backlighting
• Leather upholstery
• LED headlights
• Electrically folding door mirrors
• Augmented reality navigation
• Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connectivity
• Lane-keeping assistance
• Dash cam
• Parking assistance
• Driver monitoring system
• Keyless entry and starting
• Reversing camera
• Adaptive suspension

Only available with the E300e and E300de PHEV engines, Mercedes E-Class Estate Urban Edition models gain add:

• Burmester sound system 
• 20-inch alloy wheels 
• Sports front seats

Both the Mercedes E-Class Estate AMG Line Premium and Exclusive Premium build trims on the AMG Line spec with:

• Burmester sound system
• 360-degree parking camera
• Panoramic sunroof
• Heated steering wheel
• Ambient lighting

Equipment uplifts for the Mercedes E-Class Estate AMG Line Premium Plus and Exclusive Premium Plus include:

• 20-inch alloy wheels
• Superscreen dashboard display
• Heated and massaging front seats
• Heated armrest
• Comfort head restraints
• Air balance cabin air filtration system
• Active ambient lighting

Going for the fastest versions available, the line-up begins with the Mercedes-AMG E-Class Estate Premium. This E53-only model is broadly similar to AMG Line Premium, with the addition of:

• AMG-specific chassis
• 20-inch double-spoke alloy wheels
• AMG styling 
• Rear-wheel steering

The range's mosty expensive E53 is in the guise of the Mercedes-AMG E-Class Estate Premium Plus Night Edition, the specification for which is much the same as AMG Line Premium Plus, minus the Superscreen.