Renault Duster Review: Best In Class Ride Quality, But The Manual Isn’t Very Refined

Let’s talk about the Renault Duster. It is the car that started the C-SUV segment in India. Given that, and the sort of fan following the car had created in its first innings in India, the Duster is a sort of an icon here. Early this year, we saw a new version, which takes on the legacy but is more relevant to the tech-first connected world today. The Renault Duster has been reborn. The new Duster was launched with three engine options, two of which have been available from the get-go:

• a 1.3-litre turbo petrol engine.
• a 1.0-litre turbo petrol engine.
• a 1.8-litre petrol hybrid, which is expected to arrive around Diwali.

Deliveries for the 1.8 litre hybrid option have not started yet, but Renault tells us that we will see the hybrid Duster before the end of this year. With the two petrol engines, we get a six-speed manual and a dual-clutch automatic transmission. I have been fortunate enough to drive and live with the Duster for about three weeks. In this article, I will tell you everything that you will have to know about the ownership of the Renault Duster – how it is to drive, how it is to sit in, how it is to drive, basically everything there is to know about the Duster, so sit tight and let’s go. 

Renault Duster 2026 Review – Design and Styling

In terms of how it looks, you might have seen enough of the Duster online or on your social media, but I like how it looks. It proudly wears the Duster badging on the nose without any Renault logos. It looks rugged, distinctive, and has its own presence in the whole C-segment SUV space.

I don’t particularly like the rear profile of the car, but overall, everything fits in quite well. It is not the biggest, longest, or largest car in the segment. That title, I believe, goes to the Tata Sierra or the Kia Seltos, but I think this is one of the best-looking cars in this segment.

I honestly like how it looks. There have been instances where people have told me that the Nissan Tecton looks slightly better, but I think this is slightly more rugged. The Tecton is a little more on the modern side of design or styling, so the Renault Duster, I feel, looks great. It looks like it belongs in a rugged environment. It looks like it’s meant to be driven rough. It’s meant to be driven a lot, and that precisely is how it behaves also.

The Renault Duster comes with 18-inch alloy wheels and sits on more than 200 mm of ground clearance, which is great for those who would take it to the hills, to the mountains, where it is meant to be driven mostly. It is for the adventurous, so it also sits quite high. It has a stance sort of like SUV crossovers, a good SUV crossover stance, and thick cladding everywhere, making it look like it’s home when you take it to the hills.

Renault Duster 2026 Review: Interiors and Comfort

On the inside, the Duster has a pretty-looking cabin. We have quite a few materials inside, which should not ideally work well together, but they somehow do. They somehow look very good. We have nice soft-touch leather with neon stitching contrast. There is carbon fibre with silver accents, and we also have hard plastic. With all of those materials, it fits in quite well together. Even the fit and finish of the dashboard and the interiors is really good.

I like how the seats are also designed. They’re very comfortable, they look good, and they have this nice green and black leather colour combination, which I personally am a big fan of. Yes, the slight hexagonal shape of the steering wheel looks odd at first, but with the digital instrument cluster with the slightly tilted infotainment display towards the driver, it all is quite well put together, and the fit and finish is pretty good.

Yes, the Renault Duster looks pretty good, at least to me, and the interiors are really well put together and feel kind of premium to be inside, without any compromise on creature comforts or modern features. This ranks pretty high in my list of cars that come with all the bells and whistles.

Renault Duster 2026 Review: Features and Tech

The Renault Duster genuinely has it all when it comes to features and tech, and this section is where the SUV really exceeds my expectations. The infotainment display is not the largest but it is sharp, responsive, and intuitively laid out, it’s easily one of the better units I’ve used across any car in this segment. Adding to that is the in-built Android system, which turns out to be a genuinely useful addition rather than a gimmick. No need to connect your phone to use Google Maps, music, access mail, and more. No matter where you go, the navigation and media shouldn’t stop.

On the safety front, the Duster comes with Level 2 ADAS, and Renault has smartly included a physical button to switch it off, which is a brilliant implementaion for India since these ADAS features are more intrusive than safe as per our road conditions. Furthermore, the media controls are placed a little unusually, on a separate stalk behind the steering wheel, tucked away from where you’d expect them, but in daily use they turn out to be surprisingly practical once you get used to their position. Add to all this, seat ventilation, electronically adjusatable front seats, panoramic sunroof, ambient lighting, dual-zone climate control, air purifier, and the Renault Duster is as loaded as any other car in this segment.

Renault Duster 2026 Review: Performance and Ride Quality

But that is not my favourite part about the Duster: not how it looks, not how it feels to sit inside, but how it feels to drive this. In my opinion, this has the best-in-segment ride quality across any cars, be it the Skoda Tomahawk, the Volkswagen Tygoon, the Kia Seltos, or any other C-segment SUV that you may want to include in this list. And I don’t say that because the 1.3-litre turbo petrol engine is the most powerful and creates the most amount of torque in this segment. I say this because this car has one of the best tuning of both the suspension and the chassis, along with a beautiful steering feedback that just makes driving this Renault Duster one of the best experiences in any C-segment SUV in the whole country.

Now, I don’t just say that lightly. The day I got the Duster, I took it all the way to Jispa, Himachal Pradesh, which is about 700 km from Delhi, and back, and drove the car for about a month within the city as well. Throughout my experience, there is not one thing about the mechanics of the car that has bothered me or made me feel left out. Even on the hills, this car was quite comfortable. It climbed mountains. We took it all the way to Shinkula Top, which is the Ladakh border, and the Renault Duster was quite comfortable. Yes, the turbo lag was a little tricky, and you had to put the car in a lower gear every time there is a steep incline, but that is how hill driving is, and the Renault Duster, even so, never felt like it cannot take on the challenges that I threw at it.

Even in my opinion, this is quite an efficient engine because, after driving the Renault Duster more than 2,000 kilometres in both city and highways, in hills and in plains, the car gave me an average of around 12 km/l. This is pretty decent for a turbocharged petrol engine, which is also running on E20 fuel. 

The one thing that I will not recommend, or that I did not like, about the driving experience of the Renault Duster is the six-speed manual transmission. Not that it’s bad. It is just not as refined as you would expect from a car in this segment.

Now, I have driven manuals on the Kia Seltos, the Honda City, the Honda Elevate, the Hyundai Creta, and now the Duster as well. This manual transmission from Renault feels the least refined out of all of them. The gears don’t slot as smoothly. The biting point, although now I’m used to it, was a little tricky to get right.

Not the most refined. The gear shifts take some seconds. If I were to buy it for myself, or if I were to recommend it for somebody who is spending their hard-earned money on the Duster, I would recommend the DCT automatic instead of the six-speed manual. Not only because of the fact that it’s easier, more refined, and more responsive to drive, the automatic centre console also offers more space to users. Like I have mentioned earlier, the cup holder placement under the armrest is a little weird, but that is only for the manual. For the automatic, the cup holders are placed in a decent place, and wireless charging is also placed separately. The centre console layout is a little different when you opt for the DCT automatic of the Duster.

Review Verdict: Should You Buy the 2026 Renault Duster?

Smartprix Rating: ⭐8.5/10

• Design and Build: ⭐8/10
• Features and Tech: ⭐9/10
• Driving Pleasure: ⭐8/10
• Performance: ⭐9/10
• Comfort and Space: ⭐8/10

To wrap it up, my simple opinion is that this car is the best in the segment for those who like driving themselves. It’s got fantastic ride quality, one of the best punch, it’s powerful, it’s quick, it’s got the grunt, and it’s surprisingly well-handling. At the same time, we get superb damping from the suspension, we get a very nice chassis balance, and on top of all of that, we get a pretty rugged look with more than enough ground clearance. That makes it an ideal single car if you plan to have just one car in your garage under the ₹20 lakh segment.

I believe this is it because not only does it drive well, it also feels super nice inside. You get nice materials, fit and finish, and all the features anyone could ask for in today’s time. The 2026 Renault Duster really holds up to the legacy of the previous generation, with a little more refinement, a little more luxury, and a lot more tech. 

First reviewed in August 2026.