2025 Proton X50 facelift: full pics, specs and variant breakdown of major refresh; brief driving impressions

Let’s rewind for a moment to 2020. Remember that surreal year? Remember that uncertain, existential state of mind brought about by the pandemic, job insecurities and shocking local political developments? Remember how you felt having absolutely no idea what tomorrow was going to be like, every single day?

I could be wrong, but I think most of us Malaysians are fortunate enough not to have experienced wartime (and I’m not downplaying any war in human history in the slightest). So I put to you that 2020 was the closest we’d ever gotten to such a situation since the nation’s independence – the despair, the depression, the discomfort, the despondence.

So you’d be pardoned if you forgot that 2020 was the year the Proton X50 was born. Big deal? Yes, and all the more so in hindsight, for the X50 is by far the most successful child of the Proton-Geely marriage.

It took the market by storm almost immediately, becoming, at various points throughout its life, the country’s best-selling B-segment SUV or even SUV in general. Through versions like 2023’s R3, 2024’s RC and the run-out Sport Edition that turned up at the Malaysia Autoshow only half a year ago, over 130,000 X50s have found Malaysian homes to date, making it second only to the Saga in Proton’s sales books at present.

Now there’s an “all-new” one. We’ll leave it to you to judge if Proton’s use of the term in inverted commas is justified, but we’re going to call it the X50 facelift, based on the information we’re going to share here. We will admit, however, that as far as facelifts go, this is a pretty major one.

Now, we only had a few hours with the Premium and Flagship variants (we have not seen the base Executive variant), and most of it was static, with the dynamic bits limited to a straight-line century sprint, an auto-parking demonstration and one or two laps of Proton’s semi-high speed test oval. A more in-depth exploration of how it drives in the real world will have to wait until we can properly get our hands on the car. With all the caveats out of the way, let’s begin.

Engine: From three cylinders to four – power, efficiency up

Just like what first happened with the 2022 Binyue Cool facelift, the X50 swaps out the 1,477 cc three-cylinder engine (JLH-3G15T PFI is the port-injected version; JLH-3G15TD is the more potent Flagship-exclusive direct-injected TGDi version) for the 1,499 cc BHE15TD four-cylinder engine. Still turbocharged, still 1.5 litres and still mated to a seven-speed twin-clutch auto.

Developed by Geely-owned Swedish-Chinese firm Aurobay (which is now part of Horse Powertrain, equally owned by Geely and Renault), the new engine has been given the marketing name i-GT 1.5TD by Proton, i-GT apparently standing for intelligent-Green Technology.

Now, two things are significant here: firstly, all X50 variants will use this one engine (meaning direct injection for all; none of that port injection for lesser variants like before), and secondly, this engine will eventually power all of Proton’s Geely-based ICE models (X70, S70, X90).

Meanwhile, the Saga will get a non-turbo port-injected BHE15PFI version of the engine. It’s been a long time since the Saga had a 1.5 litre engine – Sungai Choh, time to try and shoehorn your 1.5 into the Bezza?

I jest and I digress. For the X50 facelift, the four-potter makes 181 PS at 5,500 rpm and 290 Nm of torque between 2,000 and 3,500 rpm. That’s stronger than the outgoing direct-injected three-banger’s 177 PS/255 Nm, and it blows the port-injected version’s 150 PS/226 Nm into the weeds. So-engined, Proton says the X50 is now a third of a second faster to 100 km/h (than the TGDi version) at 7.6 seconds.

The carmaker also says the new engine is 4.7% more frugal. Now, the outgoing car’s official efficiency figures were 6.4-6.5 litres per 100 km, so we’re looking at something like 6.1 for the new car. A consumption reduction is quite an achievement, given that you now have one more cylinder, more power and more torque. The engine also uses a timing chain instead of a belt – cheaper to maintain in the long run.

Exterior: Gaping mouth, cleaner rear end

Geely fans would take a split-second’s look at this car and say, “2024 Binyue L”, and they’d be absolutely right. Save for a baby’s handful of items, the appearance is taken pretty much wholesale from the Binyue L – the third Binyue facelift – which only debuted in China in November 2024.

So there are new LED reflector headlamps (yes, projectors previously) with three-dash DRL eyebrows and ‘PROTON Full LED Technology’ lettering. There’s also a new bonnet with fake vent inserts (I don’t want to say ‘Ah Beng’, but…) and creases closer to the sides (the creases were previously closer to the centre of the bonnet, and the bonnet itself had a slight upward curve above the Proton logo, now it’s flat).

Taking centrestage is a massive, gaping, horizontally-slatted mouth for a lower grille. Perhaps you can’t see it so much in pictures, but in real life it makes the car appear so over-chinned that the rest of the body looks small in comparison, like a Coulthard caricature. And yes, no more front fog lamps.

New eyes, new mouth and new bonnet mean a new upper grille, and here Proton’s version has some differentiation – a songket pattern replaces the Geely’s plainer thatched affair, and the Proton logo is cupped by the red Ethereal Bow, as is de rigueur. A note regarding the silver trim pieces that underline the headlamps, upper grille and lower grille – they’re finished in plain satin, unlike the outgoing car’s posher-looking glossy bits.

Look at it from the side and you’ll see that the roof, mirrors, doors and rear quarter panels are carry-overs from the pre-facelift X50, but where that car had chrome along the top of the windows, the new car’s is just plain black. Underlining the windows is still chrome, though, and there’s a slight extension forwards at the A-pillar base for some visual interest. Also new are the front fenders and side skirts (which have ‘vents’), although the gloss black B- and C-pillars remain. All in all, it’s a lot of new sheet metal for a facelift.

The back is also totally Binyue L – this means slimmer tail lamps bridged by a full-width rear LED light bar, a new rear bumper with L-shaped reflector-hugging elements, a simpler diffuser insert that still contains quad tailpipes and a slimmer rear fog lamp, plus either the outgoing car’s M-shaped roof spoiler (body-coloured) or a black (regardless of body colour) Batmobile-style rear wing with carbon-fibre-look motifs and red ‘S’ badges on the ‘winglets’, which are integrated very well into the roofline. This elaborate wing is a Flagship-only item.

The tailgate is new – the LED light bar and the PROTON lettering below it sit within a chamfered recess that wasn’t there before. The number plate, reverse camera and boot release button have moved down into a shallow trapezoidal ‘cave’ at the foot of the tailgate. By the way, the rear indicators are LEDs (previously bulbs) and non-sequential, and the reversing lamps are LEDs as well.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and unlike the situation up front, I prefer the new tail – I think it looks more cohesive. In an ideal world, I’d have the old face and the new tail, but this is not an ideal world.

Actually, the 2022 Binyue Cool (the second facelift, where the engine change happened) already got these new headlamps, bonnet, Batmobile wing, slim tail lamps, full-width LED rear light bar and number plate ‘cave’ on the tailgate, but its front bumper was an evolution of the first facelift’s (the 2021 Binyue Pro), being an aggressive X-shaped sea of mesh.

Interior: Unlike any Binyue – unique to X50?

You’d expect the Binyue L’s cabin, right? Well, this is the X50 facelift’s biggest surprise, because the interior looks unlike that of any Binyue we know.

Yes, the steering wheel and seats are the same as the pre-facelift X50’s, but although the 14.6-inch touch-screen, 8.88-inch instrument panel, frameless rear-view mirror and ‘see-through’ sun visors are Binyue L items, pretty much everything else is unique (even the door cards); not to mention worlds apart from the outgoing X50.

There’s an eMas 7-style column gear selector, freeing up space for a sloped bi-level centre console containing, from top to bottom, twin air-con vents, twin phone trays with driver’s side wireless charging (you could direct the vents downwards to cool your phone), a row of buttons (on/off AC, auto AC, front demister, hazard lights) and dual cupholders. Under the ‘bridge’ are 10 litres of storage, a 12V socket, a USB-A port and a USB-C port.

It’s a nice place to be, if a tad generic compared to the outgoing car’s cockpit (that ambient lighting graphic on the passenger-side dashboard is cool, though), but minimalism is in. The carried-over steering wheel looks a little anachronistic amidst the new dash (the Binyue’s more modern-looking item would have looked better), but I suppose it pays to have more shared components with the S70.

You unfortunately do need to use the screen to adjust air-con blower and temperature, and despite left and right temps displayed (like a dual-zone system), as before, the X50 facelift only comes with single-zone air-con, so the temps are always in sync. You also need to use the screen to operate the lights, though with auto lights, this isn’t really a problem.

The two-tone interior used to be red for the upper dash and black for the lower, and offered on Premium and Flagship variants. Now only the Flagship gets it (all-black for Executive and Premium), and the colours are reversed, which may reduce reflections on heavily-tinted windscreens.

Now that the right-hand steering wheel stalk is the gear selector, the left-hand stalk becomes a Mercedes-style all-in-one contraption – flick up or down to indicate (stalk returns to the middle, old-ish BMW-style), twist for wipers, pull towards you to flash the high beams and push away from you to toggle auto high beams. All no different from the eMas 7.

A few more notes before we step into the back – as with many Chinese cars, because the instrument panel must be visible through the steering wheel, it has to be made small, and because it has to house so much information, even something as important as speed is relegated to the left-third of the screen. And the text and numbers are truly miniscule.

I know my eyes are not a young man’s anymore, but try as we did, we couldn’t find a way to customise the instrument panel to show just the crucial stuff in the hope that it would be easier to read – we’ll try again when we get the car.

To the right of the steering wheel is the start/stop button and a phone mounting point (you’ll have to purchase the accessory separately); below these are the headlamp height scroll wheel and the parking brake switch.

The door cards are new, eschewing the old car’s grab handles and L-shaped door handles (which have a propensity of breaking, if social media is to be believed). The same graphic you saw on the passenger-side dashboard features here, though the graphic itself is not illuminated (the ambient lighting illuminates the insides of the door pulls). The window switches have an aluminium-like finish and sit within a piano black tray, in contrast to the old car’s plain black tray and aluminium trim only on switches’ bottom edges.

Climb into the back and you’ll see that the only changes are the aforementioned door cards and the back of the centre console – where the old car had two USB-A ports above and air-con vents below, the new car reverses their positions and surrounds the air-con vents with satin trim for a more premium look. Also, it’s now one USB-A and one USB-C. No changes to the boot (except that it’s now white LED-illuminated) and space-saver spare tyre.

Technology: Qualitative and quantitative quantum leaps

The X50 facelift’s Level 2 ADAS makes use of a 170-metre monocular camera up front and an 80-metre millimetre-wave radar out back. The front camera makes possible the same functions as before (AEB, ACC, ICC, lane-centring etc), but this is the first time the X50 is getting functions for the rear, which Proton bundles under the term ‘Rear Side Radar System’ (RSRS).

These comprise lane change assist (despite the name, this is blind spot monitoring and not auto lane change), rear collision warning, rear cross traffic alert and door opening warning – all of which the eMas 7 already has. The 360 camera has been augmented with 180-degree transparent view (lets you see ‘beneath’ the car) and auto-parking is now a one-touch affair (you no longer need to press and hold the button for the vehicle to move).

Proton says the 14.6-inch touch-screen is the segment’s biggest. The 16:9-aspect ratio unit is Android 10-powered, has a full-HD 1920×1080 resolution and has a quad-core processor with 6GB RAM and 64GB ROM. And – get this – there will be wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay (AACP) straight away from launch! The room actually broke into thunderous applause when this was announced. Currently, only the X70 has AACP (and it got it only quite recently), while the eMas 7 just got Apple CarPlay today.

‘Hi Proton’ now recognises Bahasa Malaysia commands (first in the country), and you can now ask it to do several things at one go rather than one by one – for example, “Hi Proton, close the windows, turn on the air-con, play music and navigate to KLCC,” or the national-language equivalent.

You can do lots of things with the Proton Link 2.0 phone app including operate the windows and air-con, start the engine, track the car’s location, and access the owner’s manual and service records. Lastly, an Adaptive mode – which automatically adapts the vehicle to your driving style – joins the existing Normal, Eco and Sport drive modes. However, there’s no more physical drive mode buttons; you need to use the screen.

Also new are walk-away auto locking and a key fob that’s now black instead of silver.

Very brief driving impressions

To demonstrate the X50 facelift’s extra grunt, Proton lined it up against a Honda HR-V Turbo (same 181 PS but 50 Nm less torque at 240 Nm) in a straight-line sprint. The Japanese car is supposed to do 0-100 km/h in 8.7-8.8 seconds, and the Malaysian car 7.6 seconds, but because conditions were wet, both cars could only manage times north of 10 seconds. However, the X50 was consistently faster than the HR-V by about a third to a half of a second.

Cruising around Proton’s semi-high speed test oval revealed that wind noise has been considerably reduced compared to the outgoing car, with engine refinement a strong point. ADAS-wise, the ICC and lane-centring operate a lot more smoothly on the whole, especially when the car encounters another vehicle in front – it reduces speed more naturally than before.

Some low-speed clunks can occur, the gearbox being a twin-clutcher, but this is easily circumvented by addressing the throttle a bit more gingerly before giving it your full command. Its operation is otherwise silky smooth. Not much can be said about the steering or ride and handling at this point (at least not before we test it out in the real world), but as Proton did not mention anything concerning these areas, it’s likely to be status quo here.

Variants and equipment: Raising the base; maybe not the bar

The X50 facelift will be offered in Executive, Premium and Flagship variants. The departure of the four-airbag Standard variant is good news, because it now means that all variants get six airbags.

However, ADAS is only on the top two variants; the Executive’s RSRS is strictly just a rear warning system, with no rear AEB. When the eMas 7 was launched with ADAS across the board, we were hoping that it would herald a new ‘max safety for all’ era for Proton, but not yet, it seems. Still, two out of three ain’t bad.

Having the Executive as the new entry-level X50 means that the base is now higher than before – you already get auto lights and wipers, six speakers and auto air-con. However, it does have to make do with fabric manual seats, a manual tailgate and 17-inch alloys.

One step up is the Premium, which gets full ADAS, TPMS, 18-inch alloys, red brake callipers, a power tailgate, roof rails, front welcome lamps, 72-colour ambient lighting, leatherette seats, a six-way powered driver’s seat, plus the 360 camera with 180-degree transparent view.

Extroverts should go straight to the Flagship for its Batmobile-style rear wing, black roof, black door mirror caps and red interior. It’s also the only variant with auto-parking, semi-transparent sun visors, wireless charging and a panoramic sunroof. If you can live without the Flagship’s toys, the Premium is by far the most well-balanced and all-rounded variant.

You can have your X50 facelift in Teal Bayou Green (from the S70), Jet Grey, Snow White, Armour Silver or Passion Red. Ocean Blue is gone, and Citric Orange left us when the 2024 X50 RC was introduced.

2025 Proton X50 1.5TD Executive
Gets as standard:

Mechanicals

• 1.5 litre DOHC i-GT TD engine
• 1,499 cc turbocharged direct-injected four-cylinder petrol
• 181 PS at 5,500 rpm, 290 Nm of torque at 2,000-3,500 rpm
• 7-speed wet dual-clutch transmission
• Eco, Comfort, Sport and Adaptive drive modes
• Front-wheel drive
• MacPherson strut suspension (front), torsion beam (rear)
• Ventilated disc brakes (front), solid disc (rear)
• 0-100 km/h in 7.6 seconds

Exterior

• LED auto headlights
• LED daytime running lights
• LED full-width taillights
• Red grille outline
• Silver bumper trim
• Quad exhaust pipes
• 17-inch alloy wheels with 215/60 R17 tyres

Interior

• Keyless entry with remote start
• Proximity auto locking/unlocking
• Push-button start
• Black interior with grey stitching
• Grey headliner
• Single-zone auto climate control with rear vents
• Auto wipers
• Cruise control with speed limiter
• Manual seats
• Fabric upholstery
• Multi-function steering wheel
• 8.88-inch digital instrument display
• 14.6-inch infotainment touchscreen
• Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
• “Hi Proton” voice control with Bahasa Malaysia option
• Two front USB ports (USB-A and USB-C)
• Two rear USB ports (USB-A and USB-C)
• Electronic parking brake with auto brake hold
• Proton Link 2.0 app connectivity (vehicle status, remote control, navigation)
• 330 litres boot space

Safety

• Six airbags (front, side, curtain)
• ABS with EBD and brake assist
• Traction control and stability control
• Hill start assist and hill descent control
• Blind spot monitoring
• Rear cross traffic alert
• Rear collision warning
• Door opening warning
• Reverse camera
• Front and rear parking sensors

2025 Proton X50 1.5TD Premium
Adds on:

Exterior

• Silver roof rails
• Red brake callipers
• 18-inch two-tone alloy wheels with 215/55 R18 tyres

Interior

• Six-way power-adjustable driver’s seat
• Faux leather upholstery
• 72-colour ambient lighting with “rhythmic” mode
• Six speakers
• Powered tailgate

Safety

• Autonomous emergency braking
• Adaptive cruise control with stop and go
• Lane centring assist
• Lane keeping assist
• Traffic sign recognition
• Auto high beam
• Tyre pressure monitoring system
• 360-degree camera with transparency

2025 Proton X50 1.5TD Flagship
Adds on:

Exterior

• Rear spoiler with fake carbon fibre print
• Black roof and door mirrors

Interior

• Auto-dimming rear-view mirror
• Black and red interior with red stitching
• Black headliner
• Semi-transparent sun visors
• Panoramic glass sunroof with powered sunshade
• Qi wireless charger (driver’s side)

Safety

• Park assist

Conclusion: A significant step forward

Proton says 245 new parts, 412,000 R&D man-hours and 4.3 million km of testing went into developing the X50 facelift, and even from the relatively short time we were given with the car, it was evident that this was a good car made better. You get a sense that Proton was fully aware of the model’s significance and the enormity of the task at hand to update it. Certainly, more was done than expected.

Looks are subjective as always, but the many objective improvements – the new engine, totally-new and up-to-date interior, plus loads more tech including a bigger screen, AACP from the get-go and nation-first Bahasa Malaysia voice recognition – categorically reinforce the X50’s Malaysian-market relevance. Long may it reign.

All that’s left to do now, really, is for Proton to launch the thing. The pre-facelift X50 cost between RM86,300 and RM113,300, but now that the base Standard is gone, the entry price is sure to go up. How much will the new car ask for? How much do you think is fair?

2025 Proton X50 Flagship previewed in Malaysia

2025 Proton X50 Premium previewed in Malaysia

2025 Proton X50 Flagship official photos

2025 Proton X50 presentation slides

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