Owner reviews for brake pads

The rotors I used are DBA 4000 series T3, and pads are HAWK HPS 5.0

Wagner severe duty pads also have treated me well.

Back in May I swapped OEM pads for Ferodo DS2500 for my first track day in my GR86. Otherwise the car is bone stock. I noticed some slight pulsing of the steering wheel but only during hard braking (100 to 30mph). No brake fade that I noticed.

I use Akebono pads and coated Raybestos rotors. I changed my brakes around the time I got my 07 which was a year ago. I highly doubt you drive like you're street racing or drifting. My brakes still have a hell of a lot of life left in them.

I did my own brakes, sorta with and without the special tool. My conclusion is that the tool is not strictly needed.

Once your stock brake pads are toast as well I’d upgrade them to something like Hawk’s HPS 5 pads.

personally, yeah i don't find the brakes to be particularly worse than my other non performance cars. i did feel like that at first but once i got used to it it was no issue.

Pads I went with Jurid as they’re oem and wanted strong initial bite. The Jurids nock when I reverse, apply brake, shift to drive and apply again. It’s very annoying. My original BMW OEM pads didn’t do this.

I find the brakes in the 25 WRX to be soft and not a lot of bite in them. If Im braking and need to apply more brake pedal if feels as if nothing is happening brake wise from my initial depress. I'd like more bite with the pads.

Mechanically, the wrx brakes are fine, but the feel is so freakin stiff compared to other cars that it really takes a bit to get used to. In emergency braking, you press the pedal thinking you'll stop fine, but you don't press hard enough and come in faster than you thought, press down harder and it's still not triggering abs, and you crash. It's so damn hard to trigger ABS in this car