Brake pads Akebono or OEM FORD

I Used akebono in the front and wagoners on the rear. No issues so far.

I did a ton of research recently before doing my brakes and almost pulled the trigger on Hawk 5.0. Great overall reviews, but also people stating they make noise at slow speed, like parking lot maneuvering. Also they are great for street/track but for me who is 80% street and the rest canyon I got the feedback they are a bit aggressive for a mostly daily driver. I started looking into and ended up choosing Akebono, they honestly feel just like OEM, zero complaints, and way less dust of course.

Akebono Ultra-Premium Ceramic Brake Pads, very well known in the racing community to be the best of the best OE Replacement pads that run on your stock calipers. The only better pads than these require a full Brembo caliper conversion. Buy Japanese. More expensive, doesn't mean better. For reference: I drive a 2007 Subaru Forester, Akebono is the Original Manufacturer for the OEM "Subaru" Brake Pads from the factory.

I have always gone with Akebono pads and centric rotors. It's a great combo.

I've used Akebono Euro Ceramic pads on my MK7.5 R and S5 Sportback and they were great and basically no dust.

I used to have an IS350 and with the genuine Lexus pads on, an insane amount of brake dust and squealing. Replaced with Akebono Performance ultra premium ceramics and never had an issue with noise or dust afterwards.

My Mercedes is much older W210, but for the brakes I went with Zimmerman Coat Z rotors and Akebono Euro ceramic pads. The front pads have been on for about 30k miles and are not even close to needing replacement. And they leave almost no brake dust, so my wheels look clean all the time now. Only real downside is they have a bit less initial bite than the oem pads, but I have actually come to prefer the more linear braking feel and haven't had any problems with stopping power.

I have been running Akebono on most all of my cars and have 3-400k worth of driving on them. I tried some semi-metallic pads once. Loved loved loved the initial grab, but hated hated hated the dust and the way they wore the rotors. If I was tracking, I wouldn't run the Akebono's, though. There are better pads for that. As someone mentioned, the Akebono's don't have as much of an initial grab as they need to heat up. I did try the Pagid pads once that I got from the now defunct BavAuto. They were just OK.

I was told that these pads and rotors won’t have that intial brake bite like BMW pads do but goddamn. I had to change my entire braking habit just because it really wasn’t biting like I thought it would.

Btw i did Akebono pads after replacing my rotors and it squealed really bad, ended up going to lexus dealer and had to get oem pads.