Brake pads Brembo or Centric

Centric Posi Quiet Ceramics & 120 Series rotors from Tire Rack. Though not a CX5, my Mazda6 is running at 60k miles on this set.

Brembo, funny part its cheap Did the set in my daily Kia including NAO cermaic brake pads. Way better than OE and no dust.

Mk5 R32 OEM rotors and pads - made by Brembo and i believe are powder coated. They are lasting a long time and are very strong to abuse

Zimmerman Cross drilled rotors from FCP Euro with Centric posi quiet ceramic pads. So much less brake dust with these pads compared to stock.

Ric also got Renault to use Brembo brakes when he was racing for them.

Centric OE coated "black hat" rotors and Centric posi-quiet pads are pretty damn tough to beat

Couldn't answer your first two questions, but the last question about Brembo being reliable is a very solid "yes".

Brembo directly supply Mercedes with their brakes.

Mine are done after 7400km (4900mile). I just replaced the stock tires with Pirelli Corsa 2 and the grip difference over stock is amazing, now need new brake pads. I am leaning toward brembo sintered.

Update: I went with Brembo SR which are the Sintered Racing pads for the front and SP compound for the rear. The remaining pad life on the front was about 10% and 80% for the rear. My fronts were missing pieces of pad.

It came with Brembo brakes, I have used them for about 75k miles and they are starting to make terrible noise especially when cold. They were making noise since maybe 40k miles but everytime i asked dealers to check the brakes they said they are fine. Even right now they brake perfectly fine but they make awful noise until they heat up.

Man I have civic ep3 I know it's not the same but I did mine for 180 pounds it's like 220buck brembo pads and rotors front and back. I did it myself but dude that sound fucking expensive