Brake pads OEM BMW or Duralast

I went with Dynamic Friction 5000 low metallic pads and they've been great!

Used them twice. Both times had excellent speedy service for a good price. Both times were brakes on my 3 series (front discs and pads, then rears). Saved a significant chunk of cash.

Genuine BMW pads and discs only. Driven 200k miles in my beamers. Even the e46 gets genuine BMW factory brakes. My 640i got new genuine discs and pads about a year or 2 ago. (£550 in parts, £80 labour).

Sure OEM pads and calipers can stop a loaded truck on the street, but what about when your loaded truck is on a long downhill rough trail? Your brakes get very hot and you can get brake fade and too much heat can damage components, warp rotors, etc (especially after hot brakes meet cool puddle or creek crossing). I went with Dynamic Friction Ultimate Duty pads and I am glad I did because i hit a bunch of those downhill trails the next trip and they got hot, could smell them, but no brake fade and no issues since.

My 2017 is a bone stock daily driver and I have no plans to do any major upgrades or track my car. That being said, I've never had an issue with duralast gold pads and rotors from autozone. Reasonably priced and the pads have a lifetime warranty, meaning you buy them once and can trade the used ones back in for a new set at any time, no questions asked. The rotors have a 3 year warranty and even though mine are only showing some very minor wear, I'm going to take advantage of the warranty and swap them out for a new set in the next few months befor my 3 years is up.

I'm using Dynamic Friction pads from RockAuto and they haven't let me down, grey performance and heat barely affects it.

Lasted through two track days and still have a ton of pad life left.

AutoZone Duralast Ceramics have basically lasted forever. They have a lifetime replacement for free, so I paid like $100 for front pads once, and gotten em free since. Easy DIY.

Only ever used the gold pads but they seem fine, nothing special but not unsafe either.

But seriously, having owned several BMW's and Porsche products (equally bad for brake dust) I've just gotten used to cleaning wheels more often and ignoring dirty wheels when I don't have time or energy to clean them that day.

Oriellys generally carries good discount auto parts like wix, wearever brake pads. Buy duralast break pads and watch a hour and half job turn into a all day cussathon. One time before I knew better I forced a set on thinking "well that's how they came must be oem fit" they jammed and warped the rotor in 2 months. Replaced them again dads watching me struggle and cussing the world going for a hammer. Dad " WTH do you need a hammer for? Let me see them. He inspected them and came to the conclusion they were sloppily made. The slide ears were chunky globs of material that were slightly oversized and rounded instead of being straight contact surfaces. Only after carefully taking a dremel to them did they fit correctly.