Brake pads STOPTECH or OEM Mazda

I run StopTech Sport pads and they’ve been fine. Pretty quiet but also pretty dusty (comparable to stock pads). No full track days in hot weather yet though, just autocross and cooking them on backroads.

I inherited a 2011 cx7 from my parents who purchased this car new. They have always kept care of their vehicles. This is a non turbo model. Other than normal maintenance items they had replaced the AC compressor. Since I took it over in 2020, I replaced drive side front wheel bearing and passenger front caliper, brake pads all the way around plus normal maintenance items. 320,000km runs perfectly.

I’ve tried nearly every pad on the list here and for a dual duty casual track and street car without needing the change pads I have found the stoptech sport and carbotech ax6 good if you don’t want to swap pads which is better for a first timer in my opinion. Otherwise ferodo ds2500 and the other ones in this thread are good if you get more experienced given time. The carbotech ax6 I am selling a set if interested brand new in box but they are expensive as are many suggestions on this list. The nice things about the stoptech is they are a true do all pad that is cheap as well!

For mixed street and track use, I haven’t found a better pad than Stoptech 309. Lots of dust, but no noise on the street and they will take an absolute beating on track (for a street pad). Great modulation at mid temps, low and high temps are acceptable.

Stoptech street performance (I believe renamed to Stoptech sport) has always been my go-to for spirited driving and track day use in a miata. In faster heavier cars, I use carbotechs for track days, but that's just overkill for a miata.

2016.5 CX-5 with 89,000 miles. So far I've had to replace the belt tensioner, accessories belt, water pump belt and breaks (technically I only needed pads and front rotors but I chose to just do them all in one shot since it made a negligible price difference since I was already doing the back pads.

Brakes - about to get them changed for the first time.

Seems a bit sus - but it's not unusual for rear pads to wear faster than front on certain cars. My Ford Flex and CX-50 both wear pads faster out back (it made sense on the Flex because of long wheelbase but was surprised the 50 did it too). That said they should last twice as long.

There was a noticable increase in stopping power, but it came with a significant increase in brake dust. They also started squealing recently. I recently checked the pad life and it's been okay. So far I've put 10k on em, and I'm estimating that 1/3 to 1/2 of their life has been used

Stop tech pads have a lot of brake dust. I had them and hated them. I went with the power stop pads low dust on all four and powerstop drill and slotted rotors up front. I already had stop tech slotted in the rear.