lol. Now I see it. Thanks !
I am glad you enjoyed your first “long haul”, we’re doing that at the end of August and I can’t wait.
Is the CX-90 Really that Bad? Owner Feedback?
- Thread starter 2005mazda
- Start date
I am glad you enjoyed your first “long haul”, we’re doing that at the end of August and I can’t wait.
We have had a CX-90 TPP (280 hp) for eight months. I was initially pleased with the vehicle, but I soon had concerns that it was not ready for release even after waiting 6 months from its introduction.
I do not find that it feels cheap or shudders or that the NVH is unpleasant. The ride is firm and it isn't silent or ultra quiet, but I am satisfied with it. One area I would like to see improved is the lower door cladding. The driver & passenger side door does slap/flop when closed. One doesn't hear it from inside, but it is noticeable from the outside.
I agree with many of the comments about its laggy/jerky step-off. I do not use iStop. Still, the low-speed behavior is rough and doesn't seem fixable with software tuning. The imbedded iStop/hybrid function seems to be at fault. Mazda seems enamored with similar systems used on BMW & Merc I6s but haven't tuned theirs nearly as well.
If you have in mind doing pink slip runs DON'T. Honda Odesseys will smoke you. The CX90 has a leisurely getaway but picks up speed quickly. I do not have any issues with its highway performance - it glides at internet speeds.
The Mazda i-Active sense is a nuisance, but aren't they all? One can tune the sensitivity on some features, reduce the volume of the alarms or, selectively, turn them off.
The Radar Cruise Control is a mess. I do not mind the Distance Pacing or Auto Braking features, but the RCC loses 3 - 6 mph in any but the gentlest curves. It is embarrassing and dangerous. I've had service check it three times and they claim it is "performing as designed". My `16 VW Golf performs flawlessly. Doesn't Mazda know how to benchmark?
I still think when the upper trim CX-90s are compared to its primary competition (Honda Pilot, Kia Telluride, Nissan Pathfinder & Toyota Highlander) and aspirational competition (Acura MDX, Infiniti QX60 & Volvo XC-90) it is still a smart buy. I don't think it is a value priced BMW 5/7 or Mercedes GL 350/450.
Knowing what I know now, and with Acura's 2025 upgrades, I would likely buy the MDX Technology. It would cost ~ $10K more than we spent. The Advanced is a better comparison to our TPP but the price for it hasn't been posted - I'm thinking it's another $3 - 5K.
I am eagerly waiting to hear if Mazda has addressed some of the issues that have been noted with the 2025s.
I can drop in my perspective after owning the CX-90 for a week. I have covered just under 400 miles so far, including a relatively long highway trip, but most of my driving has been in and around Charlotte, NC in the city.
Quick background, my wife and I had a 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland that we adored. Bought it in 2014 as it was coming off a lease with about 35k miles on it. Traded it last week as part of this deal with 151k on it. It was time. As part of the deal for the CX-90 I also traded my 2022 Land Rover Defender 90. I also adored that truck, but we moved to a new house to down size, hopefully retire one day, etc. It made no sense to keep two cars of our own in addition to my wife's work car. Also, the Defender wouldn't fit in the garage at the new place as it is too tall for the really short garage doors built in 1965.
I did a ton of research on different cars. We wanted something that could be a "jack of all trades" and do a lot of different things well. We didn't need a third row, per se, but we wanted it as a nice to have just because of the few times it would be very nice to easily haul two extra people to the restaurant/bar/etc.
I won't bore you with all my research, and my spreadsheet, etc. but after a lot of that, we boiled it down to really looking at the Jaguar F-Pace (I love that car, even with no third row), the Kia Telluride, the Honda Pilot, the Genesis GV80 and the Acura MDX. We ruled out the F-Pace and Genesis pretty early because we like the other four and the cost difference is huge. (Also the GV80 I drove must've been broken or something. It was slow as mud. I could have hopped out and pushed it faster than I could get it up to speed.)
So, between the Honda Pilot, Kia Telluride, Acura MDX and CX-90 we were just wowed by the look and feel of the CX-90s exterior and interior. It felt the closest to the Jag in interior "wow" factor and in being relatively fun to drive. (It's not as fun as that F-pace with a six-cylinder, but it's MUCH more engaging than the MDX or the Pilot in my opinion.) The Pilot is probably the most practical of the bunch and my head was telling me that the Pilot or the Telluride had the most room, the most storage, etc. But I had no real emotional connection to either. They were... fine. So for us, it was really the CX-90 or the MDX. We ended up going with the CX-90 in Turbo S Premium Plus, Artisan Red with the tan interior. The Acura has a better sound system but that was the only place it was clearly better to me unless you went with the MDX Type S, and the Type S is about 16k more than the CX-90 we got, which still felt more fun to drive.
So living with the new CX-90 for a week, do I notice some of the quirky things reviewers have pointed out? Well... sort of, but I think maybe my car was built late enough a lot of these were ironed out before I ever really experienced it. My car was built in June of 2024. I have felt a bit of the low speed jerkiness, but I quickly changed how I use the accelerator to accommodate and essentially have not noticed it since then. I do us i-stop and I get very smooth engagement when the engine kicks back on and pretty smooth acceleration. As mentioned above the CX-90 isn't going to win a drag race. With that said, where I think it is actually super impressive though is not 0-60 but 50-80. When you're on the highway and you need to quickly get some speed to get out and around traffic the CX-90 offers a swell of mid-range power. Passing on the highway is a breeze and you never feel like the transmission is searching, or that you're going to be left hanging in a dangerous situation.
As far as the door closing sound, vibration at the bottom of the door, after reading about, I do see it from outside the vehicle. I never noticed it before I read about it and then went to try it out, but that's just me. It might bother you way more than me.
The lack of storage inside is a little mind-boggling, but a good friend of mine has a CX-9 and I never felt like the CX-9 had enough space inside either. Both are surprisingly small inside for vehicles this big. And I'm not just talking about storage space, although the storage space is an issue. Packaging in the CX-90 is a little weird, especially if you go drive something like a Honda Pilot, which is just stupid functional inside. There is stacked storage in the doors in the Pilot, there are deep cupholders everywhere. There is a shelf in the dash. it's just a much more usable place to be in comparison to the Mazda. The trade off though is I just wasn't excited about the Pilot. It would've been a perfectly functional appliance type car for me, and I'm sure I'd have been bored with it in two years and want to trade it. No clue if I feel the same with the Mazda in two years but I doubt it. However, it is a compromise. If you really need a three row SUV to be functional and highly practical, the CX-90 may not be the one for you.
The tech inside is fine with me. The Bose audio system is underpowered in my opinion, but is good at the things that Bose is usually good at, that being realistic, relatively un-filtered audio reproduction. You can turn on centerpoint for a little "surround-sound-esque" approach if you want, but the regular stereo in "linear" is pretty good audio reproduction. I find the audio system to be a little bass-heavy, as most Bose systems are, out of the box, so I currently have mine with the bass dropped down one notch and the treble raised one notch. Again, I think it's a good system. Probably an A-tier audio system, but you could maybe drop it to a B tier for something that costs 60k plus, like the MSRP on ours. The MDX Bang and Olufsen system is much better, but again, the MDX ends up costing a lot more too. Audio is one of the most important things to me, and I feel like the Bose in the Mazda is pretty darn good.
The safety/nanny tech is annoying, but it's annoying to me in all new cars. I don't find the Mazda any worse than others, and it's not nearly as aggressive as the safety tech in my wife's work car, which is a Subaru Outback. It's only been a week, but I haven't really received a lot of false warnings, or phantom beeps. Only thing I really sort of laughed at was it yelling at me on the highway for a lane departure warning as I move too far left to avoid being hit by an 18-wheeler moving into our lane, which the safety system also knew was there, because it was showing it on the interactive driver screen. lol.
In the city the CX-90 has been great. Roads in Charlotte are really bad in a lot of places around us and while I do find the ride in the CX-90 firm, it is not punishing to me. Now remember, I'm coming from a 2022 Land Rover Defender 90 on all-terrain tires and a 2011 Grand Cherokee in desperate need of new air shocks. lol. Before that I've had a lot of sports cars (Jaguar F-type, Corvettes, etc.) so I'm coming from a much more punishing ride than most. If you want a very cushy ride, the CX-90 is not the best for that, but I find a really cushy ride to feel like the car is wallowing to me so the sportier springs feel good to me. With that said, at 60k plus this is the one place I kind of wish Mazda had just spent a little more money and offered an adaptive suspension, even if it bumped the MSRP up a little. The comfort mode on the MDX Type S air suspension is amazing, and having an option like that on the highway would be phenomenal. Like I said though, I like how Mazda has sprung the CX-90. It's a solid 8 out 10 ride for me in most conditions. It's "good" at most scenarios but only really great on the handling side. If you care more about comfort than engagement then again, you should drive a few different SUVs to be sure you'd want to live with the CX-90 on the daily. I dig it, but I can 100 percent understand why it may not be what you'd want in a three-row.
Second and third rows are fine in my opinion. Could you have a little more leg room in both? Sure, but by adjusting the second row seats, you can make the third row work for medium to small adults easily enough for short trips in town, which is all we'd ever use it for anyway. We will mostly have the third row down. I already got a folding cargo mat to lay back there for trips to Home Depot and it will just stay laid out across the back 95 percent of the time. Nice to know I have the seat back there if I need it though.
Oh, one other kind of weird thing is the sunroof. The panoramic sunroof is nice, and I often ride around with the shade open to let in light. I did this on my Defender all the time too. However, when you open the actual sunroof on the CX-90 it really doesn't open very far at all. I've seen plenty of people comment on that and I agree, it's weird to have all that glass over your head and then the maximum you can open the roof is about 1.5 feet. Just seems like another weird packaging thing. It doesn't really bother me personally, as I just don't open the sunroof that much, but it is a bit of an oddity.
All in all, I look at the CX-90 and I agree with a lot of the choices Mazda made in order to provide something that is a lot like one of German SUVs in practice. There are still some little things that probably should be there that are not tech-wise, but at the end of the day, for the first model year, I think Mazda knocked it out of the park and I'm interested to see where they go over the next few years as they tweak this platform. I wouldn't consider the CX-90 a full on luxury SUV yet, but it feels luxury-adjacent. It's right there with Acura and Infiniti, while doing some things (rear-wheel biased, inline 6 motor) in the same class as Mercedes and BMW. Here's to hoping the reliability is typical Mazda and I'll be really, REALLY happy in 5 years with this purchase.
Quick background, my wife and I had a 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland that we adored. Bought it in 2014 as it was coming off a lease with about 35k miles on it. Traded it last week as part of this deal with 151k on it. It was time. As part of the deal for the CX-90 I also traded my 2022 Land Rover Defender 90. I also adored that truck, but we moved to a new house to down size, hopefully retire one day, etc. It made no sense to keep two cars of our own in addition to my wife's work car. Also, the Defender wouldn't fit in the garage at the new place as it is too tall for the really short garage doors built in 1965.
I did a ton of research on different cars. We wanted something that could be a "jack of all trades" and do a lot of different things well. We didn't need a third row, per se, but we wanted it as a nice to have just because of the few times it would be very nice to easily haul two extra people to the restaurant/bar/etc.
I won't bore you with all my research, and my spreadsheet, etc. but after a lot of that, we boiled it down to really looking at the Jaguar F-Pace (I love that car, even with no third row), the Kia Telluride, the Honda Pilot, the Genesis GV80 and the Acura MDX. We ruled out the F-Pace and Genesis pretty early because we like the other four and the cost difference is huge. (Also the GV80 I drove must've been broken or something. It was slow as mud. I could have hopped out and pushed it faster than I could get it up to speed.)
So, between the Honda Pilot, Kia Telluride, Acura MDX and CX-90 we were just wowed by the look and feel of the CX-90s exterior and interior. It felt the closest to the Jag in interior "wow" factor and in being relatively fun to drive. (It's not as fun as that F-pace with a six-cylinder, but it's MUCH more engaging than the MDX or the Pilot in my opinion.) The Pilot is probably the most practical of the bunch and my head was telling me that the Pilot or the Telluride had the most room, the most storage, etc. But I had no real emotional connection to either. They were... fine. So for us, it was really the CX-90 or the MDX. We ended up going with the CX-90 in Turbo S Premium Plus, Artisan Red with the tan interior. The Acura has a better sound system but that was the only place it was clearly better to me unless you went with the MDX Type S, and the Type S is about 16k more than the CX-90 we got, which still felt more fun to drive.
So living with the new CX-90 for a week, do I notice some of the quirky things reviewers have pointed out? Well... sort of, but I think maybe my car was built late enough a lot of these were ironed out before I ever really experienced it. My car was built in June of 2024. I have felt a bit of the low speed jerkiness, but I quickly changed how I use the accelerator to accommodate and essentially have not noticed it since then. I do us i-stop and I get very smooth engagement when the engine kicks back on and pretty smooth acceleration. As mentioned above the CX-90 isn't going to win a drag race. With that said, where I think it is actually super impressive though is not 0-60 but 50-80. When you're on the highway and you need to quickly get some speed to get out and around traffic the CX-90 offers a swell of mid-range power. Passing on the highway is a breeze and you never feel like the transmission is searching, or that you're going to be left hanging in a dangerous situation.
As far as the door closing sound, vibration at the bottom of the door, after reading about, I do see it from outside the vehicle. I never noticed it before I read about it and then went to try it out, but that's just me. It might bother you way more than me.
The lack of storage inside is a little mind-boggling, but a good friend of mine has a CX-9 and I never felt like the CX-9 had enough space inside either. Both are surprisingly small inside for vehicles this big. And I'm not just talking about storage space, although the storage space is an issue. Packaging in the CX-90 is a little weird, especially if you go drive something like a Honda Pilot, which is just stupid functional inside. There is stacked storage in the doors in the Pilot, there are deep cupholders everywhere. There is a shelf in the dash. it's just a much more usable place to be in comparison to the Mazda. The trade off though is I just wasn't excited about the Pilot. It would've been a perfectly functional appliance type car for me, and I'm sure I'd have been bored with it in two years and want to trade it. No clue if I feel the same with the Mazda in two years but I doubt it. However, it is a compromise. If you really need a three row SUV to be functional and highly practical, the CX-90 may not be the one for you.
The tech inside is fine with me. The Bose audio system is underpowered in my opinion, but is good at the things that Bose is usually good at, that being realistic, relatively un-filtered audio reproduction. You can turn on centerpoint for a little "surround-sound-esque" approach if you want, but the regular stereo in "linear" is pretty good audio reproduction. I find the audio system to be a little bass-heavy, as most Bose systems are, out of the box, so I currently have mine with the bass dropped down one notch and the treble raised one notch. Again, I think it's a good system. Probably an A-tier audio system, but you could maybe drop it to a B tier for something that costs 60k plus, like the MSRP on ours. The MDX Bang and Olufsen system is much better, but again, the MDX ends up costing a lot more too. Audio is one of the most important things to me, and I feel like the Bose in the Mazda is pretty darn good.
The safety/nanny tech is annoying, but it's annoying to me in all new cars. I don't find the Mazda any worse than others, and it's not nearly as aggressive as the safety tech in my wife's work car, which is a Subaru Outback. It's only been a week, but I haven't really received a lot of false warnings, or phantom beeps. Only thing I really sort of laughed at was it yelling at me on the highway for a lane departure warning as I move too far left to avoid being hit by an 18-wheeler moving into our lane, which the safety system also knew was there, because it was showing it on the interactive driver screen. lol.
In the city the CX-90 has been great. Roads in Charlotte are really bad in a lot of places around us and while I do find the ride in the CX-90 firm, it is not punishing to me. Now remember, I'm coming from a 2022 Land Rover Defender 90 on all-terrain tires and a 2011 Grand Cherokee in desperate need of new air shocks. lol. Before that I've had a lot of sports cars (Jaguar F-type, Corvettes, etc.) so I'm coming from a much more punishing ride than most. If you want a very cushy ride, the CX-90 is not the best for that, but I find a really cushy ride to feel like the car is wallowing to me so the sportier springs feel good to me. With that said, at 60k plus this is the one place I kind of wish Mazda had just spent a little more money and offered an adaptive suspension, even if it bumped the MSRP up a little. The comfort mode on the MDX Type S air suspension is amazing, and having an option like that on the highway would be phenomenal. Like I said though, I like how Mazda has sprung the CX-90. It's a solid 8 out 10 ride for me in most conditions. It's "good" at most scenarios but only really great on the handling side. If you care more about comfort than engagement then again, you should drive a few different SUVs to be sure you'd want to live with the CX-90 on the daily. I dig it, but I can 100 percent understand why it may not be what you'd want in a three-row.
Second and third rows are fine in my opinion. Could you have a little more leg room in both? Sure, but by adjusting the second row seats, you can make the third row work for medium to small adults easily enough for short trips in town, which is all we'd ever use it for anyway. We will mostly have the third row down. I already got a folding cargo mat to lay back there for trips to Home Depot and it will just stay laid out across the back 95 percent of the time. Nice to know I have the seat back there if I need it though.
Oh, one other kind of weird thing is the sunroof. The panoramic sunroof is nice, and I often ride around with the shade open to let in light. I did this on my Defender all the time too. However, when you open the actual sunroof on the CX-90 it really doesn't open very far at all. I've seen plenty of people comment on that and I agree, it's weird to have all that glass over your head and then the maximum you can open the roof is about 1.5 feet. Just seems like another weird packaging thing. It doesn't really bother me personally, as I just don't open the sunroof that much, but it is a bit of an oddity.
All in all, I look at the CX-90 and I agree with a lot of the choices Mazda made in order to provide something that is a lot like one of German SUVs in practice. There are still some little things that probably should be there that are not tech-wise, but at the end of the day, for the first model year, I think Mazda knocked it out of the park and I'm interested to see where they go over the next few years as they tweak this platform. I wouldn't consider the CX-90 a full on luxury SUV yet, but it feels luxury-adjacent. It's right there with Acura and Infiniti, while doing some things (rear-wheel biased, inline 6 motor) in the same class as Mercedes and BMW. Here's to hoping the reliability is typical Mazda and I'll be really, REALLY happy in 5 years with this purchase.
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- 2024 CX90 PHEV Premium Plus
I never had any gripes about the CX-9’s power. It wasn’t crazy fast, but it was quick enough. I never had issues pulling ahead of traffic from a stoplight. And were it really mattered to me, passing at highway speeds, it always had plenty of grunt above 70mph. The CX90 PHEV feels a little quicker, not significantly. But being RWD, I don’t get the tires chirping so it hooks up perfectly every time.
Handling, I can’t tell much of a difference. The CX90 feels planted in the same familiar stretches of road and curves. I was excited about going to a RWD platform, but the CX9 was so good, it wasn’t much of a leap from the CX9 to the CX90. Overall, I preferred the CX9. The steering was quicker. Gave it more of a nimble feeling. Bonus - CX9 had a much better ride/handling balance. For as well as it handled, the highway ride was comfortable. In the CX90, my 10 yr old asks why the ride is so “thumpy”.
