I’ve put nearly 16k on an NA and have no complaints. I’ve never felt like the car was insufficient for any situation I’ve been in. Through lots of steep mountain driving and just regular day to day things, I’ve never been concerned about the amount of power it has. Overtaking has always been easy and the car is quick to get up to speed when merging. Sure, a bit extra would be nice, but when is that not true? I have absolutely no complaints and would highly recommend the NA engine.

Honestly for SUV I’d get the turbo version. It’s a heavy vehicle compared to a sedan. The extra torque and hp is handy for SUV

Owned a non-turbo 2021 mazda6 before trading it in for a 2021 with a turbo. I liked my original mazda6 just fine, but when I test drove the turbo, I realized how much it transforms the car. Mazda makes very premium looking and feeling cars and the turbo completely enhances the entire experience. Sure, the NA 2.5L is a great and reliable engine that is more than “enough”. I had very little complaints with it, but the extra potency that the turbo brings really makes these cars shine.

I recently purchased a non-turbo CX-50. Only ~600 miles on the clock, but these are my thoughts so far.

Power is sufficient. I’d say the power itself it far more than sufficient, but it’s a heavy car, so it feels less than it is. From a dead-stop, especially considering the AWD system in off-camber and loose surface conditions, it puts down good power with no drama. At higher speeds the gearing (limited by the 6-speed) and power provides non-thrilling acceleration, and will require a heavy step on the throttle and downshifts. This isn’t a problem per-se, but if you’re buying into the “Mazda is a luxury brand now” schtick then you’ll want the turbo so downshifts are less necessary and it’s a more calm drive. That’s also the case if you’re the type that is averse to revving your engine and using all the power you paid for, then you’ll want the overpowered engine.

I really wanted the turbo engine from the start, since I love and have owned many turbos. I’ve not been inspired by the track record of the 2.5T. Far too many engines exploding under reasonable conditions. I read somewhere a while back that Mazda engineers said the engine is designed to live under 3,000RPM most of the time, so failures from actually using the power is expected (my interpretation). I’m not sure the source of that claim, but it doesn’t seem like the 2.5L engine can’t handle the boost and Mazda (being a relatively small company) didn’t want to spend the R&D to develop a proper engine when the vast majority of customer won’t even use it “properly.”

Going past my pseudo conspiracy theories, the turbo trims cost a lot of money and you move to “donk” rims with no sidewall on the tires. That greatly hurts the ride quality and light off-road design mission of the CX-50. You also gain pretty minimal power (~190 to ~225) for all the trouble of the turbo if you run 87 octane fuel, which I imagine most will and I vehemently disagree with. You need the Meridian trim to get comparable tire sidewall to the base models, and that trim is fairly disappointing in its extra “off-road prowess.”

The largest draw of the turbo (for me) is the towing capacity being bumped up to 3,500lbs, but if you’re expecting to regularly tow more than 2,000lbs then a compact crossover is not the vehicle you should be shopping for.

At the end of the day it comes down to what you’re looking for. If you just want to lease a car then whatever, get the turbo, it’s just a few dollars more a month. What are your standards for power? I grew up on sub-100 horsepower cars and motorcycles that could barely hit 60mph at wide-open throttle in top gear, so the CX-50 doesn’t feel underpowered at all to me in base form. It has no trouble with power at any reasonable speed or maneuver, unless you want power to be massively overabundant and effortless.

My wife had a non turbo 2018 CX-5 and liked it a lot. We gave that car to my son for college graduation gift.

She was going to get another and then drove a 2021 Turbo and loved it. It’s a very different vehicle from a drive perspective.

If you have the means I would get the Turbo.

Non turbo ‘18 CX-5 NA that recently was upgraded to a ‘24 CX-50 NA. I did drive a CX30 loaner that had a turbo, while it was very fun to drive I opted for the NA version in my CX50. The main reason: I drive a ton of highway. I didn’t want to worry about caring for the turbo to get 200K+ miles out of it. It’s not a matter of if, but when it will fail.

For me no, anything more than 7.0 sec 0-60 is just too slow and would rather have the extra passing strength for safety.

We just ordered one (CX-50 Premium Plus non-turbo)! Gonna take a couple months because they didn’t have our color choice anywhere. My wife is so stoked.

Have a 24 PFP, it’s nice. Plenty of pickup without the turbo, and you can always pop in to sport mode to stay in a higher rpm band for better throttle response.

2024 TPP owner here. Just drove both and picked up the new ride last month.

I like to think of the NA as the minimum power this vehicle needs to move reasonably. The Turbo is adequately powered. Unfortunately, Mazda didn’t want to put in the larger V6 powertrain; it could have been glorious.

The NA definitely has some shift points of which I wasn’t too keen; definitely some soft lurching in traffic compared to the Turbo. But it does what it needs to do when on the move. When needing to accelerate a bit faster, the power it has comes at a higher RPM which results in a bit more engine noise.

Something I considered was the towing capacity of the Turbo (3500lbs) compared to the NA (2000lbs). Reality is I probably won’t use it much. But if I end up with this vehicle long term (hopefully), a little bit more utility will never be a bad thing.

You really just have to go drive both and decide if it’s worth the extra few thousand. When I was at the dealer trying to decide, I figured I’d rather regret spending a little more money than regret not having enough power to enjoy the drive. Priorities. Right?