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.