What Are The Best Brake Pads? Cheap vs Expensive Tested!

*Important Note* Lots of questions about the materials for each pad! It's honestly a very difficult thing to determine, which is why I left it out. Regulations allow for such a wide variety of materials that unless you do some sort of chemical analysis, I'm not sure there's much meaning behind it. For what it's worth, the cheapest pads were "semi-metallic" (again, vague, but that's all they tell you), while the other four pads are "ceramic." There's a wide variety of what can be included in pads, regardless of the material stated. Also, material alone doesn't show a strong correlation with all tests (both ceramic/metallic can do poorly in sound, corrosion, shear, etc), so it's difficult to determine what's the cause for doing well/poorly based purely on material.

So brake pads are like wine. Pick the second from the cheapest and you never lose.

Everyone knows red calipers and pads perform the best!

Pretty surprised that the OE pads did so well. I mean, I didn't expect them to be junk... that would be a lawsuit just waiting to happen... but I certainly didn't expect them to be just about as good as it gets either.

On my old 2001 4Runner, my brake pads lasted an amazing 210,000 miles. This was in Virginia , where by state law all vehicles are required to be inspected annually. About 5-years in, the mileage had really started to accumulate so I began asking the inspection mechanic if the brake pads were still OK and for the next four years his reply was always “yup”. So finally came that fateful day when he finally said “they pass, but just barely, you really ought to have them replaced”. This is where I made my big mistake. I had the brakes replaced at a local shop near where I worked, but didn’t specify OEM or equivalent parts. Almost immediately, my chrome wheels began to turn black with brake dust. After only 20,000 miles they needed replacing. So the OEM pads lasted 10 times as long as the cheapo brand. Who knew? This will not happen again on my watch.

Basically the results say "buy original".

Brakes, tires and headlights are not places to save money.

6:47 $7 million test facility, $15 harbor freight calipers

It would have also been a good idea to test rotor thickness with each pad to see whether the pads that lasted longer wore the more expensive rotor faster. The way I understand it, is that there's also a tradeoff there between rotor and pad life.

Man, I think nrs sold me. Gonna go get some mid level pads!

Huh, it's almost like engineers get paid to design oem parts for a specific car and purpose. Who would have thunk it

Great explanation, when I was a mechanic I specialized in brakes, i went to all the major brake manufacturers brake schools, and there IS A BIG difference in quality between cheapy pads and high quality pads, Organic pads are the cheapest junk, and ceramic was rated tops, when I was doing brakes taxi cabs and police cars, highway patrol, were using ceramic, least brake fade, low noise, long lasting, not to aggressive on the rotors, Thanks William Orange county, ca.

I appreciate the massive amount of work that went into running these tests. It seems like such an easy thing to look at the completed graphs but understanding how much work was involved in obtaining all of that data is a lot harder.

I thought this was Project Farms at first :D

"NRS uses mechanical burs to lock the pad to the backing plate" Barely passes shear test after corrosion test

As a brakes engineer, I'm impressed with the thoroughness and clarity of this video - technically sound, and explained well. Keep up the good content 👌 Edit: I'd like to see multiple pad samples tested, so error bounds can be applied to each result.

I wish I knew where the mid tier brake pads were manufactured

Well, you've successfully convinced me to continue buying OEM brakes.

1. OE 2. Mid 3. NRS 4. Upper 5. Lower

It would be interesting to see the performance of track day pads and racing pads. Another interesting test would be to use drilled and/or slotted rotors to see if they affect fade.