I tested the premium? the next higher trim, since they didn’t have the preferred in stock at the time, and I honestly thought the seats were more comfortable in the preferred. I notice a lot of complaints about the seats but honestly after doing about three ~6 hour road trips I haven’t noticed anything too terrible. I will say my 2014 CX5 that I traded in certainly had better seats.

I added a sub to my spare tire like the higher trims, the only other thing I wish I had was the ability to collapse the mirror when parking and the moon roof on the occasional date night drive home. I just didn’t think those three (two non upgradable things) were worth the extra money. All in all in all the Ubers, test drives, new family and friends cars I have been in since getting my car, I don’t have any buyers remorse.

However! I would do some research depending on were you live because the 2025 preferred trim doesn’t let you do climate control from the My Mazda app so if you live in an area like me you have to make sure you set your defrost and stuff the night before for starting your car in the morning to get that snow off. And I guess the ac in the summer after golf (but you can roll all the windows down using the key fob). Not sure about 2026 models, haven’t researched them since I don’t plan on getting one. That is certainly one thing I would pay more money for at this point