Welcome! There is a lot to unpack there, on what is “good brakes” it’s quite a complex concept! Good brakes can be a (real or percieved) stopping distance, or how easily you can control stopping force with your leg pressure, or it could be how many times can you stop the car before issues with heat like “brake fade” set in. What you are looking for and whether it’s worth an upgrade…hear me out, and I am the guy who developed the UPBrakes upgrade…What I think you are going through is probably adjusting to the tuning of the brake system. Within the limits of regulations on how cars must operate, every car is a little bit different on how much force on the brake pedal you need, to get a particular “stopping force”. That’s not something that is related to “good” or “bad” brakes but more the philosophy of the automaker and what they think is good. Everybody will have their own individual opinion on that too. Some people love brakes that give you a big “whoa” with a light force, I’d call that type of thing touchy and hard to control! The thing to understand, is how much force you need to press on the brake pedal, to how “hard” you stop, it’s just a feel thing. I don’t know how long you have been driving your Audi before you got the Volvo, but you probably have a mental adjustment to that, and now you got this Volvo, and it’s different. It’s not the same output for your input. The brain is thinking, subconsciously, “whoa these brakes suck!” I know it probably sounds crazy and you don’t believe me 😉 It’s good to look at objective test results from performance testing. It’s not as consequential as you might think. A “single stop” performance in the ABS era, is not a measure of brakes so much as tires. A wider sticker tire on a car, will stop a car in less distance. Conversely there is no brake system that can change the grip of the tires. 20 feet is not nothing for sure, but also in typical daily situations, does not indicate a large difference in practical performance. If however, stopping distance was truly the concern then a performance tire upgrade would be the solution. I think you should give it some time and see if the subconcious brain will adjust to the car. If you don’t get over the perceived issue of stopping force, there are things that could be done, probably change the pads to something specifically chose to be “agressive” which would give you more friction, i.e. less “push” at the pedal for more “whoa” feel on the stopping 😉 I would certainly love to sell a brake kit. I don’t want to steer you wrong though, what I am selling is mostly for people who already know they want it. The general benefits are increased control at non-emergency levels of braking, how easily can you control braking with fine adjustments in your leg pressure, the sort of thing that a shiny “fixed caliper” can do for you. I didn’t develop it to change the tuning of the system so that low pedal force would produce harder stopping force, for a few different reasons that I will not go into now, because I have probably already rambled enough and you either read this far or you’ve tuned out long ago and moved on to writing an angry reply telling me I am an idiot 😉
