Sadly it's hard to say definitively which engine will be more reliable in the long run since the 1.5T is a new engine. That said. It's still a honda engine, so reliability shouldn't be an issue. Afterall the 2.0L is the one that had the recall already, not the 1.5T.
I do know there are some long term maintenance cost associated with turbos after the first like 3-5 years, but not sure how this engine compares, i hear about VW owners complaining about it though. Again, honda might have worked around that issue.
Obviously a turbo has a few more moving parts, and turbos can go bad and need to be replaced. But i think it's a safe bet to say honda has spent many years building, testing and refining it's new turbo engines to be just as reliable as their N/A engines have been, that's why it took so long for them to jump into the turbo game like other automakers. So it's really a toss up. Test drive both... if you can live with the lower trim levels of the 2.0L go for it and save some money, put that money into mods or upgrades. I personally loved the new 1.5T and it's torque and power is excellent for this segment and price of car, not to mention the extra 1 or 2 mpg the turbo gets over the 2.0
I do know there are some long term maintenance cost associated with turbos after the first like 3-5 years, but not sure how this engine compares, i hear about VW owners complaining about it though. Again, honda might have worked around that issue.
Obviously a turbo has a few more moving parts, and turbos can go bad and need to be replaced. But i think it's a safe bet to say honda has spent many years building, testing and refining it's new turbo engines to be just as reliable as their N/A engines have been, that's why it took so long for them to jump into the turbo game like other automakers. So it's really a toss up. Test drive both... if you can live with the lower trim levels of the 2.0L go for it and save some money, put that money into mods or upgrades. I personally loved the new 1.5T and it's torque and power is excellent for this segment and price of car, not to mention the extra 1 or 2 mpg the turbo gets over the 2.0
