Mazda3 Activematic question

[Alfredson007]

Hi all!

I have recently bought my very first car with AT, and my first Mazda aswell. It's a 2007 with 92kkm on it, 1.6 litre tiny little engine that actually performs rather well.

Since i do not have a lot of experience on automatics, i'd have a question on the activematic's behaviour. Is it normal to feel the gear changes? Let me be more precise: usually (let's say 80% of times) i can clearly feel the first change from 1-2, it's not that bad but if i was blind and deaf, i would definetaly feel the change. But it varies, at its best its noticeable but pretty faint. From 2->3 it's usually much better, sometimes there's a feel to it, sometimes it's almost smooth. 3-4 is almost always completely smooth and i may miss the change altogether. Is this generally normal behaviour? The changes are smooth enough not to bug me per se, except in the fear of malfunction. Oddly, it almost feels that under moderate acceleration the changes would perform a tad more smoothly than in very light acceleration?

My simplied quetion would be: Should the Mazda3 change gears so smooth i can't really feel them?

For some strange reason, it feels that when the A/C is off, the gear changes are more smooth? I realize though that this is just a compact Mazda, with, i believe, rather old fashioned 4 speed automatic. BTW. Is this transaxle a learning type?

Thanks!!