Hey Sandy. and welcome to the site. Unless your talkling skylines or hi po cars of other persuaisions your not going to get too many replies... However, i used to sell both Mazda and Kia and know a fair bit about the honda.
In my humble opinion there is a clear cut winner for value, looks, performance, resale......the list goes on. The winner is........the Mazda 3. It won't matter what spec you get be it a Neo, Maxx, SP etc etc it will still be better than the other 2. And also i assume your under 50, which i also think makes you more suited to the 3. Mostly poppies and grandmas buy the others.
Hope this helps in some small way.
Cheers