Any good? Have a normal satori and presume it’s exactly the same except it can transmit power? Seen them about for around £200 which is a lot cheaper than buying a power meter, especially as I’d need a couple between bikes or be prepared to swap them about.

Anyone from the day shift used one?

They do look good for the price but I’d wait for the dcrainmaker review. Curious to know how reliable and accurate the power measurement is. Is it just an algorithm based on wheel speed? Suspect it’d still be prone to setup issues (tyre pressure, clamping force, etc.)

dcrainmaker has a little bit about them. Apparently there is a calibration cycle where you spin up to 25mph and then let it freewheel. I’ve read it should therefore be more accurate than something like powercal.

That does make you think they’d be measuring force and not just doing something based on wheel speed. I’d still wait for a decent review or two to come out. Though for only 200 quid it might be worth a punt. If the power is a bit rubbish you’ve still got a decent trainer.

Btw, for me PowerCal is a waste of time on the turbo. It seems to do a much better job on the road. Probably something to do with the variations in pace on the road vs long steady state turbo efforts.

Said this before, but just recallibrate a cheap speedo to read with a conversion factor from speed to power from the Sartori plot. It’s about 0.6x diameter so XX.X mph is read as XXX Watts. Pick a resistance you are happy with – mine is on Level 4. Plot from Bikeradar:

Power@ 15km/h 25km/h 35km/h 45km/h
Resistance 1 38 70 110 145
Resistance 2 42 75 114 159
Resistance 3 46 95 132 186
Resistance 4 50 112 178 250
Resistance 5 75 150 230 320
Resistance 6 95 192 295 375
Resistance 7 125 240 370 480
Resistance 8 150 295 438 560
Resistance 9 175 347 510 660
Resistance 10 190 365 545 720

For level 4: PWR = 6.66 KMH – 52.
Or at 35.0 km/h you want it to read 17.8 i.e. 0.5 fold conversion.

I’d save your money. I might run a callibration against my Stages this evening.

I do and hate it, its nowhere near as good as the elite one it replaced. Problem one is not really tacxs fault, the software runs on android 4.3, my tablet runs 4.2.2, no update pending apparently, the resistance wheel gets so hot you cant touch it, why I dont know, I dont like the two leg system of balancing, the elite had a single, frame type that seemed more stable, the clearance between the resistance wheel and my bike wheel is damn tight, why?, the elite gave several cms, the cam lock system never seems thar secure, not failed me yet but I am waiting. Not a good review, if I still had the packaging I would take it back, an expensive lesson to learn, no more tacx for me thanks

The tacx outputs bluetooth and ant+ so couldn’t you just use it with a garmin or any BLE capable app (i.e. wahoo)?

A bit more digging and it looks like it just does a calculation based on wheel speed and does not measure force. I’d save your cash too and get a proper PM when you can.

Thats disappointing. I thought for the extra money it would have measured force.

Not that little extra money 😉 . All that matters is that the resistance is reproducible – tyre pressure and wheel tension and resistance.

I barely use mine – much prefer being out on the road with a HR monitor/Powercal and my HR graph on the garmin calibrated to my FTP and zones. An old Cateye Wireless sits on the turbo bike as well as an ANT+ speed/cadence sensor.

Well after a TR 2x8min FTP session, my Sartori FTP is a magnificent 230W on resistance level 3. The readings on my Stages are about 10-20% higher. Readings from the Powercal range from too high at low power to dead on at 250W to too low at max power. My recent race power traces bears this out and training efforts have sustained a more credible 275W. The power distribution from the Powercal is basically a bell curve and the Stages a U distribution (I worked hard!)

I’ll take the race derived FTP, but it is useful to calibrate the Tacx against the others, maybe I need a fan!