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Hey,
The missus is recovering from a bad shoulder injury, and it's gonna be a while before she can get outside riding again.
We're looking at indoor trainers, the Wattbike Atom is what a mate has and looks banging.
What else should we be considering? I know zip about trainers!
Cheers
Ricks
MrsDeth has a peloton, and rates it highly.
She doesn't ride though, but was a keen spin-class attendee before lockdown.
Cheap turbo and zwift
Cheap turbo and zwift
No suitable bike for a turbo.
I’ve got the Watt Bike Pro, has it for years. For the money it’s been a great buy. Feels expensive when thinking it’s just a spin bike, but mine has been used a lot and has been faultless for years.
Couple of friends have the atom, that would be my choice if buying now.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/10/smart-shootout-wahookickrbike-wattbikeatom-tacxneobike.html/amp
I think the inference being you could buy a bike and a turbo. Advantage over the watt bike being she could then ride it in the real world once recovered. Any bike would be suitable to go on a turbo - maybe with a tyre change.
What's your total budget? Presumably high if you are considering a Watt bike.
I have had all different types of turbo over the last 20+ years. I have had the bog standard through to the early "smart trainer" Tacx i-magic. I had a Tacx Neo for a couple of years which I sold in order to buy a wattbike pro.
The smart trainers are great for the interaction of zwift etc. Personally I wouldn't change from the wattbike pro. No internet required to run 3rd party apps, no electricity required to power it. I like to concentrate on the sessions that I am doing and the wattbike does that perfectly. You can get re-conditioned pro from wattbike direct and are the bike equivalent of the concept2 rower.
If you like the game style of zwift then you will need a smart trainer. If you want a bomb proof trainer then the wattbike pro is a great bit of kit that will hopefully see me out
Only downside to the watt bike pro is the lack of erg mode. For
My workouts I manually adjust but it’s not ideal.
Lots of issues with Wattbikes on Zwiftpower apparently, fictitious power readings.
I use a Wattbike on Zwift, and have data in Zwiftpower not seen any issues with power output, it is consistent across all the apps I use it with too.
What happened with yours? It’s not something that’s I’ve seen come up in the owners group chat.
They announced a new Wattbike Atom in July. Apparently the 2020 model (which is what you’ll get if you order now) addresses the issues you’ll read about with Zwift, gears and ERG mode.
I don’t think the new models are in the hands of reviewers yet, though.
The gears on the V1 Atom were fixed about 15 or more months ago now with a software update, there as instant as you’d want really.
Don’t use and haven’t used ERG mode so no idea whether that’s good or bad on the Atom 🙂
The V2 uses a different resistance setup so is supposed to be even better with Zwift, though I’ve not found the V1 lacking on Zwift with the way I use it.
If you're looking at the stand-alone exercise bike in the Wattbike kind of price-range I noticed Stages have released a version recently:
https://stagescycling.com/us/stagesbike/
Wahoo and Tacx also now do indoor smart-bikes too so might be worth looking at them.
Stages looks good, like the look of that.