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I might be looking for a smart bike for the winter (and possibly the summer if the current weather continues)but no idea what’s good or bad.
The options seem to be
Wattbike
Stages
Wahoo Bike
It’ll be upstairs in the house and used by myself and my other half. She’s about a foot shorter than me so using my current bike on my Kickr won’t really work for her. Her only bike is an emtb so can’t be used.
Ideally I’d like something that’s fairly quiet.
What’s good/bad/otherwise about the smart bikes?
They're proper expensive, you might be better off simply building your other half a turbo-only bike and using the Kickr for both of you. You only need a front wheel, forks, drive train bars etc and as it's not being ridden, the quality of the frame is an irrelevance - you're basically talking a turbo rat bike. Not as neat for sure, but a lot more affordable. Spend the money you save on a nice biking holiday 🙂
I’ve been looking into this and I do wonder if a decent turbo trainer is a better option if you use ERG mode for training. Most of the bikes apart from the kickr bike seem to have some issues with spiking of power if you read online forums.
I have concluded if I’m going to get one it’ll probably be a Wattbike atom nextgen - mostly based on price / 0% finance available.
I like the Kickr bike (and I have a kickr core which has been great) but buying them secondhand seems quite risky as they’re more complicated and they are so expensive to buy new.
I actually think I’m more tempted to buy another bike just to live on the turbo so I don’t keep needing to take my nice road bike on and off.
There are numerous threads on smart bikes on the TrainerRoad forum - the newest seems to be this one:
https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/current-state-of-dedicated-trainers-smart-bikes/42254/21?page=2
Fill your boots. I like the watt bike and I think there is a rationale to a specific bike trainer and I have dumb, smart trainer and rollers
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/product-reviews/trainers
If you have the space two bikes and two trainers are definitely cheaper :/
Folding bike, that have relatively huge telescopic seat posts, such as https://www.halfords.com/bikes/folding-bikes/carrera-intercity-disc-9-speed-folding-bike-536878.html on a direct drive turbo?