Thinking of a TT for the garage, possibly to link with some sort of virtual thing like Swift.

Been 4 years since I had one so out of touch.

Are the ones that you remove the wheel and has its own groupset affordable yet? Would one work with an Orange P7 or am I best using the wheel?

Cheapo Tacx Flow is great (wheel on)

Wheel off one is probably a little bit better but will cost more

P7 will work with a wheel on

Get a spare wheel and use a trainer tyre and it doesn’t really matter what turbo you use. I wouldn’t use knobbly tyres on one.

£400+ ish for a wheel-off trainer.

QR or thru axle compatibility is consideration for direct drive.
You will need a cassette.
Be clear about your budget.
Zwift and similar are, typically, subscription services; if you buy new you may get
short-term free subscription. Don’t know if Zwift is still road-focussed.
Do some research.
Ebay is probably your friend – when you know exactly what you want.

We started with a Tacx from Halfords, which was the cheapest smart trainer at the time. About £220 iirc. It was wheel on and worked well enough with Zwift adjusting the resistance for good workouts.

Trouble is it was so damn noisy. Upgraded it to a Neo for my OH who uses it every other day for 90 minutes + most of the time.

I fancied a play so got myself a s/h Kickr and that too is wheel off. Use mine on an old Zaskar MTB but with a 42T single ring up front. Works great on the workouts and isn’t too bad when in non erg mode just riding around.

Wouldn’t want to use a chainring any smaller for non erg riding so that’s where a modern 1X MTB may fall down a bit, but for workouts it’s great.

Regarding the trainer, I’d look at second hand wheel off smart trainers before a new wheel on device.

Quite a few of the wheels off models can be used with MTBs both QR and Through Axle.

The (very long) TrainerRoad thread has a bit on turbos at the moment so worth having a read of the last page or so of posts. There’s also the “Cheap smart trainer” thread.

By their nature turbo trainers are “road biased” so unless you are used to long periods riding in the saddle they may take a bit of getting used to. Even with a lot of road miles in my legs I find it still takes a week or two to sort things out. Also your bike that “fits” might not actually do so.

Don’t know how much Zwift is but TR is currently $20/month

Zwift is £12.99 p/m

By their nature turbo trainers are “road biased” so unless you are used to long periods riding in the saddle they may take a bit of getting used to. Even with a lot of road miles in my legs I find it still takes a week or two to sort things out. Also your bike that “fits” might not actually do so.

This is good advice, I jumped in at the deep end and started trying to do sweetspot sessions (long, medium hard efforts) and then interval sessions (lots of short, very hard efforts).

I quickly spannered my knees which meant taking time off. I spoke with a coach and he was basically saying well d’uh, you can’t go from zero to 30 minutes of intervals without hurting something, so suggested starting with just one set of intervals, then building up every week, or doing a shorter sweet spot session but adding some intervals at the end. I had started by trying to do 3 sets of 10x40s intervals, and was hurting by the third set…

Turbos can be hard on knees depending on the model, the cheap turbo I used had a small flywheel which meant no inertia, so every pedal stroke is speeding the flywheel back up which is un-natural and can hurt the knees. Better trainers are smoother and more natural.

TL:DR? Start easy and build up.