New power meter on the market soon - Metrigear

diarmuid
diarmuid Posts: 73
edited August 2010 in Workshop
Looks very interesting. If it arrives on the market soon at a good price they could make a killing.
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Comments

  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,666
    There are a few people working on something similar at the moment including a cleat based one...
  • but these guys claim that they will be on the market in 6 months...
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,666
    As do most of the others...
  • Looks good but for something that appears that simple I don't think the market would be prepared to pay more than £350...
    let all your saddles be comfy and all your rides less bumpy....
  • Pork Sword wrote:
    Looks good but for something that appears that simple I don't think the market would be prepared to pay more than £350...
    Well they would have to price it competitively but I doubt it will be sold for less than £500. The very basic model of the powertap is £600 and has a much greater weight penalty.
  • lae
    lae Posts: 555
    Pretty interesting stuff.

    Do you really think it's worth £500+ though? I mean, not in terms of the actual physical value and the work that's gone into it, but will you see £500s worth of improvement?

    Maybe for a racing team of club to have one bike with it that everyone can train on, it would be worth it.
  • I don't think I'd pay £500+ for one as I think it looks rather vulnerable in it's present postion - basically, it looks liable to impact damage from road debris, misplaced pedal/foot interactions etc.
    let all your saddles be comfy and all your rides less bumpy....
  • bompington
    bompington Posts: 7,674
    I think the pricing has to be really high, otherwise real cyclists will sniffily describe it as a shite powermeter and say you can get much better ones for 5 times the price
  • Pork Sword
    Pork Sword Posts: 213
    edited September 2009
    Unfortunately, bikes are surrounded by bikesnobs these days who won't ride anything less than the latest £5k Colnago, Cannondale, Specialized Carbon Super Bike equipped with Dura Ace... so perhaps they would be better off trying to knock-em out at a grand a pop? I wouldn't be interested, but I'm sure there are lots of other suckers out there who would!
    let all your saddles be comfy and all your rides less bumpy....
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,666
    I may be tempted to ditch the PT for one of these or the cleat one if they are any good and are a damn sight cheaper...

    i.e. sub 200 quid as no doubt you will need to buy an ANT+ head unit to go with it...
  • lae
    lae Posts: 555
    Seems mad to me. I'm new to cycling (well, actually I'm not, but I'm new on this site) and I don't do any competitive cycling at all and probably never will (not seriously anyway) so luckily I don't have any interaction with bike snobs. I did once work in a bike shop but I think the most expensive bike we sold was about £600, so not nearly expensive enough.

    Actually I did once meet a couple in the restaurant I worked in who were cyclists. I told them that I'd just finished building up my restored singlespeed Raleigh and the man said 'I see. I didn't know people rode those any more'.

    Maybe he was never told not to offend the chef that's cooking his meal!
  • NapoleonD wrote:
    i.e. sub 200 quid as no doubt you will need to buy an ANT+ head unit to go with it...
    dream on.
  • Seems mad to me. I'm new to cycling (well, actually I'm not, but I'm new on this site) and I don't do any competitive cycling at all and probably never will (not seriously anyway) so luckily I don't have any interaction with bike snobs. I did once work in a bike shop but I think the most expensive bike we sold was about £600, so not nearly expensive enough.

    it's a bit harsh to call someone who spends €2k (or whatever) of their disposable income on a bike, a bikesnob. People don't blink an eyelid if someone buys a €20k car but you spend 3k on a bike (or 500 on a powermeter) and you are a snob.
  • skinson
    skinson Posts: 362
    Hmm! I know how much power I apply to the pedals. Enough to get up hills or I have to walk! It isn't going to give you 1 more watt of power. A complete waste of money. IMHO of course.
    Dave :wink:
  • dennisn
    dennisn Posts: 10,601
    bompington wrote:
    I think the pricing has to be really high, otherwise real cyclists will sniffily describe it as a shite powermeter and say you can get much better ones for 5 times the price

    Sadly, what you say does have a ring of truth to it.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,666
    diarmuid wrote:
    NapoleonD wrote:
    i.e. sub 200 quid as no doubt you will need to buy an ANT+ head unit to go with it...
    dream on.

    If it isn't under 200 quid I won't bother, the cheapest ANT+ compatible head units cost enough!
  • lae
    lae Posts: 555
    diarmuid wrote:
    it's a bit harsh to call someone who spends €2k (or whatever) of their disposable income on a bike, a bikesnob. People don't blink an eyelid if someone buys a €20k car but you spend 3k on a bike (or 500 on a powermeter) and you are a snob.

    That's not what I said at all. I said that the only bike snobs I've ever met were the two bike snobs in my restaurant who looked down on me for restoring an old bike (or having a singlespeed bike, or whatever their reasoning). Nothing to do with cost at all, my uncle has a CF Boardman and I will happily chat about cycling to him and his mates from the cycling club (and they all remark on what a nice bike I have, too, even though I built it myself for less than the cost of their pedals).

    And if you must know, I do think that almost anyone who spends £20k on a brand new car is a bit of a snob and also a bit of a show-off. I am very much a 'car person' (training to be a car designer in fact) so I would completely understand if someone bought their dream car brand new from the showroom. However I think the vast majority of new car owners are only doing it to show off, and I think the same is (probably) true of the bike snobs.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,666
    edited September 2009
    diarmuid wrote:
    it's a bit harsh to call someone who spends €2k (or whatever) of their disposable income on a bike, a bikesnob. People don't blink an eyelid if someone buys a €20k car but you spend 3k on a bike (or 500 on a powermeter) and you are a snob.

    That's not what I said at all. I said that the only bike snobs I've ever met were the two bike snobs in my restaurant who looked down on me for restoring an old bike (or having a singlespeed bike, or whatever their reasoning). Nothing to do with cost at all, my uncle has a CF Boardman and I will happily chat about cycling to him and his mates from the cycling club (and they all remark on what a nice bike I have, too, even though I built it myself for less than the cost of their pedals).

    And if you must know, I do think that almost anyone who spends £20k on a brand new car is a bit of a snob and also a bit of a show-off. I am very much a 'car person' (training to be a car designer in fact) so I would completely understand if someone bought their dream car brand new from the showroom. However I think the vast majority of new car owners are only doing it to show off, and I think the same is (probably) true of the bike snobs.

    Wow. Sounds more like you are an inverted snob rather than everyone else being looking down at you!

    So anyone that spends any money on anything is a snob?!? WTF?
  • lae
    lae Posts: 555
    NapoleonD wrote:
    So anyone that spends any money on anything is a snob?!? WTF?

    What the? NO! I literally say the opposite of that in my post.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,666
    Errr, no you didn't.

    Please see the obviously highlighted text.
  • lae
    lae Posts: 555
    I said *almost* anyone, and then went on to qualify what the *almost* applied to in the next sentence.

    Also, if you're going to play the game of picking out one little clause from a whole paragraph, try this one:

    'Nothing to do with cost at all'.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,666
    I tried it and didn't get it.
  • Pokerface
    Pokerface Posts: 7,960
    I think that anyone who spends more than £30,000 on a car or more than £6,000 on a bike is a car and/or bike snob.


    Oh wait, that was me! LMAO (I sold the car so I could buy more bikes) :)
  • lae
    lae Posts: 555
    Someone who spends £3000 on a bike to improve their times = not a bike snob, just a keen athlete.

    Someone who spends £3000 on a bike because they just love the quality and workmanship and are passionate about the design of bicycles = not a bike snob, just someone who likes 'things'

    Someone who spends £3000 on a bike and then practically laughs in another cyclist's face just because they're riding something 30 years old and cheap to build, and disregarding all the time, effort and skill put into it = bike snob

    Like I said, I know people with some extremely expensive buys and they're really nice guys, who all wanted to see my bike, and they do regard me as a 'proper' cyclist nonetheless. What they really love is cycling, not necessarily spending money on cycling.

    Same thing with cars, tvs etc. Just because I would (if I had the money) buy a brand new Alfa Romeo doesn't mean I'm a car snob, just that I love cars. The money to buy a brand new car wouldn't stop me from having an ancient Capri slowly rotting in the front garden, or driving about in a Datsun Cherry as a daily car (as I used to, RIP).

    I do, however, know (or have known) people with enough money to buy a brand new Ferrari or Porsche, but waited another month just so that they could get an '08' number plate instead of a '57'. If they actually cared about the car, they'd just buy it, rather than wait for the show-off numberplate. That's car snobbery, I think bike snobbery is probably the same thing.
  • bompington
    bompington Posts: 7,674
    Oh dear, look what I've started with yet another moment of light-hearted flippancy (look up the thread on the Planet X frame if you like for the reference, I can't be bothered).

    So my definitive attitude is this:
      I'm not willing to spend lots more money on things that are only marginally better, but if you want to, it's your money, spend it & enjoy it I certainly find it hard to take when people are willing to spend more money on things that are
    not any better; it often seems to me - that's deliberately subjective, 'cos I don't claim to be able to read people's minds - that people identify with certain brands, and this brand loyalty easily tips over into brand snobbery

    It is, however, not always that easy to tell objectively what is better; and hundreds of posts a day on this forum (not just about gear) are argued passionately, as if we had absolute and incontrovertible evidence rather than subjective opinions

    It follows that looking down on anyone for spending more, or spending less, or doing anything at all, when you have no compelling evidence to back up your opinions, is just a bit silly


    So it looks like we need to delete half the internet then...
  • lae
    lae Posts: 555
    Hey, I only look down on the people that I think are looking down on me :lol: I think :lol:

    Maybe I do have a bit of an 'eat the rich' mentality. Living for three years with two incredibly rich snobbish students whilst having a minimum wage job probably does that to you after a while. I'd like to clarify that I don't have a problem with anyone spending any amount of money on anything, so long as they love it passionately. The price should be a formality rather than a qualifier for enjoyment or worth.
  • Leaving aside the snobbery thing - can anyone explain in simple terms why power meters are so expensive? I don't really know how they work, but I guess it's some form of torque measurement, so don't get why pricing isn't really coming down despite increasing volume of production and competition.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,666
    Torquemeters are expensive...

    Factor in all the R+D, manufacture of kit, marketing, distribution, customer support and the obligatory bike schwag factor (i.e. randomly multiply price by an amount between 1.85-3.06) and you end up with the price.
  • APIII
    APIII Posts: 2,010
    I don't think the volumes are really there yet, so there probably aren't the economies of scale. SRM's are stupidly expensive because they are designed and built in Germany, not known for it's low cost manufacturing. It does surprise me though that no major players in the bike industry have jumped on the powermeter bandwagon. i.e. imagine Trek throwing their R&D budget into developing a proprietary system for their bikes.
  • ...I've come up with a cunning plan for them to halve the product costs!