Turbo or power meter?

phreak

When I first started training properly I bought a Tacx Flow to help with that. I accept that the absolute power readings may be a bit off, but I believe they stay fairly consistent, so it's been a very useful training aid.

After 5 years and a lot of usage it has stopped working this week (it stopped providing any readings), which has prompted me to think about options.

One would be to try and repair it, with the related fuss of lugging the thing across town to a service centre (no car).

Another would be to buy the latest version of the same device (for ~£300)

One other would be to buy a power meter and use that on my cheap turbo (and of course on the road). It seems a 2nd hand one on eBay would be not a great deal more than a new turbo.

smoggysteve

If you see a stages or a set of Garmin pedals for around 3-4 hundred on ebay let me know please

caedev

The other option is to use your existing Turbo with this:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chrisevansdev.turbopower

It uses an ANT+ speed sensor and the power maps of various Turbo to produce power figures for training. As you mention with your recently broken turbo, the figures may be slightly out from the real power but given the same setup (bike, tyres etc) the readings should be consistent and useful as a training aid.

mamba80

I have been using a Tacx Vortex recently, well over winter, and its been great, it gives pwr, cadence, max/averages and HR with an ANT strap and works every time, everything is wireless, so apart from check tire psi and occasional calibration, its pretty much fit and forget.
I got mine from ROSE with 5 yr warranty.
A 2nd hand PT or similar will require a head unit and is likely to cost you sooner or later in rebuild/bearings, which are not cheap at all, they are often on ebay for a reason