Stages vs Neo

meanredspider

So I did an experiment today - rode my Stages G1 vs my Tacx Neo. Tacx claim independent testing has shown the Neo to be accurate to +/- 1% so I figured it would be interesting to see.

I set the test to have the Neo aim for power increments of 50W. I'm stupendously unfit having only ridden something around 200 miles this year due to circumstances beyond my control. Apologies then for those who were hoping to see how the two devices handle 500W pumped out for 20 mins.

LOADS of caveats on this and I don't for a second claim this is conclusive or scientific or anything more that it was intended to be: idle interest. I will say, however, that some mid-life battery drain issues aside, I've been very happy with my Stages - it did what I wanted it to do and get me here:



All I've done by way of "analysis" is overlaid the two plots in some Adobe drawing app. The fluorescent colour is the Neo and the purple is the Stages - where the traces overlap, it's brown. You'll see that near the beginning there's a stop on the Stages - I'd forgotten to do a calibration (it almost never NEEDS it) - but I wanted to be fair in the test. Oh - and I should point out the test was done in my summer house on a warm day. I suffer for my art, bartender.



My personal observations:

1. There's generally reasonable correlation - the brown overlap line covers much of the range.
2. At 200W the Stages reads a bit higher than the Neo - at 250W lower. Though, when I return briefly to 200W, correlation is great. The differences look to be no more than 5-10W - not enough to concern me (YMMV - esp if you think you're going to be the next British champion - fortunately that was never a dream of mine). At 300W and 350W it looks good.
3. Average power (a very low hurdle) was 190W Stages and 194W Neo - ca 2% difference.
4. It's pretty much what I expected based upon using the Stages for 3 years - not spectacular but good enough. I can also be reasonably happy that if I train at, say 300W on the Neo, it's replicating pretty well the work I'd be doing on the bike at that power. As a keen recreational cyclist, I don't ask more than that. I use power to motivate me when I'm "training" and to pace me when I'm doing an event. YMMV.

Again - just for fun - take with a pinch of salt.

fat daddy

isn't the stages known for reading higher than most power meters and to be accurate to 2% ???

if so .. then how do you know which is the most accurate anyway ?

stueys

I've tracked my neo against my vector and P2M, it's pretty much bang in the middle and the variance between the three is fairly minimal. It seems to be a pretty accurate piece of kit.

MiddleRinger

fat daddy wrote:

isn't the stages known for reading higher than most power meters and to be accurate to 2% ???

if so .. then how do you know which is the most accurate anyway ?

You don't. But at least you know they are both tracking consistently and very close to each other, which is good enough for most of us weekend warriors. I can't see the full graph very well on my phone screen, but it looks as if the Stages is reading much higher for short bursts or sprint power?

I would have pegged the Stages to read consistently higher (then fail half way, lol) so it's good to see some positive data.

meanredspider

There are spikes but that's where the Neo is cranking up the resistance which is a weird feeling on the bike - like suddenly finding yourself moving up 10 gears in a step. Remember that, in my test, the Neo is targeting a power level. I, of course, need to provide the power.