I've been contemplating this myself lately (probably for next winter). $1600?!?! Good golly.

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Any run that doesn't include pooping in someone's front yard is a win.

hammer

Good choice. Let us know how you like it.

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Amateur recreational hobbyist cyclist
https://www.strava.com/athletes/337152
https://vimeo.com/user11846099

I'm about 99% sure I'm going to replace my Tacx Vortex with a Tacx Neo. I've used the Neo and I love it. My wife likes the Neo because it's quiet. I do have a question:

I live in constant fear of updates and I haven't updated my Vortex in a long time because it works just fine as is. I've been screwed by updates in the past on other devices (might be my fault, might not be, don't know, don't care). Have you experienced any issues with any of the updates and do you find they help?

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Dan Mayberry
Amateur a lot of things, professional a few things.

sorry I didn't chime in sooner... but appears you made the correct decision anyways !

and if you need the quietest one on the market..you got that too.

Can you control the Hammer with your Quarq like you can with the Kickr?

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Let food be thy medicine...

Whoa...you need to back up and ask the Hammer and Quarq owners. I'm still in the Industrial Age with my PowerBeam Pro.

I suck at updates too and I've only updated the Tacx Neo once.

After the update I got some new features:
When using TrainerRoad, you stop pedaling ... the Neo will back off on the power momentarily so you can get spinning again before adding back the resistance. I thought that was genius.

It works fine if you don't do the updates.

I never used the Flux but if the only difference is just in max power resistance (1400w vs 2000w), I would go for the Flux and pocket the difference.

Yes. Although, someone correct me if I'm wrong, that is more so a feature of the software (to be able to bypass the power meter in a smart trainer) than it is a feature of the trainer.

I don't think the flux and the Neo are very similar.
I went with the Neo for two reasons:

In erg mode test I saw in reviews in held the tightest range of power, it essentially reacted the quickest to cadence changes
It required no calibration and was dead on accurate with power.

You can get them from the German bike stores for closer to €900. Then whatever conversion you can get into USD.

So cost is about same as Kickr/Hammer/Drivo.

Neo is looking like a great option.
Quick question ........... is it possible (and if so, how easy) to get a course loaded for an upcoming or previous race and get the resistance of that course while training?

How does loading a specific course work?

This is mainly what I am interested in at this point.

Thanks!!!

I am not sure specifically about the Neo but I am pretty sure that in general you can do this in Virtual Training software

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http://www.instagram.com/cyclewise

To hijack this thread slightly, is there a risk in purchasing the Neo this summer? I'm willing to make the investment, but I should be able to ride outside through October if a newer version is around the corner. I've been putting off buying a trainer for years and I need this thing to last for at least three plus years with marriage and baby on the five year horizon. I don't know that the Tacx product pipeline looks like, or how long they push updates to existing models.

I have no idea.
But I train indoors at least twice a week, so I want it now. (I have been borrowing a Kicker2, and it has to go back).

You can use BestBikeSplit to generate ERG files for TrainerRoad. Works great.

I did this with perfpro, and it totally sucked.

The main reason it sucked was because the GPS traces I used (some of my own, some of other's actual race rides) end up having too many small power or elevation variances such that your Kickr is constantly changing the wattage on you, like every second or few seconds, which drives you nuts. On the road, you can modulate your power since you can coast over the smaller hills as needed, but on a Kickr, it just feels terrible, like your Kickr has gone insane and won't hold steady no matter what.

I however will bet that if you take the time to manually flatten out the courses so there are no tiny variances (like breaking down the course into fixed %climb sections or fixed wattage sections) it would work great for training. (In my experience the Perfpro 'flatten course' feature didn't work well enough at all to make the downloaded GPS courses ridable.)

I may actually build some of my own favorite local hillclimbs with this method - I keep saying that but it's now been years and I haven't gotten around to doing it!