wintershade wrote:
I don't quite get the SRM love, frankly. I mean, sure it's the "gold standard" or whatever, but it's feature set is actually kind of lacking. The non-user-serviceable battery is a deal-killer for me. Presumably if money is no object, the value of your time is high. I don't have time to be changing and shipping around cranksets whenever I need a new battery.
Have you owned one? Serious question.
Battery life of road units is up to 3,000 hours. If you train 20 hours per week, every week of the year, that's 3 years. Most people (a) don't train that much per week (esp on a single bike) and (b) don't train that much year-round. 5 years of battery life is not unusual.
Sending a power meter (ANY power meter) in for a check-up every 5 years is not a bad thing to verify it is to-spec.
Then again, you rarely see meters of many brands that will actually work after 5 years -- a 5-year old SRM still has value on the used market; that's not the case for most other products. That is sad to me as none of these products are inexpensive.
(I own, service and sell a variety of meters, including SRMs. Personally I have several of both road and MTB units in active rotation, going back 7 years. They just work*, which has extreme value to a busy person.)
* - Any electronic device on a bike exposed to the elements can have a problem; SRMs tend to have fewer than most other brands, but they are not completely immune.