I'm on Rouvy rather than TR, but for me it's as you describe. Set it to erg and let the trainer direct your suffering without changing gears. The gear selection can have some effect on noise, but you can make some limited gear changes to work around this.

Time to change is faster than it is on your bike. It's can be a bit fussy depending on the torque you have applied, though.

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I have a couple of friend with Direto and they have worked flawlessly; remember that online you only hear about the people with issues... Neo/KickR/Hammer have people complaining too about multiple issues. I am on the same boat as u deciding which one I want to get but IMHO is hard to pass on the direto base on price and functionability (plus u can always return it within the first 30 days if u don't like it).

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The entire event (IM) is like "death by 1000 cuts" and the best race is minimizing all those cuts and losing less blood than the other guy. - Dev

I started out on a Kinetic Road Machine with just its virtual power. That was excellent, and probably got me most of my current fitness level. I added P1 pedals to that combination and learned that the KKRM's virtual power was very accurate. Then, I later changed to a KICKR. The biggest impact was adding the P1 pedals so that I could see consistent power inside, outside, and in races. The P1 pedals were critical to my Gulf Coast race this weekend. I highly recommend a power meter before a full-on smart trainer.

The KICKR is very good, but it just makes training well easier than before. It probably does not materially help me train better.

Not a bad plan taking the unit off then. Kinda found something similar this year as I've only been riding. Going with the faster groups I've only left the map/route up on my Garmin rather then seeing numbers knowing it would freak me out. Checking it out after the ride I've seen some new max numbers that I probably wouldn't have seen had I been looking at my data screen because I would have been afraid I was going to blow up.

Will the P1 pedals pick up on the differences in tension on the Kinetic? For example, if I applied more tension to the tire by accident, would that P1 know there is more tension.

Also as the trainer heats up and builds more resistance do the pedAls know? Im new to power meters.

Also, do you use the P1 in Zwift and TR or virtual power of the Kinetic?

The pedals won’t care about tire pressure, heat, etc. they’ll measure power regardless.

That’s an issue if you’re using virtual power or a smart trainer that is wheel on.

I used the KKRM's free app for training for about 9 months. They have a process where you do a 10 minute warm-up at the beginning of a workout and then do a spin-down. When you follow that, the power on the KKRM is amazingly close to accurate (within 5W in the 250W range). And, the KKRM's spin down seems to accurately handle differences in wheel tension, tire pressure, etc.

Yes, the P1 pedals will measure true power no mater what the wheel tension. So, the P1 does not care about the tire tension But the other cool thing is that if you do the KKRM spin-down, the KKRM will also correctly adjust for wheel tension and match pretty closely to the P1 pedals.

I switched to TrainerRoad last summer, and did that with the P1 pedals and KKRM for about a year. I switched to a KICKR this summer. I love the KICKR, but I would always get a bike power meter ahead of a smart trainer, given funding for one of the two.

We are talking about the non-smart Kinetic? I didn't know dumb trainers could do spindowns.

Yes, the Kirt Kinetic Road Machine with its inRide virtual power. The nut is that it is a little Bluetooth gizmo that reads an RPM magnet on the resistance unit spindle. It has the built-in mapping of the power curve of the dumb fluid resistance units. It uses the spindown to measure actual resistance of your unit after the fluid heats up, and uses that to adjust its power curve to your specific unit's behavior (including tire friction and tension). It is highly integrated with Kinetic's Fit app, and that app has the spindown built into every workout after the 10 minute warm-up. Zwift and TrainerRoad also can also use the inRide like a regular power meter to get pretty stinkin' good power measurements.