info on the purchase...

i work in a very remote work location (offshore oil production facility). our company has a good supportive health and wellness initiative and im on the healt and wellness committee here so getting good equipment isnt too hard. we purchased this through clevertraining as a preorder before it was released. i had to wait forever for the unit's multiple manuf delays, but when i came to work yesterday it was sitting in the location i said i wanted it stored before i got here.

dont laugh at the pics of where i set it up! i have it next to my bedroom in an hvac room with limited access... i didnt want someone else here getting on it thinking it was a toy. i have been using an older spin bike here at work with my favero duo pedals. one take away from that setup is that you by no means need a perfect setup get see gains. it was far from ideal but with structured training i made it work and saw the fruits of the work put into it.

on to the mini review.







bike where it will live. main unit (bike frame), front and rear supports, bike seat / slider, and front handlebars were all seperate in the box. packaging didnt look to be an issue, it was well packaged in foam.

initial setup was pretty dang easy, roughly an hour or so in a very cramped area with no help. the setup instructions was like 5 pages, ikea style. two bolts for the rear support, two bolts for the front support. the front support have nice little adjustable feet for leveling. i didnt see any sort of leveling for the rear support.

seat / slider and handlebars slide into place on the same type of slider assembly. one interesting feature this bike has is you can pull out the threaded plug used to lock the seat post, seat rail, handlebar height and handlebar fore/aft with a ratcheting style hand lever. i opted for the hand lever during assembly.

you can either use the fans or not... the bike comes with a tablet holder option sans fans if thats your wish. i was skeptical of the fans but decided to give them a try.

hopping on the bike and getting it "fit" was pretty easy with all the adjustable hand levers. everything was very easily reachable without unclipping so i could adjust and tinker till things felt pretty close to what a good fit would feel like to me. im sure as time goes on ill mess with it a bit more. the included road saddle seems sufficient. i have a 2.5 hr zone 1 ride tomorrow so it will really get tested.

for the initial ride i figured it would work essentially like my tacx neo at home does. i linked it up to zwift, paired no problem, but for a structured ride it wouldnt go into erg. i had to run an update from the tacx utility app on my phone. after that it operated in erg no problem.


erg works a little slower than my tacx neo... it seems the response isnt as crisp and quick. it "ramps" a bit more when making jumps between intervals. its by no means an issue or too slow, its just an observation.





i really dig the layout of the "cockpit". i usually will have a show going on one of my ipads and zwift running on another for endurance rides. theres lots of room for my particular needs so im really happy about that. the fans... i like em! they adjust in and out / up and down very easily. i wound up having them blow out around me to my sides as i dont like having any sort of wind blowing on me or in my face. i did enjoy the air circulation around me. the fans do speed up as your wattage goes up. pretty neat feature.




ok... here comes the complaints.





the horns are not comfortable. they are squared off, which to me seems like a design thing as it does resemble the more angular design of the bike. it unfortunately does not feel good to the hand at all. i couldnt find a hand position where i was happy.





these little buttons suck. these are your shifters. they are not very obvious to the touch at all. i did play around with shifting some and shifting reaction is very quick but you have to purposefully find these buttons and feel around as they are flush with the rest of the surrounding block. again im thinking this was a design thing. looks cool, doesnt work as well as something more obvious to the touch. i really wish the entire handlebar was a "normal" shifter setup that you find on every road bike out there.





for the price of this thing i would expect the body molding to be perfect. there are a couple of spots where the plastic doesnt meet up in the seams.

dcrainmaker said he had inner thigh rubbing and i experienced it as well. the "frame" up where the seat post is fairly wide. when my knees would wander inwards to the bike i could feel the bike frame. its something i can live with, but if i had paid my own money for this i would be very annoyed.


no pics, but the crank / pedal interface is not threaded. they have 3 different "inserts" you slip in the back side of the the crank then thread your pedal into the insert with a washer to fill the void area. im assuming there are three different pedal standards out there so they were thoughtful enough to accommodate everyone. the benefit i see in this is you can just get replacement inserts without the entire crank having to be replaced if it gets screwed up. its still a weird setup to me.



this was my initial ride on the thing. im sure as time goes on ill have more thoughts and ill be sure to post up. i didnt get any shots of the little included LCD screen, ill do that another time. i do like it though... has all the relevant info for your gear selection and riding metrics right there.


if anyone has any questions feel free to ask away.

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80/20 Endurance Ambassador