Hi all. I have begun biking indoor again, when the weather is bad.
And I experienced lower watts on my BKool smart pro 2, compared to the spring.
Here is the reason: https://support.bkool.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033599731-Improvement-in-simulation-metrics
Any thougths? Is the power meassurement wrong - as they state? Any comparison with power meters?
And if I use Zwift, and the BKool is meassuring to many watts - am I cheating?
I’m not pleased. What do you think?
After years of delay Bkool finally shipped some media loners of their highest end ‘Air’ trainer. The reviews have consistently noted that out of the box the bower numbers are wrong and that Bkool’s fix has been to take real power meter data from the user and monkey around with the trainer calibration so they match. In other words they don’t seem to have any ability to internally calibrate the trainer and the best they can do is try and match independent power data. Given this is their flagship model and has been years in development I suspect the problem is worse on all the other units.
The document you attached looks consistent with what I have written above. They know their trainers aren’t correct but the hardware doesn’t allow them to sort the problem. I would guess after looking at all the real world power meter data they have used some sort of average approach and lowered the numbers. This doesn’t mean your trainer is more accurate but if the trainers systematically over estimated power it might be.
Overall I wouldn’t worry about the situation too much. The trainer should still be consistent even if its inaccurate and this is good enough for indoor training (but not for indoor racing). The majority of people can produce less power indoors, due to overheating caused by being stationary even with massive fans, than outdoors so it normal to have to re-calibrate when you move between environments. Your re-calibration may be larger than most but it doesn’t invalidate the benefits of training with power indoors.
Thx. It makes sense. Think this will ne the reason i need powermeter pedals, just to be sure 