I’m running into an issue with my Elite Suito trainer and looking for advice.
My setup:
Trainer: Elite Suito (bought Dec 2020)
On-Bike Power Meters: Single-sided 4iiii or Garmin Vector 2S
Software: TrainerRoad, usually in ERG mode
I typically use my on-bike power meters as the power source for TrainerRoad since I race and test FTP with them. However, my 4iiii recently broke, so I’ve had to rely on the Elite Suito as my power source.
The problem:
I’ve always felt the Suito reads lower, but now that I’m forced to use it, I decided to test the difference. Note, I never compared the 4iiii vs Garmin - but the two felt similar. The results are surprising:
75-minute Zone 1 ride:
Elite Suito/TR: 199W average
Garmin Vector 2S/Wahoo ELEMNT: 245W average (+46W difference)
20-minute Zone 1 ride:
Same setup, same discrepancy (+46W).
I made sure to calibrate the Suito before riding and used consistent middle gearing.
I would rather trust a smart trainer, than any single sided power meter.
That said, if I had two other aligned readings (at the same time; e.g. pedals PM and crank PM) different than a smart trainer, I’d disregard the smart trainer.
I’ve had an elite suito for a while and never trusted the power reading it’s given me. Mine is consistently 15-25watts lower then both of my other crank based power meters. I’ve never been able to revolve it with calibration or anything. So, I only use my crank based meters when using my trainer.
Either the trainer or pedals is borked (possibly both, though less likely). Looking at the graph, they aren’t just reading off by a consistent %, the fluctuations aren’t aligned at all (both cadence and power).
Quick adjustment (eyeball) to line up the timing. The two are still quite different. At least one of these PMs has an issue beyond just scale/calibration.
But then submitted a support request to Elite, and with some back and forwards they sent a new calibration file, and last comparison was within margin of error 2-4%:
Trainer recalibration (see above) will probably take care of the scale issue, and the remainder of the disparity just looks like single sided PM doing single sided PM stuff.
Bottom line: horrible, unreliable and inaccurate trainer. I bought suito t a month ago. I ride only structured workouts so I use Garmin forerunner 955 to control it. I have another smart trainer which is Neo 2t and that pair works good enough. But all the same except suito instead of Tacx i ran into a bunch of issues. First, I experienced frequent disconnections so the readings were up to 10% less than the watts I set. Last week I contacted their CS and it made things even worse: they I asked me to try their app in level mode (not sure what does it have to do with my problem). It also disconnected and I upgraded to the latest firmware. Since then I’m not able to control the trainer from my Garmin at all. Once connected it quickly disconnects and doesn’t reconnect. If that is not enough troubles, it doesn’t keep the power that was set before the disconnection.
Elite’s CS is as horrible as their firmware/hardware
Funny because I have two different Suito-T and both measure higher than the bike power meters (4 different brands and technologies equally calibrated). One of them shows 30 W higher than real at low intensities and it’s more accurate at higher efforts.
I have also the disconnecting issue on one of them, suddenly it goes away from Zwift but the bluetooth signal is still there, bit annoying…
