one of my chums has the stac and 1600km in, it seems to be pretty good so far.
FWIW I think you learn to pedal better and handle a bike better if you ride the rollers, but this is clearly old fashioned, not on-message thinking....
A real difference is that most home trainers put a load of weird loads through the back end of the bike that don't occur when you are actually riding it; I don't know how likely this is to break a frame but it can't do it any good. Between that and the potential sweat damage I have suggested that my chum gets an old frame, handlebars, saddle and pedals and uses that on the trainer; he reckons he may not even need gears per se because the contraption can be set to require constant power regardless of cadence.
cheers
Two meaningful sessions and some farting around to set up and I'm convinced. Far smoother than the old Taxc turbo with the tyre pressing on the roller.
Plus points
- it's so quiet, I can watch stuff on my tablet without having my blue tooth speaker at max, you hear nothing other than your drivetrain
- smooth, far smoother than the tacx, and I think it hits the box of pedalling better - the resistance is more uniform throughout the pedal stroke
- Power - it's telling me i have more than the Taxc ever did, so how can it be bad. It's supposedly a very accurate power meter - it should be based on the tech it uses, and it was telling me I was holding 190-210W for about 5mins with HR around 140-149 yesterday. A cheap way of getting a power meter?
Not so good
- wheel weight attachment is a bit fiddly, so I may just leave them on a spare wheel for the upwrong
- Simulated speed is way off the wheelspeed by the Garmin sensor (about 10km/h difference, but that is algorithms and neither here nor there in reality, when the real measure on a turbo is power. I'll be sending soem data files to them to have a look at and see if there's an issue, but good customer service so far