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Good afternoon all.
As a family, we'd like to get a turbo trainer for the garage - to give some exercise when the weather is pants and keep the legs turning.
Budget is currently not agreed, but would appreciate STW feedback.
Budget up to £200
Budget up to £500
We have a road bike with QR skewer to attach to whatever is ultimately selected.
We have power in the garage, but no big smart TV.
Thanks.
Not magnetic. Too noisey for fun.
Anything else will be fine, the hardest thing is getting on and using it.
Depends on what you want to do with it really, if just for spinning the legs while watching tv/film then the cheapest one you can find locally from one of the big names, if you want to use Zwift/training peaks/sufferfest etc then I'd really recommend getting a smart trainer.
I have both a basic Tacx wheel on trainer (currently on loan to a mate, he wanted to keep himself going during lockdown) that I've had for a few years now, worked well for me at first, used with an old mtb and just for the purpose of building a bit of stamina up after a few years off the bike. Moved on to the using the GCN youtube videos, basic HIIT sessions using RPE to judge efforts.
A couple of years ago I tried zwift on this trainer (had a stages power meter on my road bike by then) but never got into it, I now have a Wahoo Kickr and turn to the sufferfest when I want to tune the legs up a bit. During lockdown I tried zwift again and started to do a few races, it's a completely different experience with the smart trainer, it makes the terrain believable and the racing element is a good incentive to get out and train.
Good luck finding one.
I've got a Tacx Vortex, its a wheel on smart trainer and back when the world was a bit less mental they could be bought for around £230.
It works really well with TrainerRoad and Zwift and feels nice and solid in use
As momo said above, it really depends what you want to do. I had an old, cheap dumb trainer and barely used it. I now have a smart trainer (Elite Direto FWIW, which seems good but I don’t have anything to compare to) and will happily spend an hour or two on it on Zwift, Fulgaz or similar. Well, ‘happily’ might be a stretch, but time goes a lot quicker than on the old trainer.
Anyway, DC Rainmaker has tried most of them and will give you all the details you ever need...
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/10/the-smart-trainer-recommendations-guide-winter-2019-2020.html
Be careful with Tacx wheel on trainers as since the Garmin buy out a number of parts are unavailable. They have a few weak points too, depending on specific model.
Metal roller cover detaches from the rubber roller, fix is drilling and glueing (or buying whole resistance unit for €300+) and wheel size selector can break inside, fix is making spacers to fill the gaps (€5 part no longer on sale)