With money being an issue for me I was looking for an alternative to the Powertap.
Ibike. What do you think. Has anyone used it before?
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Power Meters...What's your opinion?
I am looking to get a power meter this year. I know, I'm jumping into the 21st century with both feet. I have never used one, but since I have been doing this training at APT this year I have realized the importance of one. Especially since I got my threshold levels tested and we will be training those levels at their facility. It just makes since to get one for the bike so I can train with one all the time.
With money being an issue for me I was looking for an alternative to the Powertap.
Ibike. What do you think. Has anyone used it before?
With money being an issue for me I was looking for an alternative to the Powertap.
Ibike. What do you think. Has anyone used it before?
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Talk to Kyle (pedal'n around)... He just got rid of (or is trying to get rid of) his ibike.
I demo'd one (the one that's on Kyle's bike I believe) last year. That was my first power meter tool and didn't have anything to compare it too at the time. The setup took a few trial runs and I'm not sure if I had it dialed in correctly since it calculates output vs. measuring actual output (ie PT, SRM, etc). I didn't have a training program back then so it was more like a curious toy than a tool.
I now have a PT and can say that the PT is a much easier setup (just attach and ride). With the wireless hub, it's easy to switch bikes without dealing with wires. With the Ibike, I believe you may have to recalculate the settings because it uses drag/resistance as part of it's computation to calculate power.
Have a yard sale and spend the extra bucks on a PT. The used wired versions laced to an open pro rim should be not much more than the MSRP of an iBike.
Just talk to your brother about his. Not sure he really like it since it really never gave him a correct reading. Always having trouble with it.
Interesting. I didn't know you had written this post when I posted my Powertap post today.
Don't get an iBike, because it's basically a waste of money seeing as once you get it, you'll have to pay even more to get a real power meter two months later when you realize that how bad it is.
But you can still use the iBike as a head unit with the latest quarq because it's ANT+Sport compatible. Check out: http;//www.quarq.us
So if you get it, and you don't like it, at least it's not a total loss. Unless you don't want to upgrade to quarq.
Thanks for everyone's input. I am getting an iBike (free of charge) from my brother. He doesn't use it anymore but not because it didn't work, just because he never got into training with power. So I'll give a shot and post a review on it later.
Firebike, I have a iBike and can comment on my experience. First, I have set it up on my road bike and it performs great. The one thing you must do before every ride is ensure that the unit's "tilt" is calibrated and reset the "wind" initial parameters. I can attest to the fact that if you don't have a solid mounting, i.e. the unit can bounce around while riding, then the "tilt" settings will be off and you will be wasting your time looking at your ibike during the ride. Even so, the software is clever enough to be able to adjust the data from a bad tilt setting once the data is unploaded such that you will have something useful to look at and analyze. The one thing I have been disppointed with the iBike is that I cannot get it to work on my TT bike. I mounted it on a clip-on bar between the extensions and I guess because of where it is located it just doesn't receive enough air flow to make the product work. Of course, the TT bike was really where I wanted to use it most so this has been most unfortunate. Then again, if you are like me and your TT bike has 650 wheels and your road bike has 700's then you would have to buy an extra powertap hub to be able to use the Powertap on both bikes. It is a dilemma.
I am in exactly the same situation as you regarding the iBike -- I've been trying to decide which way to go for the last week or so.
As you probably know, if you look around you can find pretty unbiased reviews of them that range from "utter trash" to "indistinguishable from my PT." One reason for the variability (as you know, I'm sure) is because of different models/firmware. I'm also pretty sure that if you're not good at fiddling with tech things, you're likely to think it's useless.
At this point, I have sorta decided that there are really two routes: cheap power training with reasonably accurate (but not perfect) measuring, or expensive and very accurate measuring. Given that split, I suppose it's a matter of deciding what you need for your training goals compared to what you want to spend. At this point, I'm learning toward option #1.
One of the cheaper methods of training that is still very effective is the old tried and true heart rate. I think if you are willing to compromise accuracy and reliability, you may as well go with this method (unless someone is willing to give you an iBike to try out).
Josh. I had an ibike but experienced bad luck of a malfunctioning computer(last one). I went through 2 of them. The first one was the gasket was not right on it so it filled with water when in the rain, they fixed that(they sent me a new one for that for free, warranty). Luckily ibike has very good customer service and I have spoken with the owner of ibike on the phone. You do not do that with many companies. Make sure you download the latest firmware.
The obvious plus is the cost and its ease of setting up. You also get all your information on the computer. Like the wind speed is pretty cool when you think why are you working so hard you can see that you have a headwind or a nice tail wind. You also see temperature and elevation gain.
Now the negatives to the ibike is the batteries you need when it is cold. Be prepared to replace your battery every other week if it is super cold out(remember I was riding close to 20 hours). The other thing that I did not like is you had to down load your ride and if you wanted a real accurate look at your data you click that button on the bottom right of the ibike program. That would correct it to your drag coefficients and put your power where it was. The problem with that is if it is off on the bike it does not do you any good unless you pay attention to what it was before it was corrected. So your ibike says 195 on the screen, you go home and download the information. You click auto correct and now your power reads 220. That does nothing for you on the bike if you do not know the thing reads 195. I have to say I do not know how the newest one works because apparently they resolved some of these issues. But if you are keen to this you will be fine with it. It is nice to have the extra data. I would invest and get WKO if you have a pc. That is a nice piece of software. If you do the Wko route you will download your data to the ibike program and then upload it to wko because you have to auto correct it. You will rarely see big errors in the auto correct but when you go down hill and you barely pedal you can see huge numbers in power and auto correct fixes that issue. Then you want to upload that data in wko so you can see all your scores.
Email me if any of you have any questions, I owned one about a year from wired to wireless. pedalnaround@gmail.com
Kyle
I have problems with my PT too! In order for it to function correctly, I actually have to push a button to start it! So don't think it gets any better when you spend money for a "accurate" unit! :)
Just happened to come across this blog and I wanted to clear a couple things. The new generation of the iBike has the features of the software built into the computer head. There is basically no post processing done of the ride. I do have a weighted opinion on the product though. I am sponsored by them and I work for the company developing the new generation. So don't accept my word as gospel, but if you want hard facts and side by side data, I have tons of that to show.
Honestly, there are a few things you can do to "trick" the watts, but the vast majority of the time it's spot on. In fact, there have been a few times in the past month where I use (to keep track of TSS and such) the iBike data instead of the data from my crank because of a slope drift due to changing temperatures.
If you want more info, I'll be glad to help and show you the kind of data I get on every ride. Email me at boyd (at) totalcyclist dot com.
Thanks, and if you don't have it, upgrade to the Gen3. It solves almost all the problems that the iBike had before.
That is great to hear. The previous ones would sometimes be off by 20-40 watts. I saw on the website the side by side information looked spot on. But I took it as post info. The last computer I got was the g-3 but did not use it.
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