Originally Posted by
Quinn8it
yes PowerTap lowered their price and brought it into the range of Stages- but that limits you to one wheel, which is an issue if you train and race on different wheels. plus the lower priced complete wheels are not high performance and the higher end wheels are quite a bit more expensive. building the Hub on your own rim creates problems as PowerTap only accepts warranty returns on the part they sold you- so a returned Hub would have to be unlaced before sending it back.
Powertap works ok if you have a wheel you like. They repair by replacing the hub internals so as long as you are willing to ship a full wheel there is no need to unlace. The new hubs look like they moved the electronics to the cap so some repairs are likely just sending the cap back.
I just use the powertap for training, racing is what it is and looking at power numbers from mass start races they are pretty close to the guess by the internal power meter.
The Stages does look like a nice simple option and fast sampling can help with accuracy. If the head unit is collecting at a different frequency it would be good to know what is being sent - average of last n samples or the last 1/64th of a second if 64 sends/sec. SRM is the last full crank revolution and I am guessing the others are similar. Rapid acceleration this can skew results a bit as it is torque * cadence as seen with non-round chainrings.
You do need to look at the auto calibration which is an issue with some head units and also where do they start reading. SRM wireless starts 30 rpm at least on the road so you miss the first couple of revs out of the blocks but this is where the faster reading might help a bit. I think Quarq and Stages are similar.