1. New pricing on the SRM? Or the P1 pedals? Its different people I'd be needing to contact.
2. I had constant (to the level of comical) problems with the Stages, and I have two of them. Seven weeks with the SRM and the beautiful thing it just does what it should every time. Its hard to go back from that.

Timely conversation.

Did my first ride on my new road bike. With the new SRM, and my Stages. Did a 10min interval. Power, as expected, was higher on the SRM; my right leg is very visibly more developed vascularly; probably twice as many surface blood vessels.

It doesn't really change anything in terms of training or how I use either the SRM or the Stages, I'll just have to adjust training zones based on what bike I'm riding. The difference isn't huge, but it's there.

I should note that my Stages has been flawless for almost a year now, and before yesterday I used it exclusively on my mountain bike in the mountains of western VA and NC, and out in CO/WY/UT on vacation. Rocky, rooty, wet, or rocky and bone dry.

stages: it's what the working class pros use


https://scontent-lga1-1.xx.fbcdn.net...74832579_o.jpg

photo credit: Yehudah

How on earth did you spot that.

Last time I was riding with Ted King I noticed he had a Stages on his bike.

I own Quarq, SRM, power tap and Vector but no experience with Stages.

All power meters have peccadilloes. Notwithstanding that, SRM is serviceable by SRM USA and holds its value over time. One can buy a used SRM and send it to Colorado for refurbishment. Recently, I had a 2.5 year old Quarq fail and it was out of warranty and not reparable. I am done with Quarq and purchased an SRM. From a pure financial point of view, IMO, the lifecycle cost of SRM is lower than Quarq. That is based upon applying a 50% residual value to SRM and a zero residual value on Quarq after the warranty period is over. However, SRM has a higher initial cost that may be a barrier to some prospective users.

I like my SRM a lot and would highly recommend it over other crank based solutions.

All SRM cranks are not equal. They have different numbers of sensors and electronic platforms. Some have removable coin style batteries like the Quarq, most do not.

The differentiators for me are as follows. The SRM was designed as a system, including the head unit. As such, they designed it top to bottom to have very few data integrity issues. This has been proven over time. Customers demanded a more open system, but with that came the possibility of increased data quality issues. I use mine with a Garmin, and have no data quality issues as long as I maintain the Garmin proactively. Some people make a big deal out of having to send the SRM back for periodic battery replacement (those handy with a soldering iron can do it themselves) but I see this as a plus. For $120 and a week of time during the offseason I get my instrument checked out, serviced, and professionally calibrated. At my normal rate of use that will last three years. I could spend close to $40/year on high quality Quarq batteries, and I'm getting the piece of mind that a full service brings. The SRM is a very well designed and executed measurement tool that has a proven track record of over a decade. The value that this brings is up to you.

do me a favor and explain the joke.

I posted my shiny new shoes because I like them and... ?

dunno. something --> huh, big blue head unit ----> (looks down)

Huh. I think the blue is just a Garmin cover (not something I've seen before).


https://static.garmincdn.com/en/prod...33/g/cf-lg.jpg

I had a dream the other night that I was in Big Lots and they had the new Power Tap spider power meter on sale for $349. It was a weird dream.

As for PMs, I would go with PowerTap or SRM over Quarq any day.

I had a PowerTap 2.4SL. I bought it in 2008. I used it for three years before my wife broke my PowerTap computer. So I upgraded it to ANT+and bought a Garmin 500. I then used it two more years before the torque tube died in 2012. PT replaced and upgraded the internals to the new G3 for $350.

I then acquired a brand new Sram Red Quarq in mid 2013. Nine months in, after riding on a wet, but not really rainy, day, it stopped giving me power. It did still report cadence. I tried the Quarq battery reset (touch the back of the battery to two prongs) and it didn't work. I sent it back. I got a Quarq water bottle with my returned PM. Three months later, I started getting power drift by time. The longer I would ride, the higher my power climbed, regardless of cadence or gearing. My last ride before I sent it in, I averaged 600w for an hour. It again went back to Quarq for repair. This was when I first talked with Teton about getting an SRM. I ended up staying with Quarq. (This time, I got a giant Quarq t-shirt.) Six months later, the third unit stopped reporting power. Still got cadence though. That was when I switched to SRM.

I've had my Sram SRM for about a year, with zero problems. I recently picked up a used SRM spider for my second bike. It cost me $550 with a set of nearly new Sram 11-speed chainrings. It is working just fine. Both units calibrate at the same number and seem to give me identical readings. \

As for the Garmin, it's been mostly good for me. I've lost one or two rides over the many years I've had it - one was a big mountains ride, so that was really annoying. I've had a few issues in the last year or so with it locking up. I've learned to do a hard reset, which seems to be fine.

My wife, surprisingly, has had extremely different experiences with Quarq and Garmin. She had a Sram Quarq Compact for many years that worked great. She'd still be using it except Specialized gave her a new Amira with the Specialized cranks, so we bought her the Specialized Quarq for those cranks. It's worked fine for her for the past two years.

She also had a Garmin 500 for about a year before me and it has always worked fine for her. The only issue she's had is she crashed a couple weeks ago and the tabs to lock it into the mount broke off. But we bought Dogears to mount on there to fix the problem. She can't ride for another 6 or 7 weeks, so we won't know for a little while whether it still works.

If you're within +-5% there usually isn't an issue; we all have a dominant leg. Since I do all my jumps on my left means I'm usually 52-48 distribution. Even with z1 riding distribution is off 60/40 since I can lazily pedal with one leg, but on hard efforts it should be much closer. Ideally, the best way would be to track L/R when in z3-z7.

As for actionable, its more of a Fred issue; meaning something elite athletes probably don't care about, because if they had these issues they wouldn't be pro or Cat 1. Old ppl with sciatica, back or hip issues, or a femoral glide, can be noticed and maybe remedied. For example I have minor scoliosis and if I don't treat it daily I get sciatica which has affected my leg strength...the body is a pretty complex machine and if the nerves, muscles, and bones aren't all aligned and healthy issues arise....especially in the hip area.

Since more power experts are guys that support power meters with no LR feature, I can see why they do not place value in it. Its not something you need to monitor daily, but it is good to check on occasion.

I would like to know what my power balance is. I'm sure my left leg is still stronger than my right after the problems I was having with my hip (and still have to a small extent)

If you're stronger on the right, do crits that turn right. First pedal stroke out of each corner is the leg that was up in the turn...

Power2Max does power balance and I've been happy with it. I'm usually in the 48/50 to 50/50 range.

I'm most sick of spending huge money on my hobby. I'd actually be surprised if I didn't buy a stages soon and eventually move over entirely.

I'm more of a pragmatist.

No power meter <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<power meter<<bestest power meter

Often I think, 'My house would be really nice if I invested same time in money as I do cycling'

I need to start looking for left turn crits then!

Velo Sports Center all left turns. Riding at the top of the track requires a strong left leg.

new pricing on the SRMs. i just got it yesterday.

how do you define flawless? no drop-outs or battery issues, or....gives reliable data?

I like the idea of the Stages if it was, like, $300, but what bugs me is that it is not a cheap device and is 1/2 a power meter. Even putting the issues aside w/r/t situations where cadence is changing abruptly/shorter efforts, because of all our individual peculiarities power balance is not constant and their 'multiply-by-2' simplification is flawed. (That it is not constant does not matter for crank- or hub-based devices.)

So, there are multiple sources of error, and for power (IME/IMO) that is not a good thing. You can't calibrate it, the variations in time/balance are non-linear, and then, of course, the standard chance of error that EVERY meter has. It's just too much, IMO, for that cost.

For $250, $300 I have a different take on it, but at around a grand I go used with another device. Time will tell, but for me a device that costs 1.5-2x but lasts a decade is worth more than the device that costs x but is a paper-weight far sooner.

I also have a different take if they start measuring both sides...but then I suspect we bump up the cost and longevity questions rear their head.

at a high-level, you are right: all spider-based designs are similar in that they measure the deformation of the spider and translate it to an electrical impulse. strain gauges are not revolutionary technology. the number and orientation of an array of strain gauges can differ, and those decisions, along with material choices, etc., can affect how reliable the design is in the field (changing temps as one example).

measuring power is not a complex problem, but doing so reliably in adverse conditions over the long-haul turns out to be non-trivial. bad solder joints (was an issue with a batch of quarqs some years ago) can be a thing. manufacturing in germany or the USA costs more but sometimes is a better thing (not always). these real-world conditions are the key. it's why you see SO MANY manufacturers come to the table announcing they have a new solution that will be reliable and cheap only for them to either not be reliable upon release or to realize that the price must be much higher to get that reliability. i could cite a bunch of examples but quarq's big premise was a sub-$1k power meter (like 2 years before they launch); metrigear (who garmin took over for the vector) was going to make a cheap pedal solution, etc.

"perfectionist design" isn't a term i'd use to describe the design. i think all the crank-based manufacturers have taken slightly different positions to try to differentiate themselves (quarq = user-replaceable batteries, for example). SRM has the longest history in the game, and while, like every manufacturer, they had teething problems, but those were >25 years ago. you're looking at a highly refined, proven design where no shortcuts have been taken.

quarq went with user replaceable batteries because 10 years ago with SRM that was a thing: if you trained huge volume you'd have to send your meter in once a year. that sucks. also, Quarqs have many situations where they eat batteries, so if you COULDN'T pop in another, you'd be sending it in monthly (for some units). what has happened, though, is we now have SRMs with 3,000h battery life (DA9000) = 4 years of 15h/wk, 52 weeks a year. Non-issue. Meanwhile, SRMs "inconvenient" design means you ride in torrential rain and your meter still works--never needs to "dry out."

lots of examples there, but the issue is refinement and iteration of a design over time.

were they priced too high? maybe. people who understood what they were buying knew why one might pay more for it. maybe they abused that by maintaining high prices for a long time, but that's really a decision any business-owner makes as far as how they want to grow a company. there has been more downward pressure in the industry (=a good thing for everyone), but in large part people newer to power do not understand why calibration is important, or why they need precision AND accuracy -- or that the Stages claim of "1.5% accuracy" is NOT the same as that from SRM. it is really hard to know what you don't know, and the marketing that every meter uses (same claimed accuracy) means that people who are a bit more naive (this was me years ago; i made a bunch of mistakes and wasted money) don't realize what they're missing until it is too late. after all, it seems foolish to spend 1.5x or 2x to get the same accuracy when you could spend 1x and get it, right?

[MENTION=196014]shovelhd[/MENTION] has some great points below.

just to clarify--no SRM has a removable coin-style battery (unless you are aware of something I am not). the FSA SRM (bb386) uses AA batteries in the spindle. i just mention this as few people have actually seen them so they are not all that well understood.

let's just be clear here: garmin, as a company, has a long history of issues with products and making paying customers be beta testers. lots of features (upload to strava!) but historically a reduced emphasis on data integrity.

when i buy a phone, my #1 consideration is quality of the call, but instead i get games, apps, a camera, etc.--everything but a better phone call. garmin's kind of that way.

while sending a device back is never ideal, the offshoot is that once every 3, 5 years the device is completely checked out. that is never a bad thing--but all else equal i'd rather have a device with infinite battery life.

last point is key: value is a personal opinion about a price relative to the benefits and drawbacks.

in the case of power meters, it is hard for some people to grasp the trade-offs, esp as some of them (impact of bad data--a device that is precise but not accurate (if that even exists)) do not reveal themselves for years.

as always, ymmv. there are lots of products because people have different needs and budgets. if i buy a yugo i don't think that i am getting a sports car, though--yet with power meters we continually see people hoping the yugo turns out to be that audi.

i dunno i have the first gen Quarq and it still works fine. mud/rain/gravel/potholes. maybe you guys are dialing up to 400watts too often

i think we all make a choice to be somewhere along that continuum, in any area (even shoes!). a Stages (i've sold and installed them!) has a time and place.

lots of folks paying non-trivial sums ($1k is not trivial to me) and/or taking a chance on new devices with the hope or having convinced themselves they now have the best, or a product equivalent to the best. manufacturers take advantage of that ignorance, but i guess they are not to be blamed. pretty much everyone i know that has bought a cheaper meter has believed it was the functional equivalent of every other meter out there--they didn't know better until down the road.

these discussions, above, help arm people with more knowledge so they can choose the right point on that continuum based on accurate info, not misperceptions.

^^^ a great example right there.

IME using, selling and working on lots of quarqs, when you got a known-good one, it could be good for a while, but there was a high dud rate and some models were far better than others.

i always like the 'my unit is good' comments, though. maybe you are among the few who actually have verified that. i hope so!

how does yours change throughout the power-duration curve?

can't recall, but is power2max doing pseudo-balance (like Quarq)?

should be fun, though, right? not like spending money to fix your transmission.

why not just go by RPE and/or HR? cheaper... (not entirely joking. the more i use power, to a degree, the less i need it in many ways.)