Originally Posted by
pseudobrit
I have to poke around on this machine a little. It has generic units of resistance that can be controlled outside of the wattage program. I don't plan on training with power regularly but it'd be nice to get an accurate idea of what I can do as a reference without having to drop big money on a meter.
I wouldn't spend much time to trying to find out what the watts are on a machine like this unless you have some kind of meter to compare it to.
The value of these machines, if you use the same one, and it doesn't to beat up between uses, is you can measure progress. Today my heart rate doing level ## was ###, last week it was ###.
I have a Schwinn910 upright that I bought long before knowing that real cyclists don't use these. I love it. It lets me ride pre-set routines and the only thing I have to worry about is turning the pedals. Is it as good as having my own bike on a trainer with a meter of some sort, no. But its easy, convenient, and gives me some high percentage of the gain I would get otherwise.
Someday I will max the machine out and convince my wife that I need something like a Computrainer or some other such toy. But that might still be a year away. When I got it 5 years ago I could do a set of 4 3 minute intervals at level 12, I'm doing level 19 now, it only has one more level. It tells me I am doing such and such watts, but for me, its knowing that I am improving thats important.
EDIT I guess I should have read Carpe's post, same thing.