Considering that any number trying to show you how much energy you expended is a gross guesstimation anyway it seems pointless. Calories and kilojules are trying to describe the same thing on a different scale.

Power meters will perhaps be more accurate, but not completely. They measure the work you do and express that with some fudge factors to account for energy lost that was not directly applied to moving you and your bike further down the road. Devices with only HR monitors do similar by trying to guess from your HR how hard you are working. Devices that don't have either Power or HR are applying simple formulas to further just guess.

The big thing is just not compare to another. Use the same method consistently and learn when you might need to add or subtract from the energy expenditure of your body.

They are?

If you are reading a user post or review somewhere, then I can find you plenty of negative reviews for any device out there.

Usually those issues are unique to the individual. You see a lot of people that have issues when they wonder why their Calorie count as reported by their device without HR or power suddenly changes when they add HR or power. Or when they used tables, formulas or website calculators to figure Calories the switch to a device with HR or power.

Still, don't compare Calorie counts with any other device or method. Just like wristwatches before the advent of networked time signals, no two will have the same.

I read a lot of things, don't believe most of them.

I just did a random calorie calculator I found on the web. Based on my input from my last ride it said I burned 1,200+ calories, my bolt shows I burned 819.
I'm not saying it's accurate, but it's definitely not 4x high in my experience, or 2x. Or even high really.

Also it depends on the specific piece of hardware. Some power meters report signals in very strange ways resulting in oddball readings.

Wahoo themselves have been fixing them as the pop up. Just today my Bolt got a firmware update that included fixes for 4 different powermeter issues.

https://support.wahoofitness.com/hc/...rmware-Updates


Wahoo is at least transparent about what gets fixed in what update...as opposed to being left to guess at what "Edge 1000 firmware 14.60" improves on.

Elemnt/Bolts are bug ridden. They had much more issues than any Garmin Edge I used. Yet Wahoo gets put on a high pedestal. This update still does not fix issues with SRM power meters... They gave up.

Regarding the 1000, how much more info do you need to know? No every little issue will be listed. Just major fixes.

Edge 1000 Change history

Uh-huh.

The point of change histories...is to let users know when a known issue is fixed. " Fixed an issue that could cause Bluetooth disconnects. " tells no one anything. This being the Edge 1000, a computer renowned for hating to talk to iPhones and iOS--I'm guessing such a change is about iPhones--but who knows?....Garmin leaves you to guess.

"Bug ridden" is relative. Powermeters are being annoying, but other than that you have to look for bugs. As opposed to every year old Garmin I have had that was still crash prone until about Year 2 of firmware updates, they've improved things quite a bit. Not perfect, but getting there.

???

Are you suggesting they are converting the units incorrectly?

Err.

You are talking about the power value (which should be less than the "calories burned").

kJ are the units European use for "calories burned".

"Power output" and "calories burned" are related but not the same thing.

???

Calories (kilocalories) and kJ are different units for the same thing (work/energy).

"Power output" and "calories burned" are not the same thing (but they are related). Converting between the two isn't straightforward.

Converting numbers expressed in either units is straightforward.

I don't have a power meter.
I'm not sure any calorie calculation is accurate no matter how it's calculated. The important thing is that whatever device/method is used is precise so I have a reference and then I adapt to that.

Accurate is returning the same number every time with that number being correct.
Precise is returning the same number every time.

For example a scale - If I want to lose 10 lbs. it really doesn't matter if my scale is off by 5 lbs., as long as it is off by 5 lbs. every time I step on. I can still track my weight.

I don't know how you would really calibrate Kj. Best case, it's a really bad estimate. Even if you somehow calculate it using a power meter, it's going to be a pretty bad estimate. Sort of like Strava's power estimate, I swear it's low even when I have a tailwind. I have a power meter, but it doesn't do ant+ so I have to compare.

I looked at the elemnt google group, and some of the things worried me a little. However, for my application, which doesn't involve any sensors, it seems to work pretty well. And feel like they will keep working on the issues, maybe some of the people with older sensors will be out of luck though.

I saw a post today from someone selling a garmin touring for $20. They said that they didn't want to sell it to anyone they liked. Someone responded that they thought Garmin support was going to hang up on them when they were seeking help with their 820. The answer was, "out of warranty." Heh.

To a large extent, I believe the focus on Calories/kilojules expended for any activity session is pointless. Especially if Calories consumed is not tracked. But there are no accurate methods to determine exactly how many Calories we eat either. Nor can we assume that we all digest our food and receive all the Calorie potential in them.

Do you believe that your 85 grams of apple have the same number of Calories as the 85 gram apple I just ate because a chart said an apple provides x amount of Calories?

I wouldn't nix my purchase of a sporting device on Calories if I liked the way it dealt with other features compared to other devices.

Referring to the units is confusing.

It might be less confusing to refer to the thing being measured ("power output" and "calories burned").

Since humans don't convert "calories burned" into "power output" with 100% efficiency, the two won't be the same ("calories burned" will be larger).

Power and calories
There's been some other threads about calorie calculations using a power meter.

There have been many tests / reviews with 2, 3, or 4 different power meters on the same bike. They usually match up very well, often within 5% of each other. So I think the power meters are quite accurate. Different software rounds and smooths the data with different formulas, so the totals for the ride are usually a little different.

Lab tests measuring CO2 output, etc, can calculate calories burned quite accurately.

From this article "convert watts to calories"

The efficiency of calories to useful work is around 20% to 25%. The other 75% to 80% is wasted heat!

One joule is defined as one watt per second. One (kilo)calorie is 4.18 kilojoules.

Then, since the conversion to useful work is about 1/4 (25%), calories burned are pretty close to kilojoules. No math needed. This is a lot more accurate than estimating using heart rate, or road speed & elevation.