That’s what the tech support person at sram told me. Functionally the same, but the ultimate chassis has some additional machining that makes it lighter.
I have been interested in FA and would venture to try it, but from my understanding is it will only work with a Quarq power meter. Im not really willing to give up my RF crank and Favero MX2’s yet. The MX2’s are great and move between a bunch of bikes, unless im wrong and they will work with the system.
I think it’s broader than that. It’s not about the power meter it’s about opening the AXS protocol. Why can’t I, for example, pair a blip to my headlight, to change the power output? Or use it to start recording video on my Garmin Varia. It’s all bluetooth so it’s certainly possible. . . I suspect this is coming.
The axs power meter limitation doesn’t make sense to me, but there must be something special going on with the pairing or protocol. If I’m just pairing my quarq to my bike in the axs app, it’s as simple as spinning the cranks and selecting it when it pops up. I haven’t received my FA stuff yet, but watching the FA setup videos it looks like you have to manually enter the pm serial number to pair it with the FA control module. Not sure why, maybe it’s just a work in progress. Seems like any Bluetooth power meter with cadence should be enough data, but limiting it to sram stuff might have simplified the development.
No real insight, but I would guess that the axs power meter limitation is not based on a technical reason, but on a quality control/user experience reason. Not all power meters are created equal. There have been some crap ones. So if you have some old Stages power meter that throws out huge power spikes every time you do a big hit, that may tell the shock/fork to lock out at the exact moment you want the suspension to be fully open.
Now you are all upset and saying that FA doesn’t work and it’s crap, when really it is the fault of a crappy power meter. It is a very conservative approach, but it is new, expensive technology that they obviously want to succeed. I may make a similar decision if I was in their shoes.
I think you guys are looking at this the wrong way. It’s totally understandable from a product standpoint that they limit it to the quarq powermeter. They have accelerometers that read data. Other pms maybe don’t have that or not the right kind and aren’t giving the right data for FA to work properly. If you don’t have a quarq PM you can use the spindle sensor. I don’t believe that it’s just a cadence reading. There are other sensors at play for sure.
Jonathan had two guys from Rockshox on the podcast. If you‘re interested in FA give this one a listen
I wouldn’t say “for sure”. I don’t know what the compatibility issue is, but I don’t believe quarq powemeters have any special sensors. Particularly since you can use a pm that is old (pre dates FA by many years). I suspect it’s either something unique in how the data is captured or reported or it’s just to ensure they have quality control over the entire system as referenced above. There are a lot of pm’s out there and many of them suck compared to quarq.
I wasn’t able to work out what cranks the spindle sensor works with. I personally run XT cranks with XTR mechanical shifting. I’m guessing that FA isn’t an option without changing cranks at least.
Wonder if there could be an emulator to allow another power meter to pretend to be a quark.
I think it is exciting to think we are truly at the infancy of electronic suspension, right now we have (3) systems (Fox Live Valve, SRAM Flight Attendant, SR Suntour Tact). I think in the next 2-3 years we will see some really cool or killer innovation in this space.
I wonder if Live Valve is going to drop something really cool soon since the NEO protocol is being used by Fox. SR’s system is still a mystery too me. Based on what I have read or seen the LV system is the one I would like if they brought it in a wireless package that’s a little more tidy. It just makes sense with how it functions and sensor placements.
I am not so sure either the Live Valve or Tact require a power meter to be used
Personally, I wouldn’t be a fan of that. While pulling/charging 4 AXS batteries isn’t ideal, running cables to charge 4 different components would suck worse (in my opinion). And it’s nice to have a spare battery with you (and the option to pull one off the dropper, etc. if a derailleur battery dies). And I can replace a rechargeable AXS battery when it ages out (SRAM probably wouldn’t make an internal battery user serviceable). I’ve got wired di2 on my road bike and I prefer pulling/charging the batteries on my SRAM bikes vs. the single di2 charge cable on the road bike. I do plan to get one of the new 4 bank AXS chargers to avoid the rat’s nest of chargers.
I wish SRAM would release a race battery, I honestly don’t need my batteries to last a month or even several rides in some cases, I’d definitely pay the price of lower battery capacity for something that’s 1/2 as tall as the current battery
