Are portable met carts the new lactate testing?

[RossH4]

I’ve worked in several research labs over the years and with a number of Lab grade carts. I wanted to add a smaller unit to my coaching business and leaned on some of the industry contacts and colleagues for additional input. The biggest concern is that without a CO2 sensor you are very limited in making accurate substrate measurements, and its also nice to have it involved in the detection of VT2. So the first overall problem is you are relying on a lot of estimations from algorithms. I think the value of estimates and the cost is a bit of a mismatch. As for specific units, while I haven’t used the Pnoe, colleagues who have, told me the software calculations and calculations from raw data seem to differ quite substantially. This was a major concern for those in more of a research setting. Calibre is really interesting but I cannot see how a startup which seems can come up with sensors which are so substantially cheaper than the bigger manufactures who would love to be able to offer a portable unit but have been unable to do so. In addition the issues with condensation build up is a bit of deal breaker for athletes who have greater tidal volumes and who will be working at some intensity. The VO2Master is interesting but without CO2 I just think its too limited for the cost. All in for something portable I’ll be sticking to lactate testing for now, the value in full metabolic testing for me comes from additional substrate assessments so without a reliable ability there I dont think its worth it. I do have some hope for calibre though and I have a colleague doing some independent testing there against a COSMED quark so itll be interesting to see how that goes.