Best Smart Bike 2023 Edition

See my post above. If you adjust the pre-load that takes care of most of the slip but you can also ask Wahoo to send you the fixing bolt so you can ditch the quick-release. :grin:

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I had a gen 1 Kickr, and after it being replaced 5 or 6 times, and developing a huge issue with power stability, they bought it back and I got the Tacx Neo Smart, and I’m on my third, but it’s been over a year.

The Kickr just kept dying. I was riding nearly every day for 90 minutes or more, and one ‘engineer’ said I ‘rode it to death’. Apparently. I also killed 2 Neo 2T’s and one H3. I had to buy spares in case more than 1 was being repaired/replaced. I got so I could ‘field strip’ a Kickr and box it up in around 10 minutes.

The Neo Smart has, so far, lasted the longest between replacements, yet I did get a new one for the last replacement, and the grease had solidified in the freehub body meaning it skipped teeth like crazy. I now have the self-repair kit for it in case I need a bottom bracket or something.

Having a dedicated ‘bike’ for training is The Only Way To Go. I rotted out the Ultegra crankset in my road bike on the 2T, so now I don’t have a road bike to ride until the replacement arrives. Plus it’s so nice not to have to wrestle thruaxle installations when swapping for a little outdoor action. I’ve been looking at the Stages SB20 and Atom bikes as replacements if Garmin/Tacx stops supporting my bike.

Compared to my older Elite Direto, my Kickr Bike v1 is significantly quiter. A large part of that is theack of drivetrain noice, shifting etc.

However, my friends newer Kickr direct drive is also relatively quiet.

What i like most about it is the ease of use. No switching bike etc.

Also, I actually use the tilt function quite a lot. During longer sweetspot intervals to break them up. Or when I do standi g intervals. Or just in Zwift I like the immersion.

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Thanks - that’s useful.

Your point about not having to set up a bike each time is what’s appealing to me at the moment.

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Out of all the Kickr bikes I had, I was surprised how the sound was so inconsistent. One bike was so loud, when I sent a clip of it, I got a replacement sent right away. Some were really quiet, and some were pretty noisy. Nothing compared to the H2 I had, but still, it was the same mechanism and yet the variety was surprising… The overuse of grease on the head and seat tube mounts was crazy. (Swab that stuff out and put some fiber grip in there to stop them both from slipping)

The Neo Smart has been really consistent, and pretty much the same as the 2T (not surprising as they both have the same drive component) as well. The issue is if you need that climb feeling, or any ‘motion’. The Neo Smart is a solid no flex behemoth. If you can get that thing to rock, it’s trying to buck you off, or there is a heck of an earthquake happening). I’ve been thinking of a Saris MP1 just to make myself sea sick. It would be a whole lot more ‘immersive’ and ‘realistic’ than having no motion at all. (Maybe Garmin should have bought Saris?)

The Neo Smart Plus supposedly has more realistic shifters and some other tweaks from the original I have. I’ve been anxious to see a gen 2 to see if it really is better. The current gen 1 shifters are pretty lame, but work.

The choice for what to buy has to include support responses to issues, and at times I felt like I was being ghosted by Wahoo support. It would occasionally take weeks to get a response, and things would be ‘referred to engineering’, and months would go by to find out if anything was resolved. For ‘the most expensive bike trainer’ on the market, the quality of support was sometimes lacking. But they do have direct network connection and the Neo doesn’t.