“Tacx brings an entirely new product category to Garmin’s fitness portfolio that expands our reach into the indoor training market,” said Cliff Pemble, Garmin president and CEO. “Together with Tacx, Garmin will offer a seamless, enjoyable and motivating indoor and outdoor experience for cyclists all year long.”
I… can’t decide if this is a good thing or not. Not really a fan of the garmin head units so hopefully they don’t try and pull the trainers too far into the walled garden.
This is undoubtedly a move to counter Wahoo’s market share and the question may be “what does Wahoo do?” I have no hands-on with Wahoo products so someone else may comment on how tightly coupled they are but given the popularity of their trainers with 3rd party apps, it would seem like a good idea not to lock people in a Garmin-centric solution. Then again, big companies do funny things when they feel they have a big market share.
Perhaps smart bikes might come to market faster now? Tacx bike w/ display driven by Garmin tech connected to WiFi? And then in gyms/hotels? TR anywhere - sign in and go. Like it!
The Neo is pretty solid, but their mid to low level trainers have repeat issues that have not been addressed.
Overall, this may be a good thing for North American Tacx buyers, as I would expect that access to support should be better and more “local” in the end (as opposed to having to go to Tacx HQ).
I haven’t had my ear close to the ground but I have heard nothing bad about the neo. Wish I had sucked it up and forked out for a cassette and the neo at this point… by c’est la vie.
The Neo had some early “grinding” issues as a result of debris getting to the magnets. It still happens on a very rare occasion, but they seem to have the Neo pretty nailed down now.
It is far better than their Flux or the Wahoo 2018 models that are suffering a host of issues (but that is another discussion).
Every unit has issues, but from what I have seen while frequenting the Neo FB site, they are lower in issues than the current Wahoo crop, and equal or better than the other brands.
Just kidding. Their software offering is just a mess. They had a so-so, lock-in product (TTS4) that took 2 decades to bring to something almost good, and they blew it up in pieces with half the functions on iOS, half on Win/MacOS, and some half-unconnected-to-anything cloud-based “platform”. Software has never been a focus for them.
I guess the question will be does Garmin see a future in it or will they drop it completely. I only tried it briefly when I go my Vortex and didn’t find it very intuitive to use so I dropped it investigate other platforms, but had already largely settled here.