I’ve had about 10 rides on my Victory so it’s still early, but here are my thoughts.
Build quality is good for the price. Although I will say the screws to attach the legs give me a little hesitation. If you look at the Kickr Core, the legs have long bolts that go through and through the legs and the trainer. The Victory has short bolt that thread into the legs. I haven’t had any issues, they just don’t feel as robust as the Kickr Core and I wouldn’t be surprised if reports of breaking bolts came up in the future.
Ride quality is…meh. I will admit that I used to laugh when people talked about ride feel but have to say that it’s not a smooth trainer. I’ve had an Elite Direto, Kickr Bike v1, Kickr v5, Kickr Core, and now the Victory. Only the Elite was worse in ride feel. 90% of the time it’s fine, but every so often the resistance changes and will get harder. I have been dual recording with my Assioma pedals (more later) and there are little spikes of 10-15 seconds where the Assioma power jumps 30W or so. It feels like the trainer is changing the resistance like a small grade on Zwift. But I rode Tempus Fugit and turned the trainer difficulty to zero, which means it should ride like a flat road. But I would still get these changes in resistance. Just enough to be annoying on a free ride.
Last point is accuracy. It’s accurate…after it warms up. Which takes about 15 minutes. The first 15 minutes of every ride it reads around 15-20W low and by minute 15 it’s within 1W. So that means I need to ride 15 minutes before doing any workout or Zwift race. Just never had a trainer be this far off to start.
Oh, and I can’t for the life of me get the wifi connectivity to work. And I am not the only person with wifi problems it seems.
My final thoughts. If you don’t have a trainer, it’s a good trainer for $400. But I wouldn’t call it an upgrade if you already have one. If you’re using a Kickr or Kickr Core, I definitely would stick with the Wahoo. And with the recent Kickr Core sales, it would be a tough call between a $400 Victory and $450 Kickr Core. Not to mention it’s super hard to even get one. I’m hoping they’re just working through some kinks.
I picked up one of these for the wife as a christmas present, set to be delivered today. Was excited to get it set up but now I’m worried I’ll just be diagnosing issues. Should still be a big upgrade from the wheel on Saris Magnus for her, but I’ll be comparing it to my H3.
Just tried the trainer for the second time, this time just as a test for vibration… and oh boy does it have a problem. I can’t just feel it, I can hear it (last time I had headphones on). I can only imagine how bad it feels for people who are clipped in (I use flats on the trainer due to a previous injury).
I put a brand new chain on the bike when the trainer arrived, so I doubt it’s got anything chain related (chainline seems fine). Also did some power comparison testing vs my cranks, but it’s nearly 2am here so I’ll dig into that another time.
I’ll be contacting them tomorrow. Can’t use it like this, might as well just return it.
Nope, me neither. Currently running on Jetblack firmware 4.9.
If I turn off Bluetooth and ANT+ dongles and have the Jetblack connected to my Wifi network, in the Zwift pairing screen I see a Victory with an ethernet connection icon. If I select this and have a pedal I can see the power numbers changing really quickly, I’m assuming race mode broadcasting. However when I drop into the game the signal is lost instantly and won’t come back.
I can use ANT+ pairing in game however, I can’t get the Zwift Click gear changer to connect consistently today, it occasionally did yesterday. I’ve updated this firmware to 1.1.0. I’ve seen the battery level fluctuate between 25% and now 93% when it has connected. Wouldn’t it have made sense for the Click to use the bridge mode similar to heart rate monitors, that way there’d be no need for BT or ANT connections.
Using Bluetooth in game to connect the smart trainer I suffer instant disconnections when going into game mode.
If I turn off Bluetooth and ANT+ dongles and have the Jetblack connected to my Wifi network, in Trainerroad I see nothing under devices. If I turn Bluetooth on I see Victory smart trainer, today! Yesterday same configuration, I saw Kickr Dircon and Victory smart trainer when BT was on?
Looks like I can pair via Bluetooth in Trainerroad but the signal strength icon appears to flutter.
It is really hard to guage how bad the problem is based on forum posts alone.
Best to judge them after they’ve had chance to settle into production, iron out some issues and assess their support.
I noticed that there was a comment on DC Rainmaker’s review from someone in the UK who reported an issue to Jetblack and had a replacement shipped out immediately from the UK which is good.
Promised I’d do a quick update. Wife’s trainer came yesterday, well packaged and no concerns with how it arrived.
Unpacking, setting up the trainer, and initial configuration (e.g. firmware, wifi connection, etc.) was a breeze. The wife went for a short ride and was happy with the trainer.
Today I threw my bike on to give it a try.
Connecting with wifi to zwift was easy. Power/Resistance showed up instantly on the pairing screen and no connection issues
Virtual shifting with zwift cog was pretty seamless. Definitely a different feel than real shifting but probably a small advantage in zwift races (not a trainer specific thing really, but my first time trying it)
I didn’t feel any crazy vibrations like noted above. I was a bit concerned because I felt some weird buzzing/oscillations during the initial spindown calibration, but nothing super noticeable while riding
I dual recorded power, the victory was reading way under my quarq PM. I’ve tested this PM against my 4ii and my H3 trainer, and those 3 are all within a percent or two of each other. However, the Victory is consistently reading 8-9% lower. This is despite a spindown/zeroing of both power meters at the beginning of the ride, as well as a spindown after 10 minutes of riding.
Hoping the power stuff gets sorted out with firmware updates…I’ve seen on other forums people saying their Z2 rides felt much harder, thinking this might be why At least it is consistently reading low so we can scale and/or adjust workouts for my wife whose bike doesn’t have a dedicated PM. If that’s the main issue though pretty happy with it overall.
I got up and running with ANT+ here on TR after more experimenting.
I then went to the Zwift Forum and read how to push other firmware versions despite the app saying up to date. I went for 4.12. This made all the difference. I now can have a Wi-Fi connection on Zwift, but I need to do a longer ride to check its stability. It seemed OK from a quick 10-minute ride.
The click issue on Zwift was weird. After updating the trainer firmware (!) I found that I could see the Click. However, when selecting it, it hangs at connecting for ages. I found whilst it was still connecting, jumping into the game screen then out and into pairing, deselecting and selecting the Click, it would then connect straightaway and then I can go back into the game screen and change gear.
Another thing that seemed to help was deselecting all sensors in the JetBlack app, exiting, then fully closing and removing the app from my phones open app tray. I’ll be more confident in the JetBlack app when they get rid of the “Manange” and Update Typo in the smart turnblock settings
Oddly it’s the opposite for me. The Victory was reading a solid 5-10% higher than I’d expect vs my crank based PM, but it’s so cold in my garage at the moment that I wonder if that’s playing a part in it.
I did update my crank PM firmware yesterday which has brought them a little more in line (maybe better temperature adjustment?), but the Victory is still a few percent higher than the crank PM.
I’m going to put my old cassette on it today and see if that feels any better than the cog.
Edit - Have put my cassette on… pretty much a waste of time.
If anything I can feel the vibrations more (maybe as it’s more mass than the cog?). When I got off the bike I was able to see the flywheel wobbling slightly from side to side, will try and get a video but it’s difficult as the rocking of the trainer whilst I’m on it makes it very hard to get something you can see properly.
Much happier with the accuracy on tonight’s session. I think if I’m honest the problem may have been with the crank PM (I had struggled to update the firmware as the app is garbage).
Differences were on bits were I stood up for a few secs and on the hard starts. I think it was 1.5 - 2% overall which seems fine to me for steady state… though there are some bigger discrepancies in the hard starts (more like 5-7%).
Its unfortunate that these are having issues. Was looking at replacing my H3 with one when they become readily available. Hopefully they work out the bugs.
@craigmanning I was thinking the same thing, but the H3 is still holding up (knock on wood) so replacement is currently a nice to have, not MUST have. Even in the worst case I can use my Feedback Sports Omnium at which point i’ll actually have to pay attention to those “get ready to change gears…” prompts.
Should still be a big upgrade from the wheel on Saris Magnus for her, but I’ll be comparing it to my H3.
At least it is consistently reading low so we can scale and/or adjust workouts for my wife whose bike doesn’t have a dedicated PM. If that’s the main issue though pretty happy with it overall.
