Primarily ride my road bike and have a Stages left side only power meter.
Have a gravel bike I ride about 10% of the time, no power meter.
Should I buy the right side to make the road bike dual sided, or spend the money on the left for the gravel bike?
Don’t think pedals are an option as I use and like Speedplay on the road and have SPD mtn pedals on the gravel bike.
I’m learning towards getting the dual. I seem to get the info I need from the left, but keep reading about everyone advocating for dual sided power meters.
+1 from above,
I recently bought a dual sided meter and that basically was only for the analytics. I had 2 left power meters before from stages and they worked pretty darn identical with each other on either bike.
I don’t think you can “upgrade” from left to dual? (I might be wrong.) So if you buy a dual powermeter, you can move the left only to the gravelbike (cranks permitting).
I’d rather have two left only ones, but they might not 100% read the same, because each has its own error. However, I have two left-only stages, and they seem to read fairly similar, at least my I can’t see a difference.
Buy another left or save the $ and buy nothing if you really don’t mind not having a meter on the gravel bike anyways. The point of a power meter is for pacing efforts and using power readings to track fitness changes across time.
Consistency is more important than accuracy (ie that the same meter reads within its range of accuracy ride after ride). Otherwise you couldn’t track progress and it’s useless.
People do say that you may have strength imbalances from left to right and bc left meters just get multiplied by 2, then you may be above or below your ‘true’ power readings. So your numbers might be inflated if you’re left leg dominate (and you’re sad bc your ftp is now lower) or they are under reported if you’re right leg dominant (and your happy).
The issue with this is that if you get dual and discover you have considerable imbalances, it makes you want to buy a dual again on your next bike to be able to have meaningful power numbers when switching bikes (and dual costs more money).
Single sided are typically fine for most people, and they can give good numbers. Dual (or total power) meters are better in a few ways… but not the dual meters using Shimano’s current crank design.
I’ve used dual sided pedals for years on my road bike. I bought a used gravel bike last year that has Stages left side on it. My left/right power balance is consistently 47%/53%. So doubling my left side power on the gravel bike is really about 6% lower than what I’m actually putting out.
Drives me nuts having different power readings from each bike. And I have to be careful, especially on long climbs, to remember the difference in power. Easy to kill your legs on the first big climb of a long gravel ride if you’re really riding 15-20w over target for 30-40mins.
So my advice would be for single side on both bikes. Consistency is important for ease of use.
