Once Garmin got to version 4 of the battery doors, mine have been completely flawless. I chose them at the time over the Assiomas as I didn’t want to have yet another thing to remember to charge, I prefer being able to swap batteries out as needed. They also look better without the dorky looking pod on the spindle.
I don´t want to generalize, but basically all the owners (including myself) of Assioma pedals are happy with them and all Vector owners I know regret buying them. But my circle of friends might not be a relevant sample.
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Thanks everyone, this is really useful. It’s hard to pick apart the “problems with Vectors that are not so relevant with redesigns” from “things that might affect new ones”. Though, it doesn’t give a whole load of confidence that it took several iterations before they got a decent solution, in any case…
Have any of you guys had issues with recent Vector battery caps?
Honestly it seems like the battery door issue is a non issue now.
Performance and reliablilty wise the garmins and faveros are both good now - and both provide good warranty support.
I think the choice is just on looks and if you want rechargable or replacable batteries.
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Bought the Assiomas one year ago. I am very satisfied. Easy setup and very reliable. Works well with Garmin head unit (820) I read a lot of negative reports on the internet about Vectors (problems with battery case etc.). The only thing I do not like about the Assiomas is that they have little LEDs that blink while you ride. Covered them with electrical tape…
Long term Vector 3 owner here (3.5 years). Battery cover issue is sorted. However I still don’t think I could recommend them in good conscience. My issues have included:
- Damaged or lost battery cover and had to replace it on 3 occasions either through clipping the pedal through a corner or crashing. Count myself lucky that I never damaged the internal threads badly enough to wreck the body of the pedal as well since on each occasion the cover was knocked off or askew. Obviously my fault, but the thicker pedal body does make clipping more likely, having the battery cover as the first bit of the pedal to make contact with the ground is a bad design, and it did make me realise that a pedal is a pretty vulnerable part of the bike in which to locate hundreds of pounds worth of sensitive components.
- Pedal body coming unwound (plastic body starts to work away from the metal part that sits innermost on the spindle, resulting in pedal not spinning freely). Seems to be a known issue. Has happened twice to me and led to warranty replacements on both occasions. Did find posts on Google from people who had successfully tightened things back up and glued it, so I guess if you were out of warranty you might not be totally screwed but not sure I’d want to find out!
- Even after resolving the battery cover issues, I have still had a lot of issues with “fretting”. Batteries rub into each other or the contact points, a fine black dust forms which isn’t conductive and so leads to power cutouts. Can be mostly resolved by a drop of mineral oil on each side of the battery and/or using a double thickness battery instead of 2 batteries. But I’ve still had issues with cutouts or unreliable power, and had to reapply the oil between battery changes which is just a PITA. Probably exacerbated as I ride some pretty rough roads so a lot of vibration which I guess increases the fretting, a friend mostly uses his Vectors indoors or on smooth roads and has had far fewer problems. I dread the regular “right sensor missing” message popping up on my screen
- Seem to take an age to calibrate and calibration fails fairly regularly despite having a recent model Garmin head unit. Compounded by the fact that they seem to suffer quite badly from accuracy issues if not calibrated every ride, or recalibrated after a stop or when temperature has risen/dropped a lot since the ride started. Seems a fairly minor quibble, but annoying and in conjunction with all the other issues means I’m quite often in the position of simply not trusting the power I’m seeing which defeats the point of having a PM! New PMs from Quarq (and probably others?) now seem to auto-calibrate whenever you take a break from pedalling, that makes a lot more sense
- I don’t think they’re actually great as pedals. One of my pedals in particular seems to develop a bit of play very easily when the cleat is even a little bit worn. Can feel a little up-down movement between shoe and pedal. Haven’t been able to sort it with the tension screw. New cleat helps but it comes back within a few months. Have ridden both Look and Shimano pedals for over 20 years and never had this issue, cleat wear is something that normally I hardly ever have to think about. On the occasions when the Vectors have been out of action or sent back to Garmin (frequently!) and I put my old Ultegra SPD-SL pedals on the bike it’s just a better pedalling experience
Sorry, this turned into a bit of a long winded slight ranty essay! They’ve not been all bad or I wouldn’t have stuck with them this long. Most of the time I can get them to work reliably, and it is convenient being able to have a single power measurement source that is transferable across multiple bikes (beater road bike, race bike, TT bike). For me at least (and many others I know have had similar issues to a greater or lesser extent) it’s just been far from a “fit and forget” user experience. Seem to spend an awful lot of time replacing batteries, oiling batteries, calibrating and recalibrating, checking cleat wear, etc, all of which makes it even more frustrating on the days when I still get no power or unreliable power. As pedal power goes the Faveros do seem to be a much better ownership experience (rechargeable battery avoids a lot of issues). Be interesting to see what Wahoo come up with if or when the power Speedplays are released. I do think that unless you have a lot of bikes or are renting bikes a lot, then the crankset is a much better place for a PM and leaves you free to choose whichever pedals you want.
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Assioma. It would almost be crazy to buy the Garmins.
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I’ve owned PowerTap P1S and Garmin Vector 3. I had no issues at all with the PowerTap pedals. They were great for the money. Completely flawless, no issues at all. And really accurate. I upgraded to the dual sided Vector 3. Again, they’ve been great. I am on my second set having one warrantied, but the warranty process was completely no hassle at all. One phone call and a new set were dispatched the same day and with me in under 24hrs. The new set have been without any problems at all.
I’d have no problem highly recommending the Vector 3. (the battery door problem has been fixed.)
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I have the assioma duos for a few years now and good. Great price. Only issue is when I used to do alot of winter riding in the wet the inside bearings got washed out. The only seal for these bearings is the bearing lip seals. The pedal body does not have a seal like an o ring. So water get in easily. I e mailed Favero about this but dont know if the design has changed. Probably great for some dry European area.
The flip side of this is that the faveros are super easy to service and swap bearings if you need to - not sure the same can be said for the Garmin’s?
Just remembered also the seals on the bearings are metal as opposed to rubber which is unusual. Metal seals are not great for water ingress. I ended up getting ones with rubber seals from another vendor.
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As I understand it the Wahoo Speedplay powermeter pedals are going to be sooner rather than later. I’d hold out until they appear.
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any chance you could elaborate in this a little? I’ve not seen a squeak about them since they failed to meet the summer deadlie last year, but as a 15 year Speedplay user I’ very keen to get some!
For someone who uses SPD-SL cleats, what are my choices here?
The Assioma single side seems to be the recommended budget option from reading this thread but as far as I can work out they are not SPD-SL compatible?
No indeed, they use Keo cleats.
The main reason I prefer the Assiomas is the battery design. Using a stack of batteries in a product exposed to this level of shock and vibration is looking for trouble, and requires an access door that will always be a problem. Sealed rechargeable is the way to go. A single battery per pedal would be a lesser evil.
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I use assioma duos on my road bike with no problems whatsoever, and I use Garmin rally xc one sided on my mtb also with no problems whatsoever. I would easily recommend both pedals, although the assioma charge instead of change battery and I think that gives them a slight edge.
No debate, Assiomas.
Another vote for the Assiomas from me. Slightly different reason perhaps to most in the thread so far though, based on recent experience…
Having been in two crashes in the last month (one car pulling out and one in black ice 
) and going down on both my left hand side and then my right hand side and the pedals taking a hit both times they have continued to work just as well as before, so I’m giving a vote based on robustness!
The Assimoa Shi is their shimano offer, I think its £530 for the power meter spindles only (you also need to buy the pedal body).
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Yeah the assioma-shi spindles for spd-sl cleats - but you do and up with each of the pedals around 1cm outboard which is most likely not ideal.