Same here. My ATOM was a big time disappointment, and soured me on the Wattbike brand for the foreseeable future. At least they took it back for a refund.
I’ll tell you how disappointed I was…
A week after returning mine, another arrived at my door unannounced. No contact from wattbike, just arrived, no extra charge, no nothing.
I was so annoyed with it in the first place, I rung them up and pointed out their mistake and told them to come and take it away!
Of course I always would have returned it, but it shows just how disappointed I was in it that I wouldn’t even consider trying to keep it…even if I wasn’t charged for it!!!
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I hope Wattbike will release a v2 of the atom, without any unnecessary features like shifting. Basically just a smart trainer with an adjustable bike built in. And with a price much closer to the smart trainers, of course.
That would sound perfect to me. I’m not sure if I care about shifting. I’m enjoying hearing the Atom comments and they reflect what @gpl and Ray said. I’m a bit surprised Watt Bike haven’t managed to address it in later firmware updates.
I’m shocked Neo thinks that is a good price when I would think Watt Bike has set the standard. Given the Atom issues I would have thought they would challenge them head to head on price.
A dedicated smart trainer costs the same or more than a smart trainer plus a left-over bike, and still leaves you with the wrong saddle, the wrong bars, the wrong crank length and the wrong geometry. If you don’t care about the issues above, you already own a Peloton bike, and TrainerRoad is meaningless to you.
In other words: no market.
just reading some older threads and saw this.
I came to cycling last September. I bought a Wattbike Atom after flirting with Peloton, etc. A colleague introduced me to Sufferfest and TrainerRoad.
The Atom is a great trainer with TR, I’ve never used gear mode, all training in ERG with the TR workouts. It does have a few shortcomings such as being able to quickly adjust between two users (saddle fore/aft). Also it didnt seem to cope with low power interval when my wife started - intervals peaking about 100W with low valleys would see an increase in resistance!
Otherwise, I would recommend. ( my FTP from ~190W to 270W in 5 months).
It’s really convenient. The tri bars hold your iPad. It is mounted on wheels for some maneuverability. I put some thicker bar tape on.
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Nice increase in power. You must be doing something right.
I agree the Atom is probably perfect for TR and/or its own hill climb app.
However when you are paying a premium price, I really would expect it to do everything flawlessly…or in fact even doing resistance mode “ok” would be a start!
The Zwift experience with the Atom is just completely unacceptable from my point of view.
I wouldn’t be paying over £1500 just for a TR rig.
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Hello, I posted this review of the Wattbike Atom on road.cc in December 2018 and thought it may help contribute to this topic. As far as I am aware the comments are still valid one year on. I regularly use it with Trainerroad. Thanks Steve
I took delivery of an Atom a few weeks ago and have used it for about twenty hours so I thought I would share a few observations to complement the review above. I also have a Wattbike Pro/Trainer so have experience of using both. I bought the Atom because I specially wanted ERG mode which the Pro/trainer doesn’t offer.
Initially building of the Atom is very straightforward. Connecting the smart device is relatively simple but I did have some problems connecting a garmin HR strap via an ant+ usb dongle particularly using the Wattbike Hub, on Trainerroad the connection is faultless.
The Wattbike Hub offers tests, climbs, speed workouts etc. My first ride using the Atom was to use the Alpe D Huez climb workout. This worked really well with the resistance dictated by the gradient with me changing gears as the gradient increased or decreased. Perfect.
This brings me to a major disappointment with the Atom (for me at least), the gradient feature is only available in the climb workouts. If I wanted to just ride and then increase the gradient it doesn’t allow me to do this. Obviously the Atom has the functionality to allow this but this hasn’t been made available to the user yet. Also the user guide (downloadable from Wattbike) on page 10 mentions there are three action modes with the right red button :- gear mode, gradient mode mode and erg mode with the up/down buttons moving up/down the gears/gradient/erg power (5W increments). The user guide says “To switch between the modes, press the red action button on the right shifter”, this is plain wrong. In fact the whole page 10 is misleading. This may not be a problem in itself but one of the differences listed between the Atom and the Pro/Trainer is the gradient mode between 0% and 25% listed for the Atom. This may influence prospective buyers, it did with me. I contacted Wattbike about the three action modes and the gradient mode and this was their reply:- "The Gradient mode you aren’t seeing is for when you are in one of the climb sessions on the App. In a normal Just ride session you won’t see or experience that.” So it is not available to users.
A second observation concerns using the Atom on Trainerroad. Nearly all of my wattbike sessions use trainerroad. Integration is easy, however I realised that I can only use erg mode. Resistance mode is “ available” but doesn’t actually work any where near effectively to the point of being useless. I contacted trainerroad, this was their reply:- " I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately Wattbike has not implemented resistance mode for the Atom, and has not yet decided if they will actually do so. Shifting gears on the Wattbike does increase resistance, but it does not use the same standard resistance mode protocols that other electronic trainers use, which is why it does not work within our app the same way Resistance mode does for other smart trainers.
Hopefully Wattbike implements some changes to this protocol via a firmware update, but we will have to wait and see on that one.”
A potential problem related to this for potential users is the FTP tests which should automatically switch to resistance mode for the 20 minute interval to allow the user to find their best average power.
I think perspective buyers need to be made aware of what I consider disappointments and slightly misleading marketing on the Atom. In summary I would still buy one because having erg mode was my overriding required functionality but the two disappointments could be deal breakers for others.
Firmware version - 1.01.58
Hub version - 3.2.4
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I think those predicting a lack of market demand for a high quality Zwift compatible all in one smart bike will be proven wrong over time. Bad reviews and limited market availability of the atom have made it a poor indicator of true market demand, and the Neo smart bike’s excessive delays have hurt the market, but by all indications, the Neo pre-order was quite successful with demand outstripping initial production plans. It is expensive, but looking at Peloton’s explosive success at a similar price point (counting monthly, shoes, etc) the Neo pricing is not out of line. Not all Zwift users are starving college students, and many are used to spending far more on bikes, and there are clear advantages to an all in one that will appeal to a sizable segment of the market. I think many here will be surprised when the all in one market takes off once someone figures out the technology hurdles.
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I just decided to make a trainer bike for myself, but it’s going to be using a kickr. Look at how much trouble Wahoo has had, and they are better than a lot of companies that spent years with trainers that weren’t reliable. Add on top of that the need for multiple users and I would say most people are better off with a bike and a trainer on a rocker plate.