Powertap P1 Pedals - Initial Impressions
I posted a pic on the dashboard the other day of my new P1 pedals, and a couple people asked for a review, with one asking for an "initial impressions" post. Here in the initial impressions post, which I will update as I get more time on them.
I've used a Quarq Cinco on a 53x39 crankset for the past two years. I got the Quarq used from Slowtwitch, and I had been pretty happy with until Choo Camp. At camp, I realized that, being a Girthy-American, I could use more gears. Listening to Rich talk about his preferred gearing set-up Friday evening convinced me that I needed to change to a compact crankset (I already have a 12x27 cassette, which is as large a cassette as my Di2 rear D is supposed to handle). Then on the Saturday ride, my Quarq kept cutting in and out (it was a light rain and I think the battery was dying), so I took that as a sign from above that I needed a new set-up.
Although there appears to be a long wait for the P1 pedals at some retailers, I read that Powertap was shipping quickly, so I put in the order directly with Powertap on Monday after camp, and started looking for a compact crankset and new bottom bracket. I got a note Monday late afternoon that the pedals were shipping! By Friday morning, I had the crankset and bottom bracket ready to install, and decided to "work from home" in the morning so I could get them installed and ready for the arrival of the P1s Friday at the office. The crankset and bottom bracket went on smoothly, so it was a matter of waiting on the pedals.
Pedals arrived as expected Friday so I installed them Friday evening to prepare for my long ride on Saturday. Set up was simple - install the batteries, attach them to the cranks with a hex wrench, and pair with my Garmin. I can't say enough about the ease of installation. No torque wrench or special tricks. Just screw them in tightly and they are good to go. I will say that as soon as I got them set up and paired with the Garmin, I got a low battery warning, so I ran out and bought new batteries and changed them immediately. While I do not know the brand of batteries PT sends with the pedals, the were generic and unlabeled. As for the cleats, I had Shimano cleats on my shoes but the P1s use a different type of cleats. I understand from Slowtwitch that the cleats are from Wellgo or something like that and are fairly cheap to order. I got the 6 degree float with my pedals. The non-Shimano or Look cleats could be an issue for someone that has several bikes with several pair of shoes. I may put a pair of new pedals on my road bike so I can have the same cleats, but I haven't decided on this yet.
Here is where my hiccup started. After a quick calibration, I pedaled around the block to confirm the power reading. Much to my surprise, I was getting a steady zero with no power reading. Not wanting to do my long ride on Saturday with no power, I spent significant time re-doing the set up and searching the almighty interwebs for info on the issue. I found nothing. Eventually, I got frustrated and resigned myself to riding with no power on Saturday. I was not real happy. One post on Slowtwitch mentioned that it can take a few minutes for the pedals and Garmin to start getting along. I was bummed, but hoping for the best come Saturday morning (hope really is a strategy).
Saturday morning came early and I started by making sure everything was paired still, and did a quick calibration. The Garmin found the pedals and calibrated everything, but I was still getting zero power reading as I pedaled away. Thankfully, after about 2 minutes of pedaling the power reading came on, and I was good to go for the rest of the ride. The power readings stayed consistent without any drops throughout the 5.5 hours of riding. Even after stops at gas stations, everything picked up immediately and I was good to go. Based on past efforts, the power and cadence readings seemed appropriate and consistent. While I'm not really sure what to do with the left/right balance numbers, it was interesting to see.
I did not ride Sunday morning, so I am not sure if the two minute delay will be consistent, or if it was a first-time thing. I hope for the latter. I will update this post after my next outdoor ride, which should be this Saturday. Overall, I will say the delay was a huge frustration and time-waster trying to get it sorted out, but for the ride the pedals worked and seemingly worked well. I liked the 6 degree float on the pedals, particularly with a knee issue I've been having as of late.
Would I recommend the pedals right now? I can't answer that question right now. I need to ride a few more times and see if the power reading delay still happens. If so, I'm disappointed. If not, I'm a happy camper.
I know there are a few others here that ride the P1s, so I am interested in hearing about the experience of others and whether others have had the delays in reading. JW?? Anyone else??
On another note, as it always seems to be, my Garmin 510 appears to have decided to die, so I will likely have to buy a new bike computer. I'm thinking of the new 520. Thankfully my wife has not asked me how much I spent on the sport of triathlon these past few weeks!!
Comments
I had a similarly easy install on mine. Take them out of the box and tighten them on with a normal Allem wrench. I used the original batteries and still haven't changed them after a couple of months (note to self: Change batteries before IMWisconsin).
My Garmin 510 found them immediately and I've had no "serious" issues since... I have had a lot of "minor" issues that I have flatly ignored. I was previously running like 2.5 yr old software on my 510, and I was getting a LOT of error messages that would pop up while I was riding. I usually just cleared them out and never saw any problems with the output, so I just continued on as usual. Since I updated the firmware version on my 510 to the newest version, these have largely stopped. Some of the errors I received were: 63F7, 113C, B73E, 200, E5F8, F8F8, DE11 (I started taking pictures of them with my phone in case I ever needed to trouble shoot, but it must have healed itself).
I never have any problems calibrating, but I sometimes get a "Right Powermeter Missing" error when I start riding. I'm not sure if that one takes longer to wake up or if that battery is low/dead. Again, my power numbers seem "right" on every ride, so I never investigated further.
Yes, my readings take a few seconds to show up when I start, but I think that's a Garmin issue needing enough data to calculate NP. My SRM is/was the same way.
The ONLY other issue I have had is on 2 different occasions, I have had a SUPER high power spike that messes up my whole ride Avg NP. Weird because when I upload my file, the data seems normal, so I think it might be a head unit thing. I used to get occasional spikes with my SRM every once in a while so I just chalk it up to "sensitive pieces of equipment freaking out every once and a while".
Summary, I'll probably be selling my SRM and just swap these from bike to bike going forward. Would have already done so if I wasn't so lazy. BUT, I don't really see a big advantage of the P1 vs any other reliable system. If I were buying a PM for a "normal" bike, I'd probably just buy a used Quarq for half as much as the P1 and get almost the exact same utility. It takes me about 2 mins to swap a crankset from bike to bike and it takes about the same to swap these pedals. I've looked at R/L balance I think 2 times in ~40+ rides and once was 49/51 and the other was 51/49, so I think that L/R data is pretty much a novelty item.
From an "ease of use", I've pretty much forgotten the P1's are on my bike. My routine for every ride is the same (and hasn't changed from when I rode my P5 with the SRM every ride). Takes me about 30-60 seconds pre-ride, most of which is phone pairing stuff and sometimes waiting for my Garmin to find Satellites.
1) Turn my Garmin on, Turn my phone's Bluetooth on.
2) Spin the crank 1-2 turns holding the left pedal (then 1-2 turns holding the right pedal) [this was only 3 seconds instead of 6s with a crank based system since you only half to turn one side to wake it up]
3) Make my crank parallel to the ground and touch my Garmin screen 2x to calibrate [the parallel to the ground thing is an artifact of how I did it on my SRM]
4) open my Garmin App on my phone and start "Live Track" [for my wife's piece of mind]
5) Turn any blinky lights on, mount my bike and go, press start on Garmin once moving.
My follow-up comment is that I really like the pedals. The initial delay that I had has not happened again, and both my Garmin 920 and 520 pick up the pedals right away. I have not seen any power drops or other problems that I've read about on certain blogs and forums (other than the occasional "right power meter missing" message, which is meaningless). Regarding the delay that I had with the first ride, I swapped emails with the PT people and they indicated that they have heard of issues in the first couple of rides with a delay when there were numerous devices connecting at the same time. Oh well, it hasn't repeated itself, so I have no more issues. The one thing I cannot yet comment on is battery life. I understand that the batteries should last for about 60 hours, but I haven't put in that much time and I will be changing batteries as a precaution before IM Choo in late September.
The bottom line is that based on my experience so far, I would recommend the pedals if someone wants a pedal-based power meter.
Been riding on my P1's for a couple of weeks now. NO problems with my Garmin 510 or anything else.
Next week I will test them on my MTB. Ya, have to use road shoes (I have an old pair) but want to see my power numbers on a few of the NorCal mountains. Yes, mountains.
When I get my Cyclocross bike I will use the P1's on there also.
I have been using the red pedals with 6 degrees of float. Just got the gray pedals with zero degrees of float and will probably use those on trainer session over the winter.
HIGHLY recommend the P1's.
just updated my 520 & 920 firmware, looks like Garmin took care of the HR dropouts...
I am planning on removing my two Powertaps & selling them to help fund my pedals..
Also, curious how your Garmin is picking up the old PT? I do not yet have the pedals. I have it set as a power meter on Garmin which also brings in Cadence, speed, etc (though I think speed is coming from the GPS potentially) thus if you want to use the PT as the speed/ cadence sensor, you probably want Garmin to have it linked that way. Otherwise, you risk it bringing in the power data..
Hi Scott,
I get mileage from the GPS of the head unit, which in my case is a Garmin 510. The P1's provide power and cadence only, through the power profile without special configuration.
Depending on which head unit you are using; Garmin, Powertap, smartphone app on iOS (or Android coming soon), etc, if it has GPS, then you should probably delete the old hub sensor so that you are just getting a single, clean, power & cadence reading from the P1s.
You typically do need to set the crank length to get accurate reading through the head unit. On Garmin for example, that is a really simple input during setup. DCRainMaker did his usual great job of explaining setup steps on his blog that you could refer to here; http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/08/powertap-p1-pedals-review.html
For Zero reset, you can either complete that task with your head unit, or through the PowerTap smartphone app. Just note that if you use the smartphone app, you are making a bluetooth connection, and then if you are using a Garmin head (ANT+) that might cause some issues when go to connect to the Garmin the next time around. That has been my experience anyway -- I've had to re-pair back to the Garmin head unit over ANT+.
- Marc
Thanks for the feedback all. I am just using my 920xt as my head unit and just had it search for sensors to find the pedals. I am not sure how it paired, but it sounds like it is pulling in the info it should be. I will have to look at the crank length article. One other dumb question, I have no issues zeroing out the power meter with my old head unit (500), which I can go through and pair and all that if needed, but is there an easy way with the 920xt? It doesn't prompt me to do it like the 500, so I usually don't think about it.
Also, when measuring crank length, what is the proper starting point and end point?
Hi Scott, You have everything that you need with the 920XT and the P1's.
920XT will give you distance and speed through its GPS. P1 will give the 920XT power and cadence just by adding it as a power sensor. So, no need for the Garmin Speed & Cadence sensor add on. Less cost & no clutter. Awesome!
Here are crank length and zero reset. Now get out there and ride!
HOW DO I SET MY CRANK LENGTH ON A GARMIN FORERUNNER 920XT?
To set the crank length for your P1 pedals on a Garmin Forerunner 920XT, you will need to have the 2.5 version of firmware. After version 2.5 Garmin released three other firmware versions: 3.3, 4.2 and 5.2. The option to set crank length in versions 4.2 and 5.2 does not appear for pedal-based power meters that are not Garmin Vector Pedals. If your crank length happens to be 172.5mm, then you are good to go. If your crank length is not 172.5mm, your power will be off by a percentage based on the difference in crank length.
Calibration/Zero Reset:
...and crank length is measured from the center of the bottom bracket hole to the center of the pedal mount hole. Often, it is engraved or embossed on the inside of the crank arm itself.
I'm not really sure how to take that statement "The option to set crank length in versions 4.2 and 5.2 does not appear for pedal-based power meters that are not Garmin Vector Pedals". That would be evil empire behavior. If true, we should track down the Product Manager and ask that they change that policy. Or else they risk losing their loyal customers that buy many (just not all) of their fitness products.
Though I have yet to take bike outside on a actual ride, this morning I rode around the block to test the pedals out. After a quick calibration power measurement appear in about 20sec of pedaling with left/right figures showing too. I'm looking forward to taking the pedals out for an actual ride as well as testing them on my mountain bike. To be determined.
Good to hear. Been loving mine with no issues. Used the P1's on my MTB this week and it was amazing how spikey my watts get on those climbs. But fun to see how hard I work. Right/left pedal has been consistent at between 48/52 and 49/51.