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IS PIONEER'S POWER METER SOLID?
Anybody in the haus with pioneer PM experience ? Considering for my next bike .... but no idea if it delivers!! Currently using QUARQ which tends to abandon me half way into the races !!!
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I'm cheap, but profligate, so I have 4 power meters: Stages (on the left crank only of my road bike) $400; PowerTap hubs (TT and commute/cross bike) about $600 + wheel; and PT Pedals (half price @ $600). They all have been rock solid. I see no need to spend more than $600 +/- for NEW power meter, less if used. Deals are always coming round.
Am I making sense? What is your experience?
Just after buying mine a few weeks ago, Powertap released their P1s pedals which are essentially single side power measurement for $699. If the cost of the P1's is an issue, you can always go this route and from what I've read, you can purchase the other paired pedal at a later point.
My Quarq Riken only measured left leg power and after looking at the data from the P1, I've noticed that my left leg is generating 1-2% more power than the right. Not sure what to do with that data anyway, but I supposed the overall average power of both legs is now slightly more accurate for me using the P1 pedals....is that worth an extra $500 to get that information?? Probably not.
What I was asking about is the fact that dual-sided or non-sided PMs are collecting twice as much data to average over the short term. Since PM data is so noisy anyway (lots of "bounce", even with 3 second averaging), I was wondering if the inherently smaller data set made that worse with one-sided measurements.
I've heard nothing bad about them other than the price.
I have the Stages on my road bike, and a PT for my TT. Since I'm not a bike racer (never done a bike race, never will. I have done swim and run stand alone races), I really don;t use the PM *on my road bike* to inform me while I'm riding. I go with HR and RPE, if I go with anything at all. Out of curiosity, and to answer your query, I checked short segments on from each PM which were totally steady (VI = 1.00, eg 159/158, 180/179, etc). While each gave the same number of displayed data points per minute, the Stages was "noisier" (wider variation between hi and low). That bothers me not a bit, as I use the PM on the road bike for after the fact PMC purposes only.
My takeaway: Stages non-drive is "good enough" to keep track of how hard I'm working *overall*. But I wouldn't want to use it during a TT/Triathlon.
I think the bigger issue with single-sided measurements is that your right and left legs can fatigue at different rates. If your balance is 50/50 when fresh, but 57/43 at high intensity or longer duration (one example I've seen), then a single-leg meter could be off by 15%. This is going to be different for each person (and can change due to injury, etc.), so might not be a problem for you.