Affordable Power Meter Recommendations?
 

I'm new to cycling. I bought a Specialized Allez Elite at the end of June with the expectation of going on a casual ride with my wife every week or two. Then I got hooked and have put several hundred miles on it. Now I'd like to add a dual-sided power meter... without spending a grand on it.

Here are a couple options I'm looking at:
Favero Assioma Duo
Power2max NGeco Praxis

(I'd link to them for you, but I'm not permitted yet)

What are your opinions on those two options, and what other options might I be missing? Thanks!

Have you confirmed compatibility of your crank with the Power2max option?

I can tell you that I recently purchased a 4iii power meter from Europe for a significant discount from US pricing due to the favorable exchange rate. If you are willing to wait for international shipping, that may be an option to explore.

If you want affordable, consider getting a single sided unit.

I know someone who works for a PM company and he is quite knowledgeable in these matters. He admits that SS is pretty much as good as DS but they sell the DS because customers want them.

I've had a P2M NGEco for... 25,000-30,000 miles? Reliable, good battery life [the batteries are easy to find now, too - you can even get them at Target], doesn't lock you in to a specific pedal system.

For most users, a HRM is "pretty much as good" as a PM. Everything depends on what you're doing with the data.

That's true too.

I have no experience with the Power2Max. Mostly because I'm invested in Quarq after a long relationship with Powertap. So Others will have more useful input on that front.

But, between the Favero Assioma's and the Garmin XC's I chose the XC's. Really it came down to 50 hours of use verses 250 hours of use on a single battery change/charge.

I chose the dual sided XC 200 model. It required a software update & a calibration to generate believable numbers. It also generates a lot of pedal dynamics (how you pedal) viewable in Garmin Connect. Whether or not that is useful to you is anybody's guess.

I know for myself, single-sided measurement is inaccurate.

I'm on my second season using Favero Assioma (single-sided).

No complaints, they just work, and the app is easy to use.

But use the cleats that come with the pedals. I tried using Look Keo cleats, but they were super hard to clip out of.

Define “ most users “. Think of HR as a metric of what you have been doing and PM as a metric of what you are currently doing. Let’s say you are riding up a 1/2 mile hill with varying gradients. As you start up a steeper pitch and want to be sure you are either not going too hard or not hard enough HR is worthless. By the time you are done with a 50 or 100 yard stretch HR may be reflecting what you had just done but will have offered no feedback while doing it.

Consider 4iiii also. They make some good crankarm based PM's. And you can just get a single side now and the other side later as their PM's will all work together so far if you decide years later to add the other side.

However since you are a beginner, I might suggest you wait and be sure you are going to be cycling still next year. And also that you aren't just still doing casual rides as those don't seem to me as needing a PM. Also, you'll need a good cyclometer to go with it and HR info as well to make decent assessments of what you are doing. So have you already gotten a good GPS cyclometer with HR that is also able to fully use PM data?

That's interesting regarding the cleats, I have the Assioma pedals and use grey Look Keo cleats and they work perfect.

Yeah, those were the cleats I had trouble with. Maybe I got Assioma pedals that were just a slightly bit tighter than normal.

Look on Ebay for a powertap wheel that matches your bike.

The Assiomas give you a lot of data on pedal stroke and are very durable, and you can swap them between bikes where most other types of power meters are fixed to one bike. The app works great and battery life is good as well. I've had a couple of sets for more than two years, no issues with them at all. You can also now buy just the spindle so you can use Shimano cleats, but the Look cleats to me are fine.

Since 2007 I've owned and used Powertap, SRM, a couple of different quarqs, assioma's, and now have a Giant dual sided crank power meter as well... I think they are all great, but $ for $, the Assioma's are an incredible value.

What do you do when the cleats that came with the pedals wear out?

I just bought the Assioma Duo and it’s great!! Due to the exchange rate I got it under USD600.

Personally, my advice would be to NOT buy a powermeter. Not yet at least. Get a lot more miles in your legs first and get a feel for the effort required, then revisit this when you've put several thousand miles on it.

But if you must...

I'm a big fan of the Favero Assioma DUO powermeter pedals. The single-sided UNO version is probably fine. Probably. Pedal based powermeters are also easy to swap between bikes, I do this regularly.

^ I can second all of that. They simply just work, and the battery life is more than good enough.

Buy new ones... 😛 (you can buy the Assioma specific cleats online)

Watch this. The cleats are Wellgo RC7.

I have Vectors. Garmin doesn't sell replacement cleats, so I use the Look ones. That's very cool you guys have the option! I didn't know anybody did that. 🙂

Power2Max. Perfectly reliable, simple to use.

I used SPD-SL pedals before but since I don't want to assemble my own Assioma spindle + Shimano pedals combo I went for the Assioma Duo (Look Keo). Surprisingly I found that with the supplied cleats, it's quite easy to clip in and clip out, or I should say just the right about of force. My previous Shimano pedals always felt a bit too tight.

As I posted above Shane Miller did a test on the supplied cleats vs. original cleats and found that both the Xpedo / Wellgo RC7 cleats that come with the Assioma Duo, and original Look Keo cleats, can clip in/out of the Assioma pedals without problem. But just in case if you find any problem with the original cleats, you can always buy the Xpedo / Wellgo RC7 as replacement, they can be found quite cheap online. However, I had some poor experience with their RC9 SPD-SL cleats supplied with their R308 SPD-SL pedals before - the rubber parts wore out in no time. So far the RC7 looks good (well anyway Look Keo cleats don't have a lot of rubber to begin with).

https://stagescycling.com/en_us/product/sale
Watch Stages "sale" section. That is where they dump over stock, old stock, and blemished units and some really good deals pop up on there at times. I scored a 5800 left side crank arm PM for $200 last year.

Yes they do, I just bought a set from Excel

If it weren't for an old foot injury, and lacking confidence that I'm applying pressure even, I would most likely go with SS to start.

Yeah, it's the only spider PM that I'm confident is compatible with what I have (Praxis Alba M30 direct mount 5 x 110 BCD)

I've looked into 4iiii, but haven't seen anything that looks compatible.

A very fair suggestion. It's possible that the magic wears off over the winter, but I doubt it will. My rides, unless with my wife, aren't really casual, and are more objective-based. I've been using an older Garmin Forerunner 230 and HRM for tracking my rides; I'll be upgrading my watch as well, as this one doesn't have support for PMs.

Another fair suggestion. But I'm a stats and data junky, and I can't help myself.

i feel like the DS is key to understand what your true output is, since you have no way of really knowing how balanced you are otherwise. and then once you know, it doesn’t seem to matter, or at least for me it has not changed at all.

but my balance is 45/55, which means a left side measurement doubled is 10% low.