Originally Posted by chaadster

Interesting. I wasn’t aware of the Phantom 5 issues you experienced, and have no familiarity with it’s smart bike functionality. I have been riding CycleOps bikes at a cycling training studio for 11 years, and have used the 300 PT, 300 Pro, and Phantom 3 models for coached, power-based training, which is the basis for my insight and why I described those bikes as being in-between basic stationaries/“dumb” trainers and smart trainers.

Just using the native functionality, those bikes are extremely reliable. We’ve got about 12 of them which have gotten pounded by hundreds of riders for thousands of hours, and even the 300 PTs, which I’m sure are close to 20 years old, are still running. They’ve been maintained, of course, and there have been failures of things like clamp levers and head unit brackets, so I don’t want to paint a picture of perfection, but that’s also in a commercial use setting.

To the extent the Phantom 5 is different, I don’t know; I had thought it could be operated manually as previous and lower-line models, but it sounds like you’re saying there may be problems even in doing that, which is good to know.