Tipmart

Talking about bike trainers with a friend last night and I told him I was going to buy a wahoo kickr system. He told me I should look at the Elite system as they also have a climbing accessory. I'd honestly never heard of them, any thoughts?

build quality?
user friendly?
works with zwift?

thanks

PeteHski

Elite are a well known, experienced player in the trainer market. I have an Elite Direto X that’s about 3 years old and it was great value for money. There are a couple of newer models now and I would say they are comparable with their Wahoo equivalents.

While Elite trainers are usually good value for money, their climb accessory was very expensive at launch. I don’t know if it is cheaper now, but it was a lot more expensive than the Wahoo climb.

kcjc

I got their gen 1 Drivo at the end of 2016 and been very satisfied. It's the only trainer with a power meter and it is very accurate. Their current top end line up have same optical power meter but not as accurate. The whole time Elite issued only one firmware update so that one can adjust the time step for power smoothing. Similar gen Wahoo is probably on it's 20th or 30th update to correct power reading. To my knowledge, Elite is still operating the same, they just works out of the box and to their stated claim. The added bonus is I never needed to zero reset my trainer.

The bad. Only think I wished was that my trainer was more responsible to power jumps, erg and sim. On Zwift, I noticed a 4 secs lapse between grade changes and the adjustments is muted. Same lag on erg and slow power adjustment (how fast the resistance ramp up or down). I recently change to the Hammer 3 when they were selling it for $400. It has similar lag but kicks in harder. Think of it as being in the big ring vs small. (My Drivo still working but doesn't support FTMS and I was giving MyWhoosh. It's a backup for now.)

Line up wise, current top offering from Elite is in between the Kicker and Core. To bad they aren't offering the Drivo.

Tipmart

Thanks for the reply. Their climb accessory is $350 more than the Wahoo so I'm looking out for deals to see if I can pick one up cheaper

PeteHski

Yeah, I think Wahoo makes more sense if you are adding the climb functionality. Otherwise Elite trainers are generally pretty good value (at least here in the UK). You might also want to consider the Zwift Hub, but it is not compatible with any of the climb accessories (it has a fixed non-pivoting hub design).

Sy Reene

FWIW, the Elite stuff is markedly less expensive shopping overseas, while Wahoo is not. A Justo + Rizer would run about $1600 delivered. A Wahoo Kickr + Climb about $2k incl sales tax.

Tipmart

i noticed that. There's a place in Spain that ships to the US although I think I would feel safer buying here if something goes wrong with it

Sy Reene

That's fair. Expensive but fair. I have read, though not sure how current this is, that contacting Elite for support, they haven't typically cared where you bought the equipment.