StephenK

My gym has some computer screen exercise bikes made by Expresso. They are somewhat fun and include a full bunch of metrics including watts. But i's my impression that the effort is much more than a real "road" bike requires. I think Expresso give me 14 mph for effort a road bike would go about 5mph faster. The efforts are recorded in your account and you can even set it to upload to Strava although the heart rate info doesn't export.

Anyone use one of these yet? What did you thinK?

CliffordK

Hmmm....

If it outputs watts, then you should be able to compare the Espresso watts to an actual power meter, or calculated watts using other devices.

From the photos I'm seeing (home versions?), it is hard to say whether the bike was modeled after road bikes, or MTBs, although if you have videos, the stills I'm seeing do indicate road like entertainment. However, one might calibrates watts and speed to an average MTB rather than to a road bike.

Also, keep in mind your average road bike performance. It is easy to glance down at one's computer when one is pushing 20 MPH, and forget all the other variations in the ride leading to an average speed of 15 MPH.

gl98115

I spend a lot of time on Expresso bikes several seasons ago. The good is that the 'virtual reality' is entertaining enough to make the time go by. Also I really liked the pacer function for doing long intervals. But I don't think the speed and power numbers are accurate or precise, so they are useful for Expresso world but not transferable outside.

jpescatore

My local gym had Expresso bikes for a couple of years - I much preferred them to the standard Lifecycle kind of stationary bikes, much less boring. But, they were constantly breaking down so the gym dropped them.

I didn't find the power numbers on the Expresso bikes to be any closer to reality than any other stationary bikes but the speed as a function of perceived difficulty seemed closer to reality than the other bikes - ie, the Lifecycle kind of bikes are way over-stating "speed" and the Expresso seemed more realistic.

cb400bill

Zombie thread closed.