Cycleops new powermeter, PowerCal

[AttacknowAttackoften]

Someone came into the shop during the summer talking about this. What I found neat was its ability to recognize the inability of pedaling at the summit/downhill portion of a climb. I don't know how it did it (his claim), nor did he, but we were both satisfied that it did.

My conclusion at the time was that as long as it's consistent, it would be good enough. Not good, but good enough. Not good enough to compare to others, but good enough to track fitness.

[kode54]

For 100 dollars, I just bought that and is satisfied, needed to replace my Garmin chest strap anyway.

same. i had to replace my Garmin chest strap so i ended up getting the PowerCal. it paired up rather quickly with my Garmin 800 and syncs everytime i put it on...unlike my PowerTap SL+...which most likely may need servicing.

[jaketim114]

Maybe I'm just cynical, but if it's not an actual power meter, then why bother? It may give you a guestimate on power, but what's that really worth? The whole point of using a powermeter is to have quantitative data.

[cwdzoot]

I have been using it for some time and really like it - wen't over it in a video here http://youtu.be/JRatYHlh54Y

[claus]

For those who use a Powercal: do you use it with a Joule 1.0 computer? I'm trying to figure out how to display a 3s "smoothed"" (averaged) power number instead of those wildly varying values. However, the (online) manual (20819_Joule_User_Guide.pdf) is rather useless, and the help for Poweragent points only to it for more information. Is this possible at all? If not, what other (simple) head units allow to display this?

[claus]

I wrote about my first experiences with the PowerCal.
It works well for me on climbs, i.e., consistent efforts that aren't too short. I intend to do more comparisons to see under which conditions the PowerCal matches the data from my old Polar power meter (yes, I know, it's not the most precise power meter, but that's all I currently have).

[whydobearsxplod]

Lack of power smoothing on Joule 1.0 is pretty disappointing. I believe that smoothing is a basic feature for computers with power display, especially one with power as its primary focus. I am hoping they will correct this with a firmware update quickly.

Perhaps the developers at saris have been spending too much time with powercal. To me, the joule 1.0 shows some major signs of neglect.

[Buffalo]

I have tried it with the iphone and wahoo app, but I can't get it to read the speed/cadence sensor. This is on rollers, so will wahoo not read the speed or cadence sensor?

Also the two uploads I made to strava they show a strange spike it HR to 426 BPM!! Has anyone ever seen that happen? In training peaks it doesn't show this weird spike.

[Privateer]

I can see a benefit to this. I have P2M meters on my MTB, CX, road, and TT bikes.

However, I find myself using my race bikes when I should really use a commuter, winter trainer or retrobike because I like to have a complete dataset for CTL and ATL calculations in WKO+.

This is a cheap solution to that problem. For specific workouts the P2M will still be king, but this would allow tracking of stress while also allowing me to ride whatever bike is most appropriate.

[ACDC]

I am very interested in this, pairing it with a Garmin Edge 500 as I can pick both up fairly cheap. Not entirely convinced it would be accurate during short intervals but how useful do you think it would be for using it to increase FTP during longer intervals >5 mins and steady efforts i.e. 2x20's etc. I've also read that it can be a useful metric for measuring TTS etc.

[mikeyc]

Like others have said for $100 it's excellent value. You just can't compare it to a power meter that costs 15x more. It pairs up easily with my Garmin 500 and I'm quite happy with it.