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CycleOps
9400 Electronic Trainer
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Submitted by
Brian
a Racer
from Isle of Palms
Date Reviewed: January 3, 2006 | | Duration Product Used: | 2 Years | | Price Paid: |
$699.00 | | Purchased At: | Bike Shop | | Strengths: | Easy to read display, pre-programmed workouts, best midrange power trainer hands down, integrates with powertap wheelset, tech and warranty support is a real live person you talk to that day!!! | | Weaknesses: | Cadence cable would be better wireless. | | Similar Products Used: | Powertap, Cateye | | Bike Setup: | Raleigh Prestige Road bike | | Bottom Line: | I'm returning to give a 2 year recap review. I've gone from a Sport MTB rider and a Cat5 road racer to an Expert regionally ranked MTB racer and a Cat 3 road racer in two years. Could not have been done without this trainer. The trainer has gone through at least three high intensity workouts a week for 104 weeks. I've sampled every workout on the display and these are great to break up the monotony of the sprint or hill intervals. Ergometer for the power meter is on within 10 to 15 seconds of steady state and on in 2 to 5 seconds for quick accelerations.
What's greatest about this trainer is the tech and warranty support. The support at Saris is OUTSTANDING. The best I've worked with in any business. I had warranty work done to this unit and it was out and back in no more than ten days including shipping days. That absolutely rocks especially when you have designed power workouts in your training cycles.
Next up on the review is the pc adapter. I'll put it through it's tests and put out another review after complete. | Value Rating: Overall Rating: |
Submitted by
Tucker Snedeker
a Racer
from Chicago, IL USA
Date Reviewed: April 9, 2004 | | Favorite Trail: | Mount Snow VT | | Duration Product Used: | Less than 1 month | | Price Paid: |
$650.00 | | Purchased At: | Alfred E Bike | | Strengths: | Works Great. Great price/feature value. Easy to setup | | Weaknesses: | Charges for new courses, USB not supported without third party adaptor (same for Computrainer) | | Similar Products Used: | Computrainer, Gamebike | | Bike Setup: | Road bike/Mountainbike | | Bottom Line: | Great product. Great value.
This product rocks. It was super easy to setup. With the exception of the 30 dollar serial to USB adaptor, everything I needed was right there in the box and easy to configure. After trying a few different Com ports in the Netathalon software, I got the USB adaptor working and everything else was super smooth to get going.
Product doesn't have spinscan feature (which tells which leg is producing more power and how smooth your spin is) that Computrainer offers. Other than that I don't see much difference in the way of features. You can only set up one trainer per computer as well, which is perhaps the only other big negative/difference vs computrainer. If you plan to always train with someone else like a spouse, perhaps it's worth the extra dollars for a Computrainer. You can race against some one via the web or a Lan setup with two computers with the Cyclops but can't hook two trainers to one computer out of the box.
Trainer measures and captures heart rate, speed, watts and includes some nice easy to use software that graphs ride performance based on these metrics. Also has some coaching software for further analysis and training which I haven't yet played with.
Comes with about 4 courses and additional courses can be downloaded via the web. Each new course is between 10-20 dollars. I think Computrainer offers these for free, so that's a positive for the competition, but for the 850 price difference I'll take the Cyclops and buy new courses as I need them. Even if you bought ten new courses right away, you still save yoru self 650 dollars!
Fluid trainer is very quiet and resistance is great. Also allows you to do web racing over the internet, something not offered by the competition. All in all this product is a great value and one I highly recommend. | | Value Rating:Overall Rating: |
Submitted by
Brian
a Racer
from Lexington, South Carolina, USA
Date Reviewed: March 3, 2004 | | Favorite Trail: | Catawba, Charlotte, North Carolina | | Duration Product Used: | Less than 1 month | | Price Paid: |
$500.00 | | Purchased At: | Harrell's Bicycle World | | Strengths: | Easy setup, minimal moving parts to break, no power cords, steady resistance, quiet, simple user interface, pre-programmed workouts, transfer rides from Powertap wheelset to trainer to mimic rides. | | Weaknesses: | +/- 10% variation on power as opposed to computrainer and srm cranks of +/-1.5-3% variation. | | Similar Products Used: | Ciclosport HAC4, Minoura aluminum rollers, Minoura Inner Rim trainer. | | Bottom Line: | The CycleOps 9401/9411 Electric trainers come in the standard Cycleops box and is Forrest Gump easy assembled within five minutes. The various parts that come in the box are: 1 Power Unit, 1 Cage, 2 data cables (1 density port cable to transfer data and power to the user interface, 1 barrel cable to record cadence), 1 cadence magnet, 2 O rings, 1 L bolt, 1 straight drive bolt with locknut, 1 skewer, 1 bolt action tube, 1 bolt action handle, 1 handlebar clamp, 1 handlebar console. The entire unit is self contained which means there are no power cords to plug in to an electric socket. The handlebar console has a Lithium Ion battery pack that is recharched by the power unit when the rider actuates the power unit.
The user interface is easily navigated by two directional buttons and one enter button on the keypad. The setup routine allows for five riders to be recorded into the internal database to track saved rides and run an algorithm for power workouts. The algorithm depends on a rider setup database which defines age, sex, weight and 'sounds' criteria.
There are four Fitness Tests: Max Power, LT, Ergometer, Aerobic Time Trial; four Interval Courses: Sprint, Pyramid, Criss Cross, LT; and five Standard Rides: Jumps, Flat Track, Steep Hill, Long Hill, Heart Rate Control. All of which sound exactly what they intend to deliver. There are three view modes during an active ride they are: Current View, Average View and Max View. Once again they do what they sound like they do.
The trainer is extremely quiet and delivers smooth resistance changes when controlled by either the user or a program. There are 20 levels of resistance to choose from on this trainer. The technicians at Graber state that the unit has a max sustained power setting of 700w and can record power output at a lab tested (not defined) 1100+w. Max sustained means that after 30 seconds the unit automatically gears down resistance to match 700w. I was able to sustain 694w for no longer than 10 seconds without my heart shooting out of my chest and across the room.
I really only have two gripes thus far. One is there doesn't seem to be an easy access port to swap out battery packs. You'll have to break apart the handlebar console by removing four #2 phillips head screws to service the batteries. This is an assumption as I'm not about to break that bad boy apart. The other is that the cadence unit assumes that you don't already have a cadence unit strapped to your steed. This cadence magnet is HUGE compared to normal bike mounted units. You have to finagle your cadence receiver and magent around to get within the 5mm transmit area to take advantage of the RPM reading on the user interface.
Lastly, the only difference I could see between the 9401 and the 9411 was software, heart rate transmitter and a PS/2 cable to upload your ride data. One cool factor feature of the 9411 so I hear is that if you have a Powertap wheelset, then you can download ride data from your Powertap to mimic rides on the trainer. I'd have to test that before I believe it.
| Value Rating: Overall Rating: |
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