Up until now most power meters have been a roadie-only deal, but we’ve hammered the new PowerTap disc hub off-road for months without worry.
Setting up couldn’t be simpler. Build the hub and special 160mm disc into a wheel, lick and stick your heartrate belt on, zip-tie the wireless head unit to your bars and get gone.
The pre-paired head unit will then immediately display various wattage, bike speed and pedalling speed variations (max, average,current) plus heartrate. The data the semi-carbon hub delivers is potential training gold.
The latest versions let you read out training zone and individual lap from the head unit too, while variable measuring intervals help smooth out the surprisingly varied wattage readings as your power ebbs and flows along the trail.
However, you can only display three functions at a time and the relatively small screen can be awkward to see in low light situations.
PC display is both comprehensive and relatively clearly displayed if you know what you’re looking at though.
The latest versions of the 2.4 hub use Garmin Edge 705 compatible ANT transmission too, with firmware updates available for older 2.4 versions like the one we’ve been using.
