Hi, I want to invest in a powermeter. Ideally, I could use one for my three main bikes: a road, an MTB, and a gravel bike. I live in Mexico, and the road quality is ‘variable,’ with sometimes quite a rough terrain and steep slopes (+ altitude ~2,000 m.a.s.l.). Do you have any recommendations on a portable solid option between bikes? My bike computer is a Wahoo ELEMNT.
Favero Assioma for road and gravel , Favero Assioma PRO MX for mtb
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If you accept to ride MTB cleats on all three, Favero Assioma PRO MX is a solid option.
Maybe check before if your Wahoo has bike profiles that allow setting different crank length. It’s almost sure that crank lengths will differ in between those 3 bikes and crank length must be correctly defined for Pedal power meters. If your head device does not support bike profiles with different settings, you will need to remember to set the crank length every time you move the pedals to another bike.
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Thanks for the critical hint about crank length! Indeed, they are different. Is it necessary to have the MX-2, i.e., sensors on both pedals or is the MX-1 option sufficient? I want to have realistic readings, but I could live with an error of, let’s say, 10%. I want to track and evaluate my fitness, and I’m not a professional athlete training for a competition.
In that case, single sided is good enough. The measurement is solid on both single and double sided. But if you have a known L/R imbalance, the ‘true total power’ can be a bit of.
In case of a L/R = 48/52, you would get 96% of your true power output.
Not really important for a fitness athlete, the trend will always follow correctly.
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Once you start tracking your power, you won’t tolerate 10% error.
Thanks for posting the question, I’m wanting to start tracking MTB power too.
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A slight novel here, mostly echoing the points made above. I went on a bit of a journey with power meters last year. I started off with buying a Stages Power L meter in the pedal arm for my MTB. I chose this as I didn’t want to have the power meter in the pedal due to any possible pedal strikes. The Favero stuff claims to be safe against this but you never know. The actual electrics on the Stages one is fairly safe halfway on the pedal arm.
The downside of a pedal arm/crank based solution is that isn’t not really portable across bikes unless you have the same groupset types, pedal arm length, etc. It’s also slightly more annoying to transfer than pedals. However, you can have different pedals for it. As I have started to prefer larger platform pedals with spikes in them so I can ride better in the more tricky parts of my trails, and often ride only semi clipped in on those sections, the pedal arm based power meter suited my use better. If the Favero MX had more pedal body options, I’d have gone for them.
I had a slight concern with only having a left based power meter wondering how off it would be. But then I got an Elite Direto trainer for separate reasons, which showed my L/R to be 50/50 within 1% tolerance on my training sessions overall, so that’s taken care of that part of my concern. Maybe you can go to a local gym or other training facility where they have such machines to check your balance. If makes more sense to get L/R if your legs are not quite equal. If you are riding on technical trails, it’s likely your power delivery might also depend on physics a bit as you will position your body and legs.
Having said all this, I’d probably still recommend the Favero for your use case as the MX series would be fine for road, gravel and MTB, and it’s hard to beat the portability of the pedals. But do keep in mind that maybe your requirements for MTB and road would be a bit different.
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If that 10% error is consistent and you don’t compare to someone else, it doesn’t matter. You can still follow your progress.
Even if you use a considered ‘accurate’ power meter, you need to pay attention when comparing. Most have specified accuracy of +/- 2 or 3%. If one is 3% high and the other is 3% low, the total difference is 6%.
Most of us amateurs will use a power meter to measure personal progress. Consistency is way more important then accuracy.
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Thanks a lot for all your insights, especially @MedTechCD and @dublet. Also, @THCamden has a good point: if you start measuring and monitoring, you might get (overly?) ambitious about accuracy. However, consistency between the activities is more important to me than absolute accuracy (I’m an analytical chemistry scientist by profession). Currently, I’m using the VAM as an indicator. Today, my peak VAM was ~1,000 at an HR of 176 (I’m 50 years old and ride at ~1,700-2,000 m.a.s.l.) for a steep part. Anyway, then I need a brake until my lungs and heart operate normally again. Climbing, I can maintain ~400-500 VAM. The recommendation of @Manuel_Oberti and @MedTechCD for the Favero Pedals seems to be a good choice. Based on your comments and rethinking the ‘why’ I want to measure power, I have concluded that installing a permanent power meter on my road bike only might be the better solution. Indeed, my Wahoo ELEMNT cannot manage different bike profiles (thanks for mentioning this ‘detail,’ @MedTechCD). Changing pedals is fast. Still, I’m using quite ‘odd’ pedals (including traditional cage pedals for using regular shoes when riding to work), and I’m relatively happy with them. The MTB and gravel tours are with different folks and more social than training rides; I’m usually alone on my road bike tours. Thus, I will look for a reasonably priced yet reliable power meter for the permanent installation on my road bike (Shimano crankset). Ideally not produced in the USA 
. Of course, any recommendations and experiences are welcome.
It really does depend on whether you have a power imbalance between your legs. Reading on other forums and confirming with my experience, if yo do have one it will likely change depending on a number of factors, intensity, cadence, standing or sitting and level of fatigue. In my case I have an average imbalance of about 55/45 (L/R) but this hides a greater variance at lower intensities and virtually an even power output at threshold and above. At mid Tempo my left leg could be doing threshold and my right endurance. 
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Power meters are addictive, once you start you might find yourself eyeing up power meters for all of your bikes…
dcrainmaker has always got very thorough reviews, for Shimano 4iiii is a good option if you wanted something pedal arm based. Stages is having some financial difficulty at the moment, so you may get a bargain there. He’s also got a round up of some pedals, though from a couple years back so it misses the Favero MX.
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Finally, I ordered Favero Assioma MX-1 pedals and Marvic Gravel SPD shoes. This seems to be a failsafe combination, and I will start using them. Thank you a lot for the helpful discussion!!!
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At low intensity I am at 55/45 also left dominant. The difference decreases with higher intensity and levels out around FTP.
Tried arch support in my shoes and experimented with lower saddle height and altering saddle fore/aft but set it back where it was because the difference remained the same.
The arch support in the shoes did massively improve foot cramps, so that was not a waste of money.
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Great Choice. I have two sets of Assiomas for 4 and 3 years now and they work flawless 4 Times a week.
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Thanks for taking advice the members (like @MedTechCD) gave you! (there is just one solution for using one (1) powermeter on multiple bikes with different groupsets/sorts/kinds/brands and that is a pedal-powermeter). Still not ideal, but the most cost-effective! (I like to grab one of my bikes and go…But that cost me a rib and liver)
And it is a good choice IMHO!
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I am late to the question. But I will give my insight. I had Favero Assioma fo like 5 years sold them to a friend who is still using them and bough the Favero pro mx 2. They already have almost 10.000 km, Road and gravel and technical MTB. I have hit them against rocks several times pretty hard, they have been submerged in river crossing. For me they are the best option for doing everything.
You can still update in the future for the mx2. Sometimes I have up to a 4% imbalance most of the times y have 50%-50%. For me is good to know when I have imbalance, I have realized It is when I am overtraining or stop doing my strenght exercises.
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Love my mx pro (left only). I’m not riding crazy terrain but has still taken a bit of a battering on the gravel bike (you become a lot more aware of what your pedal hits when it costs £££) and still works really well after about a year and 1650 miles / 140h according to intervals.
I really like the auto-calibrate feature - ie you don’t have to remember to do anything - just ride.
I don’t really care about LR balance as I just use as a guide to my overall fitness over time (which basically has plateaud) and to use as a guide for pacing etc. plus it’s a lot cheaper and less to charge (that said I don’t seem to need to charge that often - must be a handful of times - and when I do it’s mostly for safety).
One thing I’ve seen in the app is if you know your LR imbalance you can enter the figure so that your single sided logged data is closer to true value - within the context of all the discussions above about limitations such as variability etc which I don’t claim to know anything about.
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Something you might want to consider, getting a 50/50 split on one bike doesn’t mean that is what you will have on a second bike. Setup is VERY important. If the fit of the bike is not correct, you can get different ratios. If you are doing a comparative study, you can be comfortable with comparing readings from the same setup. But Bike A and Bike B with different set-ups can give different readings. I use Wahoo Zero pedals indoors and outdoors on two different bikes. My balance on the outdoor bike is 49/51, but using an old frame on my Kickr indoors with different geometry, I get anywhere from 50/50 to 45/55 depending on where I adjust my seat height and reach (changing the seat position). I get consistent reading at the same setup position, but different readings for another setup. The adjustments are relatively minor, less than 10 mm. That said, the differences here are rather minor to a casual to semi-serious trainer. It is the tread that is generally the most important in my opinion. I’m 80 years old, ride 500+ hours and 8000+ miles a year and I think that probably qualifies me as “serious” and I’m satisfied with those kinds of results.
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One more vote for the FaveroAssioma… I bought to sets of just the ‘cores’; set the both up w Shimano SPD pedals… one for road/gravel single sided; the other with the Shimano model EH500 that has clip on one side, platform on the other. The single sided stay mainly on my road bike; the double sided move back and forth between gravel and MTB.
Be sure to check out the iPhone/android app and become familiar with it before traveling or using them abroad … it has some quirks but is completely functional… when traveling with them, you need just the app to park them in sleep/standby mode, but a charger cable is needed to wake them up… also IIRC, a few functions with the app require INTERNET ACCESS… which could be kind of lame if you happen to be off-the-grid… like in remote mountainous areas or third-world gravel!
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Respect man! I sure hope I will still be able to do that in 20 years from now…
Guess the secret is to keep moving and taking good care of body and health.
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