I purchased a ZBike 2.0 and want to comment on my experience traing with this indoor bike here:
My Background:
I have quite a few years of experience riding on a trainer from wahoo using a real bike mounted on the wahoo-trainer.
I purchased the ZBike2.0 trainer because I wanted a
-> 1) cleanly looking(no exposed grease like on the chain of a real bike),
-> 2) relatively silent,
-> 3) being precise and reproducible in the power measurement
trainer.
-> 4) And because it was warmly recommended by my portal Rouvy.
I knew it was lacking freewheel but had accepted that.
A) Purchase and delivery were quick and to my satisfaction.
Setup was relatively easy.
Coupling to my (windows) computer and Rouvy via Bluetooth was without problem.
B) Positive experiences during use.
-> It ist surprisingly precise and realistic. I get very similar speeds and climbing efforts like on my real bike. Yet I would have expected slightly higher speeds on the trainer due to perfect digital road, a perfect digital bike and perfect weather conditions ;-).
-> Riding Rouvy workouts in the ergometer mode works flawlessly yet a little less precise and noisier in the power settings than e.g. on the wahoo device.
C) Minor Issues
-> I knew there was no freewheel. Yet the lack of that was somewhat uncomfortable. You cannot pick up e.g. a bottle from the floor without receiving punches from the pedals. So I had to put a high table next to the bike to be able to reach things I may need during the ride (keyboard, watch, bottle, phone,..).
-> The handlebars still have some small movement even when the fixation is tightened.
D) Substantial Issues
-> When the cadence exceeds about 90 rpm, I get annoying clicking sounds from the inside of the bike like two small metal parts hitting each other. Something seems to be not fixed properly or not assembled precisely enough inside the mechanical drive. Hopefully this will not result in a mechanical failure later on...
-> Sometimes the control circuit seems to crash. I had it several times that after crossing a crest on a Rouvy ride while quickly (too fast ?) shifting up the gears, the bike got into a state with grossly incorrect power rating. I felt like pedaling well over 100 watts, but the bike only showed about 35 watts. Stopping, unplugging the power and plugging in again could resolve the issue each time. Nevertheless this is very annoying.
-> The control loop on (Rouvy) downhill passages is not always stable. It quickly goes into about zero resistance (other than on a real bike on a real road or on the wahoo trainer). Shifting gears up is a little sluggish on the BZycle2.0, so I might have overdone upshifting here and there - yet still nothing happened during the first few seconds and it felt like empty pedaling for a while. Then the bike finally got in a state where I could apply power for some time. But then a minute or even non existing flattening of the descent resulted in a massive increase of resistance to the point of almost blocking pedaling for some seconds. Then again it went into very little resistance and back again. The power protocol (on Rouvy) reveals wild oscillations in recorded power and cadence after such events.
To be honest: Passing crests on the BZycle in a group of other virtual bikers is a pain and I tend to loose contact to the members of the group passing the crest using other trainers (which does not happen on the smoothly running wahoo trainer).
-> It is very hard to climb passages beyond 10%. The gears are not there and you are thrown into extremely low cadence and sluggish force pedaling. While this may be realistic for a real bike with restricted gearsets, the manufacturer could easily offer smaller virtual gears in this situation. This is only just about software and the bike can handle reasonable resistaces in principle. No one would try to get into these small virtual gears in a descent when they would technically not be available anyways.
To sum it up:
I encountered some
very annoying problems the worst of which are all basically
software/electronics problems. Those could probably be fixed by
intelligently updating the driver software by the manufacturer.
Properly setting up the parameters of a control loop (probably
a P-I-D-Loop) is no rocket science! I am waiting for that to happen
in future.
Today I somehow have learned to shift gears very
cautiously (like handling eggshells) in descends on the ZBike 2.0.
I admit that I like to train on this indoor bike and moreless tend to accept the drawbacks. Yet I would probably not buy it again with today's experience and would rather buy a trainer from another manufacturer.
I strongly recommend that the manufacturer gets his act together and fixes the control loop issues soon and rolls out a corresponding update. They may kick themselves out of business in the long run if they don’t fix such issues with their products.
The manufacturer knows about the issues. I told them in a yet unanswered purchase follow up contact several weeks ago. When a proper fixture will be rolled out and the improvement is in place I will gladly update this report and ride the Zbike 2.0 with more pleasure.
Impressum:
Michael Anders,
am Redder 91a, Klein Nordende, Germany