In theory yes, buying off-the-shelf units could be valuable, but in practice, we really haven’t seen that matter in the last decade-ish. As I’ve written before, by and large, early units (not pre-prod, but just early) of almost every tech item have worse performance than later units. But more importantly, the way units are built these days with high levels of automation, it’s almost always going to be black and white pass or fail for electronic devices (specifically focusing on the manuf build quality).
Yes, there can be cases where a company has a high failure rate and they may be hoping that by doing QA it gets a reviewer one of the non-failed units - but even that in this industry has shown it doesn’t work. One only need to see the number of power meters/trainers/etc that we find issues with - it has nothing to do with the physical building of the product, and everything to do with the design/algorithm.
Where you can get into issues is prod-prod units (such as the IQ unit), or whatever, where that may have an element of hand-build to it. I very rarely use pre-prod units in reviews, and note that accordingly. In most cases, I just simply have a unit that’s in the first production batch. And again, referencing above, that almost always skews to a worse experience than a better one.
Don’t, unless you want to feel compelled to buy a third power meter
(A few months ago I found out the power numbers of my Elite Suito and my Quarq DZero started to diverge substantially. Both have a different slope and offset. In the end, I decided to just stick to the numbers produced by my Quarq power meter.)
But I’m always serious… Also the burden of proving a false claim is different when you have an agency actively regulating the market and usually placing the burden on the company to prove their claim vs having to take a company to court and the burden of proof on you to prove them wrong
You need to be able to show that one is wrong and not just the two don’t agree. Make sure you get more devices to record with too. Also a new bike too just to be sure its not the frame… :-p
It is incredible that a company like Shimano is not able to get a Powermeter properly working and then decides to still sell it a a pretty high price. Having not perfect accuracy and some issues with cheap PM is annoying but you can live with that because of the price but if you charge what they do for theirs they basically need to be perfect…
Interestingly watching GTN Tech’s video on TT bikes at UAE and the teams that are interested in TT tech (INEOS, Quickstep) are running the 9100 version of the power meter for the TT, less worse than the current gen and more important for TT’s?
I asked the Shimano AU rep at the Tour Down Under why there were so many 9100 cranks on 9200 equipped bikes. The answer was along the lines of teams not bringing their ‘No 1’ bike setups to the TdU. He speculated their ‘best’ bikes were back at the service course in EU. I think he made that story up on the spot and went with it.
The TdU being the first race of the new season always has the “Here’s what’s new in the peloton” content. All the bikes GCN covered there had 9200/9200. Their marketing was on-point.
To answer your question, the 9100 meter was still junk.
I’m aware the 9100 is still junk, in your opinion, if you had to run either the 9100 or the 9200 for a TT which one would you go for?
This is UAE, and being later in the season would’ve thought they’d have more parts if they hard them, but still running the older tech.
Or the TT is of lesser importance so the older stuff is fine.
iirc the 9100 had just the right side issues while the 9200 has inconsistencies with offset drift too. I’d have to dive back through my data to confirm.
Just wondering if anyone else can give their experiences on the accuracy with the 9200 powermeter? Similar over-reading with the little ring, etc.? Besides GPLama and DC Rainmaker, I’ve read very little on people’s experience with this powermeter. Thanks!
