The bearings in my Elite Volano, a direct drive fluid trainer, died last weekend, and I need a new trainer. Basically, I have it narrowed down to the Elite Suito and the Wahoo Kickr Core. The Wahoo is a tad more expensive, and I’d need to buy an XDR driver, which increases the price difference slightly. Whereas with the Suito, I could continue to use the XDR driver I bought for the Volano. I do like the smaller form factor of the Suito (I have a small apartment), too.
I don’t do Zwift, but I do use our favorite training platform. But I reckon I would use them in Erg mode. According to @dcrainmaker’s review the Suito is a bit “wobbly” as he put it.
The other question is about vibrations: it seems the Kickr Core is quieter. My old Volano (with working bearings) was relatively quiet, but I had to put some effort into damping the vibrations.
Power accuracy is not going to be a deciding factor, I’ll use Power Match in conjunction with my Quark DZero.
What are your experiences with both? Any recommendations?
PS I have checked what the usual suspects @GPLama and @dcrainmaker have to say about them.
I think they have improved ERG in the latest Suito (T I think). My suito is the earlier version reviewed by Ray back in 2019 and I tend not to use the ERG just resistance controlled within TR or generated by RGT/Zwift. Actually I’ve used it a couple of times (but not often) with RGT and TR and its a lot better than it was initially (Im not sure where the improvement lies, firmware or Apps); I prefer though being unconstrained and going more all out at times. I went for the Suito because of its size/ foldability. Two years down the line I still think that was the right choice for me. It replaced a Muin which was quiet and this is certainly no louder and touchwood I haven’t had any complaints from my apartment neighbours.
I’ve got a Suito and my wife has a Kickr core, I’ve used the Suito extensively and love it and have used the kickr several times. I’d say the kickr is slightly quieter but not by much. There is very little vibration on either unit.
I’ve only done workouts on powermatch on them both using my assiomas and erg. The Suito takes a split second longer to respond on spikes in power like starting a v02 max interval. On longer intervals like sweet spot, the kickr holds the power closer to the target where the suito floats a bit above and below target, but at the end of the intervals my averages are the same so no big deal.
Thankfully I’ve never needed Elite’s customer service, I’ve had the Suito for about 10 months with 0 issues. My wife has had her Kickr for about 1.5 years also with no issues. I can say that Wahoo’s customer service is excellent, we’ve had a bolt and tickrs replaced by them hassle free.
I had some problems with the early version.To be fair Elite did try resolve issues (after initially being unhelpful) Accuracy seems not be 100% to me compared to multiple.other power meters, a bit of a lag in resistance change too. . Overall its not that its a bad trainer and works ok, but if i could spend my cash again i would go H3 or kickr core.
This is the stepper motor design on the Suito. It’s having to physically move the magnets in/out to change resistance. It’ll never match the Core for speed because of this. I expect Elite to be moving to an electromagnet design soon.
I went through this about a month ago, and ended up with the Elite Suito. I wasn’t sure whether the difference in noise would be significant, but… as best I can tell, the Suito is still not as loud as my fan (a Lasko blower), so it is quiet enough for me. Aside from price, the fact that it packs up quite thin was the deciding factor for me.
Power isn’t perfectly smooth, but it definitely gets me to the right average power and without any concerning spikes. I am very happy with my purchase; chances are I would also be very happy with the KICKR Core, too, except that it would be harder to pack on road trips.
I use a Suito and I have had no real issues with it. It’s not particularly loud, especially when you have a fan or two blasting. I use erg almost exclusively now with no issues, have used resistance with zwift in the past and that worked fine also. I recently started using powermatch with assiomas and it definitely lags a little bit compared to not using powermatch but it hasn’t been an annoyance to me.
My one issue was that it was making a weird knocking noise for a while, I contacted support who emailed me promptly and asked for a video. Of course when I went to get a vid of it the knocking stopped and I think my unit is a little finicky about being balanced and having the appropriate tightness on the rear axle.
I would recommend it for sure, but that said if I were buying another one and knew I’d be using it as much as I do I would probably spring for one of the more expensive alternatives.
I just wanted to give an update after a year of ownership. So far, my experience has been very good. I’m only using my Quarq for power measurements and erg mode only for Z1 and Z2 work. The stability has been fine, but I still prefer resistance mode for sweet spot and up. I think if I were using another training, I’d feel the same way. After years on a dumb trainer, it just feels counterintuitive.
One fly in the ointment, though: I noticed that the power measured by my trainer is significantly different from my Quarq. And it isn’t just an offset problem, the slope seems different, too. This difference persisted after calibrating the trainer. That wasn’t the case initially, the two power meters tracked very closely.
I went with the Suito, I should have mentioned that in my post
Since you posted, let me be more specific: at 200-230 W the difference is about 15 W, at 300-350 W around 30 W. I used the TR app to do a spin down after a workout, i. e. when the trainer was warm. I also zeroed my Quarq power meter.
