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Tacx vortex smart turbo trainer

by monkeytrousers
Sun, Jan 11, 2015 21:41
2

Has anyone got a view on these? I watched a youtube review and it seemed too good to be true.

About £300 plus the other handy bits like turbo tyre, tablet holder and sweat catcher thing makes it all seem excellent VFM.

Does it all work and what about the rides you can download and ride?

Cheers!

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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2 comments

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monkeytrousers | 9 years ago
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Thanks for the write up. Best review I've read on it!

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pablo | 9 years ago
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I have one got it for Christmas has taken a while for me to get used to it compared to my old fluid trainer. You can download workouts from tacx for free and video workouts (pay) but they aren't very well documented so you have to do research on their website. I tend to do my own custom ones anyway so not an issue and can programed in the app easily. They do several types of workout slope, power, heartrate and you can then program your intervals against each in time or distance. You can download the app and run it in demo mode by the way.
I tend to do slope and then aim for a power kind of non-intuitive but it works for me. The vortex will only go up to 7 degree slope IF you weigh under 75kg above that and it will be less (they have a table on their website) if you want more than this you need to upgrade or use higher gears to fake it which kind of defeats the point.

The app is pretty basic at the moment although tacx have promised to add features the major one being you can't export workouts to Garmin/ training peaks/ strava which is madness. I use my garmin which picks up the ant+ channels from it so not an issue for me. Budget for a Bluetooth/Ant+ heart rate strap like wahoos one its not 100% necessary but if you want to show/do a heart rate based workout it is. The ant+ stick for iPad is silly money so I bought the wahoo and use it for running also for £10 more. The iPad mount works really well you can pick it up for £30 all the other bits are unnecessary just buy the cheapest tire you can find if you want don't bother with 'special tires'.
The only real issue is it can take several attempts to find the resistance brake requiring several app restarts but when it finds it I haven't had a drop.

Really long but probably not to many real world reviews I'd give it 7/10 and with the promised software updates & fixes probably 8 if they opened up and allow trainer roads etc probably more.

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