An Australian duo has released a new app that aims to give you a real-time power readout on a smartphone screen with no dedicated power meter required.
You’re sceptical? Of course. It took years for power meters to drop from stratospheric pricing to become anything like affordable to mere mortals, and now you can get power measurement simply using your phone? That sounds far-fetched.
Apps with similar aims already exist – like Virtual Power Meter (designed specifically for use on indoor trainers), Cykelstrom Bicycle Power Meter and Relevate. Accuracy varies; it’s extremely difficult to estimate the precise resistance you’re overcoming (due to the wind speed and direction, your ride position, and so on). For example, Cykelstrom says the average power it gives is within +/-10% of that of a crank-based power meter over the course of a whole ride on smooth surfaces, and typically +/- 25% for mountain biking, depending on trail conditions.
We’ve yet to use the new Ride app so we can’t give you the benefit of any personal experience – not even a first ride – but we can give you the story from the guys behind it.
“The app turns your phone into a full-fledged cycling computer – speed, elevation, energy – but the key feature is Real-Time Power, estimated from the phone’s own sensors rather than a hardware meter on the cranks,” says Dean Lusk, the builder of Ride. He and Ride designer Jono Allison have been friends since childhood.
“The goal is to be the best cycling computer out there. Not so much a Strava alternative, but a Garmin without the need to buy a Garmin – or the expensive pedals. Power accuracy is not quite on the same level as the dedicated hardware solutions, but it’s close enough to train and track with.”
Platforms like Strava already estimate power for a ride using information about your weight, speed and elevation change, but not in real time. Strava only applies its estimated power algorithm after you’ve uploaded your ride, and this calculation relies on your uploaded GPS coordinates, elevation gain, speed, and weight. We tested it out last year and found the results to be variable – pretty good in certain circumstances, but no threat to a dedicated power meter overall.
The biggest difference with the Ride app, of course, is that it aims to give you a power figure on your phone screen as you ride.
Big question: how does the Ride app come up with the power figures it displays?
“It’s primarily a second-by-second physics-based approach,” says Dean. “We take GPS data, altitude, weather, rider height and weight, ideally some bike info for best results, and add a bit of special sauce.”
Special sauce? Intriguing, but we’re not privy to all the details. Ride can also provide real-time cadence estimates.
How accurate are Ride’s calculations? Dean has provided graphs comparing Ride figures (shown as Ride Real-Time Power) with measurements from Favero Assioma PRO RS-2 or Assioma DUO pedals.
On this ride, for example, the overall average power measurements were within a watt of one another, although the average is only ever a small part of the story when comparing power. The peaks and troughs seem to be greater (generally) with the Favero pedals in this instance.
The average cadence suggested by the Ride app is the same as the figure provided by Favero. Although the figures diverge occasionally, they’re pretty close most of the time.
That’s in no way intended to be a detailed analysis, by the way. We’d want to collect our own data before making any sort of comment on performance, and we’ve not had the chance to do that.
Who is the Ride app aimed at?
Dean says, “I know that in the short term, hardcore roadies will have no interest in mounting their phone on their bike, but the way high-end Garmin devices are trending in size and capabilities, it might not be long until there is little discernible difference between a phone and a Garmin, so I take a long view on that.
“And today, there are lots of serious cyclists who already have a Garmin, Wahoo, etc but don’t currently have a means to measure power, and Ride’s Pocket Power feature lets you transmit real-time power and cadence from Ride to a BLE-enabled [Bluetooth Low Energy] head unit, and have it read on your device as if coming from a traditional power meter. So even for cyclists who don’t like the idea of mounting their phone, I think there is still a broad use case there.
“In the immediate term, I think people most likely to be drawn to Ride are cyclists that are just starting to learn about the value of knowing their power as the key metric of cycling, but maybe aren’t ready to spring for the expensive hardware to get it. The nice thing is that, if they ever do decide to go for the full setup, Ride fully supports BLE power meters like the Assioma range (including Cycling Dynamics on the Pro RS series), so they can keep using Ride if they want to.
“I think it might be a similar story for those who aren’t already invested in a specific ecosystem – Garmin, Wahoo, etc – but see the appeal in a full-featured device, but perhaps not in the £700 or so for a top-end Garmin.
“That said – and I feel like I’m getting a little sales-pitchy – my goal really is for Ride to appeal to cyclists not on the basis of value, but because it is quite literally the best cycling computer you can get.”
Any limitations?
“It is not yet optimised for drafting, so to get realistic results while drafting, there’s a manual toggle to help the algorithm along,” says Dean. “Our test group is quite modest in size, and high-power riders are underrepresented, so we may well find that there is some tweaking required to give folks with an FTP [functional threshold power] of 280W+ optimal results.
> What is FTP? 7 key facts to learn about functional threshold power, a major training metric
“At launch we’re lacking routes and navigation support, as well as workouts, but they are both just around the corner and will be top priority post-launch, and we will be shipping improvements as fast as humanly possible. So hopefully we’re not too far off being able to make that a genuine conversation.”
As mentioned above, we’ve not tried the Ride app for ourselves so we have no input on its accuracy – other than to say that any app of this time has to make a series of estimates and assumptions.
The Ride app is launching now for iPhone, with a beta Android version coming out early August and a full Android launch by the end of the month. It is available as a free trial, but longer-term pricing is £9.99 per month or £59.99 per year. A ‘lifetime option’ is £199.99. It’s 50% off during the Tour de France to celebrate the launch. There’s also another launch promo; lifetime purchases start at $1 via the ride.app website, with the price increasing by $0.50 every time someone purchases.
Head over to ride.app for more info.
