Turbine Breathing System – Tester Pack

Getting more air into your lungs and therefore muscles is an obvious way to boost performance, and the Turbine Breathing System – or Rhinomed Turbine Nasal Dilator to give it its full name – is designed to do just that. As you've no doubt guessed from the name, the Turbine is designed to get that extra air in via your nostrils.

If you've ever raced, you've no doubt seen warming-up riders wedging menthol-coated cotton balls up their noses in a bid to relieve any congestion, to get as much air in as possible once the pedals start turning in anger – so there is obviously a market for this type of product.

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The Turbine works by being clipped over your septum, with the rounded parts disappearing inside your nose to flare out your nostrils and open things up. Rhinomed makes some pretty bold claims about the Turbine's performance – ones we can't clarify, scientifically at least – that it provides an increase of 38% 'nasal flow' and is 38% more effective than nasal strips, the ones you stick on the outside of your nose such as Breathe Right.

In use it feels like there is a slight benefit to your breathing when riding, but although 38% sounds a lot, many people don't actually take in a lot of air through their nose in the first place while riding. So even at moderate levels, if the majority of your inhaling and exhaling is taken care of by your mouth, any performance benefits are going to be minimal.

This is the era of Team Sky, though (Chris Froome is touted as a Turbine user), and all their marginal gains – so in some cases those benefits, no matter how small, are going to be welcomed.

What I've been testing is the tester pack: three different sized versions for you to narrow down which fits the best. Each size also has a little ratchet to try to dial the fit just a little bit more.

The problem for me, even when I found the best fitting of the three and tweaked it, was that I could still feel I was wearing it constantly, something I never found with Breathe Right strips when time trialling. Trying them both for comparison, I could find no performance advantage one over the other.

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Although I could feel the Turbine all the time, it wasn't uncomfortable; it's actually quite soft, being made from a medical grade polymer. It's more that it was quite a distraction, and it was a relief to take it off.

On the value front the Turbines work out at £3.66 each and Rhinomed quotes a total of 10 uses out of each one, which sounds about right as they do feel like they lose some tension after that. More realistically, though, you'll be buying the pack of three of the size you decide on, which ups the price to £5.66 each, or 56p per use – a little more than the nasal strips' approximate 40p per use.

Overall, the Turbines are a good choice for the racer or type of rider who spends a lot of time right on the rivet, as the small performance benefit is probably justifiable – and when every muscle in your body is screaming for you to stop, the distraction of the nose clip is probably welcome relief! If you are a congestion sufferer, or you get hayfever and ride at a more moderate pace, I'd still probably plump for the external option of a strip instead.

Verdict

Minimal gains for the financial outlay and not the most comfortable for me