The Elite Zumo smart trainer this week's surprise performer in the llama lab the Elite Zumo was spotted back in 2018
In limited availability in only certain markets. It's recently reappeared with broader availability
I have ridden the Zumo a while back in the llama lab but this week I got my hands on one of the new production units
Elite aren't short on having different models of trainers on the market, and their direct drive interactive smart trainer range looks like this
With the Zumo sitting there at the top as the cheapest one in a list
so you have the Zumo, the Suito, the Direto X and the Drivo 2
Jumping to the unit specifications of the Zumo trainer. [narration of the list of items on screen]
With a spin down calibration required but not every ride. Same as most direct drive smart trainers
It's every maybe every few months depending on your usage.
Noise level is low and I'll take you through that later on in the video
Listed under "other" is a bonus round!
It has power meter link PML, which is exactly like a power match with software
But it doesn't within the hardware if you have a power meter + + or bluetooth in the general vicinity
Typically on your bike it can link to that and report that as the power that you're doing
bypassing the internal power meter. The Zumo has temperature compensation very similar, or I'd say probably
Identical to ATC for power meters where things heat up power can drift that takes it into account for power calculations
And you get 12 months of My e-training subscription with Elite.
Over to the pricing and you can see here
It is one of the cheapest direct drive interactive smart trainers out Euro €599, UK £450, USD $650 and Aussie dollars $799
As you can see from the pricing there, the Zumo is at the lower end of the mid-range budget
Direct drive interactive smart trainers but so is the Suito, and the Suito kind of muscles its way into this category
By providing a little extra value. So the Suito is only $100 more in most markets
But with the Suito you get a cassette, one month of Swift, you get no assembly required
So you have to tool around with the thing and you've got a front riser block.
So depending on the value you put on all of those it might be 1:1 for value
That is assuming this Suito can hold its own against the Zumo. The Zumo does pretty well!
All righty here in the llama lab with one of the largest smart trainer boxes that I have seen
So a lot of spare air or empty air here in the Zumo packaging, but it all ships very well
No damage to the Trainer and whatsoever. All right, lifting the trainer out now
This unit did come with the cassette pre-installed from Elite for the Llama lab.
But they don't ship with a cassette. And also my favorite tool here the Dyson stick vac (links below to that)
We have the unit of the Zumo. We have the feet. We have the quick-release
We have the through axle adapters, the bolts, the manuals, documentation and the power supply.
All pretty straightforward to put together. Let's get about doing that now after I've quickly read the manual to find out which bolts goes where.
Two bolts in the main leg here, one bolt each for each of the arms and
they do swing in and out if you were to move the trainer around or to set up your pain cave each time you
Do a work out. So it does have a handle on the back too, which is handy
All right, the feet also have Levellers on them
Just twisting those out to make sure the thing is nice and stable for the sprints in the Llama lab tests
Good to go and back to my favorite tool in the llama lab, the Dyson stick vac
Nice and clean now and we're switching this over from quick release, over to thru axle. Less than a minute to get that done.
One bonus thing of all new Elite trainers they come with extended power supply cables
You can see that they're heaps length in that to get it over to the power supply on the wall
Plugged in. Away we go, bike installed
Now you may have heard we use the terminology "native thru-axle" or this is what I mean by native thru-axle I can use
The thru axle from my bike directly on the trainer. No quick-release
conversion kit
spaces or anything
Once everything is set up you use the thru axle that comes with your bike, line up the threads, tighten it up and you are done.
Okay a quick first pedal of the unit
And with the directional mic you can hear the gear changes over almost everything else there
Pedaling away
Again, shotgun mic aimed directly at the trainer and you can hear the drivetrain more so than the trainer so it's a quiet trainer.
Not silent, but quiet.
And that freehub could probably use a little bit of packing grease but we will worry about that another day.
Next up is checking the firmware on the Zumo with the new Upgrado app from Elite on the iphone here. So logging in
Yes, we do. Want to connect via Bluetooth
We find the Zumo
It will then go off and check with the Elite servers if there's any updates for that so current firmware 191
Hardware Revision 3 and it is all up to date, happy days!
No updates required. If there was an update you'll be prompted here to follow that process.
Closing that app out and pairing everything up to Zwift
The controllable trainer we have power source and cadence all connected to the Zumo
And Its on to "Titans Grove" [route], which is a brilliant warm-up for a trainer
Undulating terrain, ups and downs
Should really heat things up with that varied terrain
Now for the ten minutes is done
We switch off the controllable train to pairing we jump over to the Elite app
The My e-training app. Advanced configuration of the trainer and spin-down
Calibrations only need to be performed every now and then, but I do do it out of the box
Just to make sure everything lines up. Ok we are spinning down
Should present us with an offset there at the end, and there we go, offset value confirmed.
We close out of that app. We re-pair everything to Zwift and we should be good to go for the power numbers
So coming to the end of the 200 watt section here from the Llama lab test into the transitions and we've got a
one
two three
I counted almost
Probably spot-on three second transition there from 200 to 250 watt in erg.
So that stepper motor pretty much on par as what we expect. It didn't really jump there straight away
But it got us to there at a nice stable value
Okay, making sure I'm in the right gear for the Sprint's and
It's on and
The Zumo had more power behind it, then I could put to the pedal so
No problems at all there for the Sprint
I wasn't in ahead of it or in front of that stepper motor and it didn't spin out.
Now onto the "Overs and Unders" section of the llama lab test and the graphs here looked pretty good
No major waves or no major overs and unders within each 20-second section. It seems to stabilize pretty well and
The transitions from low power to high power weren't too bad at all
But the truth is in the data
As always here we are on my favorite website on the internet DC Rainmakers analysis tool where we can compare multiple power meters as an overlay and
See how they stack up... and stack up
They do! This test here with a Quarq DZero on the bike the Elite Zumo as the trainer standard Llama lab test
which is getting more and more detailed as
Time goes on and as we discover more things about smart trainers in different ways to poke them
So standard warm up here over Titans Grove before the calibration and all looks pretty good there
So the responsiveness of Titans Grove which is up and down and up and down all looking pretty good
So within a few watts there those what's really tightened down after the calibrations performed at around 10 minutes
into the steady-state 200 watts and 250 watts
I'm going to skip over that little part just there where I had a dropout (be that from environmental factors) be that from
Just being a dropout. I will skip that though because it's the data from the trainer
I want to look at and we jump in here
200 watts steady state into 250 watts steady state on a
Budget direct drive smart trainer that is plus or minus 3% in its specs
BOOM! That is absolutely that's not what I expected. That is really really good
So within a few watts there overall 233w vs 237w with a spike there at the end for the Sprint
But that's looking really really good. It was a pretty smooth ride on the pedals
There's a few ups and downs as that stepper motor
Sort of centered itself at the set point it needed to be but as I was moving the pedals that was pretty good
That was the first surprise!
Into the sprint on the unit and not too bad at peak power was within a few watts
Sustained power probably a little low, but you can see that's still pretty close for the Sprint
Just riding along into the overs and unders
Boom, this is a budget smart [trainer]. It's not meant to be acting like that
It's meant to be... it's meant to give me more things to talk about with discrepancies in power 258w vs 258w
That just worked! Up into the 450w zone
The next test is the flywheel speed test
which is a recent addition to the llama lab test in which I
Set the trainer for four and a half minutes and every 90 seconds
I change the flywheel speed. Same cadence, same power, different flywheel speed by changing through the gears.
Usually what we see at the end is that trainers can't hold both power accuracy and
Resistance at a high fly wheel speed. Things just start going a little skew. Except on this budget smart trainer
So the first section here a slower flywheel speed this would have been 39
25 or 28 up the back slow flywheel speed here. Power accuracy is pretty good, holding its own into the mid-range zones of the gearing.
Medium speed fly wheel between top 35 and 40 km p/h
That's still pretty good and then here when I whack it in a
53:11 up the back you can see the spike there for me to get that flywheel on. It still reports correctly and accurately
It's a little wavier because you're on top of the gear
But the Zumo was holding it's own against the Quarq DZero
Surprising good good good, but
This is not what's happening with the higher-end units. So again the Zumo
You're surprising me!
Onto a shorter harder effort here up a small little hill. So just riding along
You can see they match one for one just riding in SIM mode
Jamming the pedals. What have we got? 700 watts there for around 30 or 40 seconds routing a little bit lower by a few watts
But given it's a budget smartphone. I'm measuring way down the back
That's still pretty good and overall there 212w vs 211w overall
It's pretty decent and then just riding along 109w vs 109w just cruising. Power wise this thing absolutely nails it!
Jumping to the cadence reporting coming from the Zumo which is calculated from your pedal stroke in your power analysis
Titans Grove is the part where things usually fall apart from here
So cadence versus the Quarq in Titans Grove 84-84 and its those up and downs
Again, they've got that working as well. That's spot on. Quickly jumping to the overall stats here, and it's happy days!
These can be influenced by dropouts and start and stops and recording intervals on head units. But look it's a good indication indoors
where you don't coast a lot.
186w versus 186w. 238 vs 237 normalized
Sprint wise we are looking within
within 12 watts or 8 Watts their maximum sprint wize. That is very very surprising for this trainer and average cadence 86 vs 86.
Job done!
After every lab test, I do summarize everything and send it off to the company for review
And I think I'll just cut and paste what I've sent over to Elite for the Zumo
so my lab tests
Observations here was within 2.7% of a Quarq at 200 watts within one point seven percent of the Quarq at 250
Well within the 3% spec plus or minus the Quarq as well. Within 0.68% of peak power and maximal sprint
That was phenomenal
The Zumo was a little low for peak sustained sprint power
so when the sprint was right up there and
humming along a little bit lower
But not as much as we've seen on other trainers and I think acceptable given the technology used and the budget this trainer comes in
at the over-and-under for 150, 350, 450 etc llama lab test was
exceptionally good for power and the ERG mode ramp changes were pretty good as well the power accuracy with those different fly wheel speeds was
Phenomenal. I've not seen a trainer pass that part of the Llama lab test
So huge tick there for the [Zumo], but can you tell I'm quite surprised with his budget
Trainer and how it's performing? Anyway, a tick box there. It's based on data
The shorter hard 700 watt effort was within two point three nine percent of the Quarq again tick box there
The only observation I have which could be seen as a criticism
Possibly was the ride feel was a little light
I needed to change down one or two
Gears on the back to make it feel like I was riding a bike on zero percent gradient. It's really spinning
I was really on top of the gear I had to crack down a few gears to feel that ride feel that I expect indoors
That's really the only observation I have we're not riding around in a 53:11 or the 39:11 anyway
So there's always a few extra gears. It was one or two down on the back and it was ok
So on to my overall summary notes again that I sent through to Elite as an FYI
how their trainer performed in the Llama lab. The power accuracy was within acceptable ranges in the Llama lab the power reporting from the Zumo isn't
As sharp on the spikes as compared to a crank or a spider based power meter
However, that's kind of what we expect cracking down the power really sharply on the pedals
You're gonna get that spike that that trainer might not pick up on instantly, but other than that, it was pretty good.
Cadence data was great
ERG responsiveness was good, wasn't exceptional, wasn't sort of punch you straightaway at 450w exceptional
Wasn't really as smooth as the [Saris] H3, but it was pretty damn close. So pretty good for that
It passed the ERG fly wheel speed tests. Nothing passes the flywheel speed test. This thing did
The ride as I mentioned before feels a little light, in regard to resistance
So cracking down one gear on the back a little harder. It made the thing feel a little better quite operation
although not silent, good ride feel not sluggish
overall a good performer for the price. Wrapping up today with my
Conclusion of the Zumo direct drive interactive smart trainer and it's a pass. It passes the llama lab test
The power accuracy was as per spec if not even better
The ride feel and ride experience was far beyond what I expected for this level of smart trainer
It actually holds its own up against some high-end smart trainers - especially with those flywheel speed tests and power
Accuracy, the Zumo still uses the stepper motor technology internally where it moves magnets physically
But it was one of the better units with these technologies that I've ridden recently if you haven't picked up on it already
The Zumo did surprise me, and I was pleased to see it pass those Lama lab tests, especially for a budget level smart trainer
So we'll leave it there for today. Thanks for watching this one.
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