- Morning Trainiacs.
This here is the Tacx Neo two T Smart.
This is the Tacx version,
of their top of the line smart trainer.
This is the best of the best.
Now, there are already some really good reviews
out there that go into the nitty gritty details
of testing exactly how accurate this is,
like to the millisecond of how responsive it is.
Those reviews are great,
but in my experience that isn't how most people use it.
Most people aren't going to take weeks and weeks
to go through every last little bit of a trainer.
They want to be able to pull a trainer out of the box,
have it work really quickly
and have it feel really good
without a whole lot of fussing around.
Now, I'm going to link to some of the really good videos
that go into the nitty gritty details,
at the end of this video, if that's what you're looking for.
But what we're going to go through today,
is what is this like to set up?
How does it compare to the Wahoo kickr,
that I've historically used as far as user-friendliness,
how quickly can we get this set up
in the course of one ride, really quickly
to be a fully functioning high-end smart trainer
that has a really good user experience
and all that good accuracy that you would expect
from a high end trainer.
I'm looking forward to this.
I've heard good things.
(upbeat music)
So right now it is 10:02 a.m.
Let's go through the unboxing starting now
and see how long it takes us to actually get this set up.
First thing you're going to notice
is that this is a very heavy box.
It's a heavy unit compared to the Wahoo,
or the Hammer H two, H three.
It's got a few extra pounds
and it's a little bit harder to move around
if you end up going from one place to another.
Manual, axle, through axle, cable, other half,
power brick of the cable.
Now it's packaged fairly nicely in the box,
but there is no handle on top,
which would make it a little bit easier to get around,
if you're trying to go from one place to another.
Otherwise, that's it, that's all you got in the box.
Pretty basic.
Now to fold it out, I think very simple.
Just like that. And, fold it down.
The reverse of that, to fold it back up,
if you want to travel, there are some tabs under here
that you're going to flip and then flip it back.
Not the worst, but one of the things
that you are going to have to do
is you're going to have to get a cassette
from your bike or the previous trainer that you've got,
or you're going to have to buy one,
if you don't want to take the cassette off of your bike.
That's going to be a cost of another,
call it 60 to 80 bucks, if you don't already have the tools
to be able to do that.
Getting yourself a cassette, it's really quite easy.
That's the handle there that I like.
All you have to do is go to either your old trainer,
or to your rear bike tire
and once you've got the tools
to do it, you need a cassette nut.
I think that's what that's called.
Pop it in, get a big Crescent wrench,
just a normal one that most people would have,
tighten that up and then here's the specific tool
that you need. You need a chain width to hold that in place.
There you go.
And then just simply, slide it off
and then go put it back on.
(upbeat guitar music)
Now that's on. We're ready to put it together
and we're at 10:17 a.m, 15 minutes.
So the footprint of this,
as far as the room that takes up around the trainer,
is pretty big.
I would say maybe 30, 40% larger than a Kickr or a Hammer.
So if you're tight on space, that's consideration
and like the Hammer, unlike the Kickr,
you're going to need a riser block,
underneath the front wheel, which is supplied too.
(upbeat guitar music)
Once you've got it settled into the unit,
you want to put in the skewer,
you want to have the lever from your skewer,
on the non-drive side, on the non-cassette side.
Now it seems like a silly thing to pick on,
but it's worth noting, we've got lots of slack on this.
So I'm about 10 feet away from the wall
and I have more than enough room.
The last thing you're going to need to do
before you get rolling on this,
is you're going to have to download the Tacx App
and we've got to connect to the trainer,
we've got to check and see if there's any firmware updates.
Seeing it pop up right away is good.
First, we've got to do the device defaults, body weight,
bike weight, and then we'll check for a trainer update
and let it run.
The nice thing about the Tacx two T,
is that it doesn't need calibration.
A lot of the other devices, you've got to do a spin down,
basically every single time you move the trainer,
or unplug it or reset it or update it.
You've got to calibrate these trainers constantly.
This you don't, it's automatically calibrated for you.
Update complete.
Two minutes to do that.
Alright, so we're currently sitting at 33 minutes.
That's about what I would expect.
Let's see how long it takes to actually get us set up
and riding in the Zwift.
You want to find me,
first name is T last name is Riathlon Taren.
And for the Team Trainiac athletes,
everyone's putting hashtag Team Trainiac after.
So we've got to pair, from the power source.
So this is where we want to see,
how well, how easy it is to pair.
So I'm riding right now, so it should be awake
and we should be able to see it.
So something I've just had to do to get it to appear,
was I had to turn the Bluetooth off
on my phone because it was connected
with that update that we did at the start.
Let's see if we can connect this with cadence.
So we've got a cadence sensor and controllable
and we are riding.
So start to finish. It's currently 10:41 a.m,
looking at 39 minutes, including a lot of messing around
with the camera, moving it to different angles.
So you're looking at about a 30 minute set up process.
Now let's see what first impressions are for the ride.
How does it actually feel?
(upbeat guitar music)
Okay. So I've been riding for about 37 minutes.
Initial impressions are good. It's a high end trainer,
it feels, I would say a little bit smoother,
like more gradual changes in the resistance from a Kickr.
You can maybe hear right now,
that it does have the feature of cobbles.
So as you go over cobbles, there's a little bit of a grind
and so far it's good.
Just the general ride feel is fantastic.
Exactly what you'd expect from a high end trainer,
but I'm going to do some tests here of really low cadence,
really high cadence and then some high power
and we'll see how the performance is on that.
All right, we're going to drop it down,
to somewhere around probably 60,
ease the feel out, 60
and it's changing right away.
And it changed and the power, picked it up right away.
That's a big thing.
A lot of trainers will end up needing some time to catch up.
All right, let's do some high power intervals
and see how they are.
So the thing I'm looking for
when I do the high power intervals are,
does it skip it all? Like, does it lose the resistance?
And that's what sometimes even the high end trainers,
end up missing on.
Try that here, step up,
smooth once it gets up there,
and let's go.
(trainer whirring)
Okay, that was good.
Now we'll try that going from a little bit higher cadence,
which is how you can really trick a trainer.
High cadence, bring it up.
(trainer whirring)
And no, no slippage, that was good.
So high power, low cadence, it's good so far.
We'll try to have high cadence.
(trainer whirring)
If anything, I would guess this high cadence
is a little high it's reading around 120
and I'm guessing it should be closer to 110.
(trainer whirring)
This is the decibel level of me talking.
So you can see that just me talking is louder
than the trainer itself.
Talking is somewhere around 70, 72 decibels,
while the trainer itself is,
(trainer whirring)
closer to around 56 decibels,
which is fine If you have sleeping people in the house.
All good. It's a couple of things that I noticed.
Let me wrap this up, I've got 16 more minutes
and totally the final few things.
Overall, Good. Just a little different,
if you're coming from some of the other trainers.
Okay. That was good. That was really good.
I've been saying for a couple of years
that whether it's the top of the line Hammer Trainer,
the Kickr Trainer, or this trainer,
it's kind of splitting hairs.
I'm glad that I was proved right, just now.
So, upon first glance, is this a good trainer yet?
It's everything that it's supposed to be,
as a top of the line trainer.
Thing to know about this, is that it's $1,399 U.S,
Whereas the top of the line Kickr Trainer is 1,199.
These are the two that are compared the most.
What do you get with the kickr?
Well, what I've always said with the kickr,
is that if you want compatibility with the climb,
where the front end goes up and down,
then you have to get the kickr.
It doesn't work with other trainers.
However, that climb costs a lot more money,
so you're into it for more than this trainer.
If you don't want the climb,
then it opens it up to the Kickr, to the Tacx two T Neo,
to the Hammer H three S, the top of the line trainers.
This is going to be the most expensive.
What do you get for that extra couple hundred bucks?
Well, in my experience, I would say
that this is probably the most road like feel,
it's the most accurate, it's the most instant,
going on Hills and feeling that road feel.
There's really no feeling at all like you're on a trainer
and it's manually adding or taking away resistance.
In addition to that, what I would say is the base of this,
with that wider footprint,
it's actually going to have more stability overall,
while still having a little bit of actual play,
which I kind of like, because you know that the entire unit
is going to be stable, but it's not like riding
on a two by four that is turning your undercarriage raw.
So I liked that a lot.
As far as the power surges, the low cadence goes,
as far as the accuracy of it all, it all checks out.
But if you want the full review,
if you want a full head to head comparison between this
and the kickr between this and an H three,
or between this and the new Tacx Flux two,
the more budget, but still really good smart trainer,
hit the subscribe button below,
because there'll be doing those in the next month.
It's good. That's how you set it up.
I expected really good and i got really good.
You'd get it too.
All right. Later, Trainiacs.