The most accessible home trainer is the work of the main platform to use it. Zwift, in a great effort to democratize, has bet on a very aggressive price to swell the ranks of its users. But what is its Hub really worth?
The long-awaited home-trainer from Zwift, the online sports platform, is finally on the market. The Hub, that’s its little name, is launched in a booming market with a very specific positioning. Indeed, Zwift wanted to make it particularly accessible. While most of its competitors were sold for nearly 1,000 euros, a few months ago the Hub only cost 499 euros. This is of course its main advantage, but this price positioning also raises some questions. Is the Zwift Hub a cheap trainer? Is it less solid or less efficient than the models sold almost twice as much? Or is it simply the best deal of the moment for anyone who wants to cycle without leaving home.
What is Zwift? Who is the Hub?
For those unfamiliar with Zwift, it’s a virtual platform that connects thousands of cyclists and runners to each other in a virtual world, Watopia, dedicated to physical activity. To access Zwift, you need either a compatible treadmill or a home trainer. The vast majority of users use the second, which they associate with their bike to carry out training, races or simply to move. If we wanted to popularize, we could sum up the Zwift Hub to an exercise bike giving access to a virtual world with infinite possibilities. Indeed, the Hub, this is the name that Zwift has given to its own home-trainer, aims to bring even more people to the streets and paths of Watopia.
Zwift Hub: an air of deja vu
The Zwift Hub is a direct-drive home trainer. That is to say, you have to remove the rear wheel of your bike to associate it with the device. In form and functionality, this Hub strongly resembles the Wahoo Kickr Core that we tested a few months ago. But on closer inspection, it looks above all like another reference for connected home trainers, the JetBlack Volt V2. And for good reason, it is simply the same product, rebadged for the sports platform.
This should already give an indication of the level of reliability of the product. Indeed, the Volt V2 is one of the very good references on the market and is often presented as an alternative to the Wahoo KickR Core or the Elite Suito.
With its 4.7 kg on the scale, it is slightly lighter than its competitor at Wahoo (5.4 kg), but in practice this is not felt during even the most intensive training. The structure remains stable, even more so if you have taken the trouble to block the front wheel.
Even if Zwift is archidominant at the platform level, its home trainer is not a closed product. It is quite possible to use the “Hub” with other simulators, such as TrainerRoad for example. Conversely, owning a Zwift trainer does not give any advantage on the platform, either in terms of features or in-game gadgets.
Installation: simple, fast and efficient
This is one of the major obstacles when buying a home trainer. The installation may seem complex for anyone who has not already got their hands dirty, or at least removed a bicycle wheel. What’s more, the choice of equipment is defined by the type of transmission with which your bike is equipped. In other words, it is possible to make a mistake when buying your home trainer and have to go through the after-sales service box. Moreover, during our test of the Wahoo KickR Core, we pointed out the potential complexity of this installation for anyone who was new to the subject or did not have the appropriate tools.
For its Hub, Zwift has chosen to go as simple as possible and to reduce the technical steps and the possibility of error in the assembly as much as possible. Upon purchase, Zwift asks the user to choose their cassette type (8,9,10,11, or 12 speed). First difference with the competition: the Hub arrives with the cassette already mounted. It is therefore not necessary to invest in a cassette remover. The assembly is sketchy. Four screws, as many nuts, an adapter and that’s about it.
In order to support the owner in the installation, the platform recommends relying on a series of four very short, but particularly well illustrated tutorial videos. They cut out the process step by step and stop at the key points of the assembly. Concretely, it is almost impossible to make a mistake and even on the most complex stage, that of mounting the wheel, Zwift provides a cardboard template to measure the spacing correctly and not to opt for the wrong end cap.
Once the bike is connected to the Hub, simply plug the device into a power outlet for the synchronization to start. The rest is classic: downloading the application, creating an account and pairing with the tablet or smartphone. All in all, the installation is done without a hitch and it only takes about fifteen minutes to find yourself on the virtual roads of Watopia.
Train on the Zwift Hub
Once the Hub is installed, most of the actions go through the application. Indeed, it is in the settings of the latter that it is possible to associate a heart rate sensor, or to adjust the level of “difficulty”.
More precisely, it is a question of slightly changing the feeling of the effort on the steep parts of the course. By default, Zwift chooses the medium setting (50%). That is to say that if you arrive on a 10% slope, you will feel the effort corresponding to a 5% slope.
The Zwift Hub is capable of simulating slopes with a maximum incline of 16%. This is the value chosen by other home trainers on the market, such as the Kickr Core, for example, and it is already a strong incline for a workout. Admittedly, some simulators make it possible to exceed 20%, but this type of extreme settings only concerns a tiny minority of cyclists. As for the pedaling power that the Zwift home-trainer can handle, it is a maximum of 1,800 Watts. Again, this is a limit value that only certain pros can approach. Ordinary mortals will be satisfied with more down to earth values and quite related to what Zwift can simulate.
In the end, like other competing products, the Hub is a model of simplicity in terms of adjustment since it offers very little. Almost everything is based on its ability to properly simulate the efforts on the road.
Zwift Hub “driving” sensations
The sensations on the Zwift Hub are quite close to what we felt on the Wahoo KickR core, so really good, both in terms of acceleration and braking. The virtual platform’s home trainer also seemed to us to be very responsive to cadence changes, which it simulates in about two seconds. In fact, the user never has the impression of pedaling “for nothing” or outside the frequency zone required by his training.
The limit of this kind of simulators is ultimately the same, regardless of the model. When you raise your head beyond your screen, you are always surrounded by four walls (sometimes a window) and finally, the parts with a lot of elevation are certainly more painful for the thighs, but the brain retains that the bike lacks inclination. To compensate for this second point, some equipment manufacturers have developed inclination simulators, relatively effective a priori, but which will considerably inflate the bill.
The last point concerns noise. Some trainers tend to make a little motor noise. This is not the case with the Hub, which is “transparent” in this area and only lets you hear the noise of your bike’s transmission.
The Zwift Hub against the competition
Undeniably, Zwift’s advantage over its competitors lies in its price. It is much lower than competing home-trainers whether at Elite (with the Suito), Wahoo (KickR Core) or Tacx (Flux S). Moreover, it is probably not trivial if at the time when Zwift launched its Hub, its main competitors lowered their price. Indeed, the Volt V2, from JetBlack, (which is strictly the same hardware as the Zwift Hub) has gone to 499 euros, against 749 euros previously. The Wahoo Kickr Core has seen its price drop from 899 euros to 599 euros in recent weeks. As for Elite and Tacx, they have also just revised their prices downwards. Sold between 700 and 800 euros a few weeks ago, they are now barely more expensive than the Hub. If it does not revolutionize the home-trainer market in terms of design, Zwift at least has the merit of making them more accessible.
Verdict of the test
The Zwift Hub is not the most powerful home trainer, nor even a revolutionary simulator as some might expect. It is, quite simply, the home trainer with the best value for money at the moment. Without doing better than competing products, it above all succeeds in never doing less well, whether in terms of pedaling feeling, translation of power or the ability to simulate the inclination of the road. But it does so by being much cheaper than its direct competitors and much easier to install. By managing to remove the two main obstacles to the purchase of a home-trainer (the price and the difficulty of installation), Zwift has succeeded in its bet perfectly. It democratizes the accessory that provides access to its platform and compensates for what prevented it from gaining new users. To put it another way, Zwift wins on all counts.
