Price Paid:  $1500.00 at Brand's Cyclery

Favorite Ride:
North Nassau County NY

Bike Setup:
Trek 5.2 Madone SL with Chris King headset and Polar 725 HR monitor with power.

Summary:
Everything written in the first review here is accurate except for the fact, from my experience, that the heart monitor on this unit is not at all reliable.

I use my Velodyne with NetAthlon (having attached a tv holder to the front piece where I place my computer/tv flat screen monitor) and, together, the riding is as close as possible to real, outdoor riding in today's simulated environment.

Strengths:
Stable, strong, repeatable, highly accurate simulation. Note, too, that due to the heavy weight of the flywheel, even coasting is possible.

Weaknesses:
Heart Rate monitor will often fail to register a pulse, even when installing an outside sensor and moving the sensor to all possible locations (to eliminate possible interferance).

Similar Products Used:
Portable attach to the rear of the bike Wind Trainer

Price Paid:  $2395.00 at VelodyneSports

Favorite Ride:
Any hills

Bike Setup:
My regular bike is a Trek 5900. I have a Bianchi Campione 8 speed mounted to the Velodyne.

Summary:
This is University scientific instrument quality machinery. If you are really serious about training and recognize that your efforts will be enhanced by having an accurate information flow from your workouts, this trainer is for you. For far less than the price of a used Trek 5900 you can make sure that your indoor workouts are safe, enjoyable and reviewable.

Safe? Having purchased one of the well known trainers and experienced the nightmare of having it tip over when I got out of the saddle to start crunching the gears, I can tell you it is very comforting having the Velodyne holding onto my bike. Tipping over is not an issue with the Velodyne.

Enjoyable? Let’s be honest. With the inexpensive fluid etc. trainers you have to fake it to get the trainer to resemble real riding. Who enjoys having to go up to a high gear to simulate the low gear you would be using to go up an actual hill in real life?. Even then, once you get some momentum going the resistence declines. That’s what you get with those trainers. The Velodyne gives you the option of selecting grades and it gives you no more mercy than a real hill does. It really feels like the real thing.

If you need something to keep your attention and the numbers on the display aren’t enough, Velodyne is compatible with NetAthlon.

Reviewable? Attach the Velodyne to a computer and you start a river of information flowing, ie time, distance, speed, average speed, power (watts or horsepower), cadence, heart rate, grade and calories. Transfer the data to something like Excel or Quattro and you can do anything with the data you want, eg spreadsheets, charts etc. I prepared a summary spreadsheet to track my averages for each training session so I can spot trends.

The Velodyne lets you ride preset courses or create your own courses. In all honesty, I haven’t tried this feature yet as I’m still just concentrating on the adjustable grades. I’ll update this review once I get into that feature.

If I were to make any improvement it would be to have a backlight on the display screen. It’s my understanding that the guys at Velodyne are working on that, but that is no reason to wait if you want a great piece of training equipment.

Strengths:
A precision piece of machinery. Gives you the real feel of hills. Extremely stable platform. A ton of information generated from your workout. A serious machine for serious workouts. Once you fire this up, your old trainers will be distant memories.

Weaknesses:
None that matter.

Similar Products Used:
None of the trainers that I have used compares to this. Entirely different leagues.