EB17: Power2max brings full featured, dual leg powermeter under $500 for road & MTB

Written by Tyler Benedict Sep 02, 2017 2:50 a.m. ET

power2max NGeco crankset budget power meter

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If the price of power meters has been a deterrent, you’re running out of excuses. The new Power2max NGeco spider-based power meters offer dual leg measurement, cadence, temperature compensation and long battery life starting at $490. And the unit can be upgraded in the future to match most of the features of their $990 NG model.

The NGeco doesn’t get quite as much time on the calibration dyno, so they’re claiming +/-2% accuracy (versus 1% for the NG). And it gets a slightly downgraded version of temperature compensation, but it still has it. And it still measures total power from both legs (can be upgraded to measure left and right independently). Integrated accelerometer grabs cadence without needing external magnets or sensors.

The only visual cue that it’s the NGeco (for “economical) is the rubber battery cover. The NG uses a fully sealed rechargeable battery to get 150 hours. The NGeco uses a thick coin cell battery, but ups that to 400 hours run time. The cap looks simple, but they say they’ve ridden wet, muddy mountain bike trails and haven’t had any issues. It transmits in ANT+ and Bluetooth, with options for the following cranksets:

The options without cranksets are those that offer direct-mount chainring/spider solutions, letting you slot the power meter onto your existing cranks. The others require a physical disassembly in their German factory (the NGeco is made in-house), with a permanent fixing of the power meter. In instances where you want to keep your Shimano chainrings (like shown up top), they pair that with Rotor or FSA cranks.

There’s also new mountain bike power meters that replace the Type-S and use their latest internals. They’ll have NG (blue cap, left) and NGeco options for these, too.

Like the road, there are FSA solutions for non direct mount cranksets. The spider accommodates a 104bcd 4-bolt chainring, with spider options to fit Race Face and SRAM direct mount cranksets.

Available in two months for MTB, road versions are available at end of Sept.

Power2max.de

Tyler Benedict

11,206 articles

Tyler Benedict is the Founder of Bikerumor.com. He has been writing about the latest bikes, components, and cycling technology for almost two decades. Prior to that, Tyler launched and built multiple sports nutrition brands and consumer goods companies, mostly as an excuse to travel to killer riding locations throughout North America.

Based in North Carolina, Tyler loves family adventure travel and is always on the lookout for the next shiny new part to make his bikes faster and lighter.

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Cherk Chup

6 years ago

(can be upgraded to measure left and right independently)

Think twice before you are going to believe in that.

Charles Trotman

6 years ago

€50 upgrade per feature is bit rude though

Tim

6 years ago

Why the dumb comment without an explanation?

Cherk Chup

6 years ago

go figure how independent LR power measurement is done on this product, then you will know.

btw according to your logic they haven’t explained so BR is dumb too.

Bryan

6 years ago

Reply to Cherk Chup

I don’t know the real answer but I think you may have partially answered it in your first post… The unit can be upgraded to do L/R. Doesn’t “upgraded” imply that more hardware could be added to get all sorts of advanced metrics?

David R.

6 years ago

Reply to Bryan

Or they use different software, to provide readouts of data that is already there. Upgrade via license key?

Cherk Chup

6 years ago

Reply to Bryan

Bryan, that’s exactly most people would think that upgrade means more hardware could be added (maybe strain gauge on NDS crank upgrade) or the original hardware to be modified somehow to truly measure left and right power independently.

There’s only one group of strain gauges to measure power down-stream of both left AND right legs. So by no means there could be independent LR readout.

I hope BR could do more to educate us the readers. I like BR and that’s why I hope they could improve.

Jordan

6 years ago

Reply to Cherk Chup

FWIW, this will work the same it it currently does. It does not measure them independently, it simply differentiates power from one half the circle to the other and assumes the power is L/R. This is probably a decent but not great assumption.

Matt

6 years ago

Reply to Cherk Chup

Because from D.C. Rainmaker —
“So why don’t I care about left/right power balance (which the ECO lacks)? Well because in the case of how the Power2Max measures it, it’s not real. It’s actually not left/right balance, but rather whether you’re pulling up or not. You can easily trick this by simply single-leg pedaling, and you’ll note the unit totally misses that. Compare this to true left/right balance capable units like the Verve Infocrank, ROTOR 2INPower, PowerTap P1, Garmin Vector, Favero Assioma/Bepro, and so on – which actually measure the left and right sides.

As such, since it’s giving you useless power balance data – then it honestly doesn’t matter. Plus, I virtually never look at power balance data when doing ride analysis. The only place I think that’s valuable today is injury recovery, and in that case you *really* want to have legit left/right numbers.”

Sascha

6 years ago

The problem is that the spider has no way to differ between pushing on one side and pulling on the other. LR measurement with a spider powermeter is always an approximation.

Penn Teller

6 years ago

Ray Maker (DC Rainmaker) is wrong about this. He’s an IT guy, not a mechanical or biomedical engineer, so I don’t really fault him for it.

This system (insofar as it’s described) can report net L/R power with reasonable accuracy. That’s not the same as the absolute power from the left and the right independently, for sure. But if you care about pedaling “balance,” you get that info out of this meter.

Plenty of studies have shown that cyclists, even pros, don’t actively pull up on their pedals (except for unique situations such as kilo starts on the track and when actively trying to). The consensus is that it’s more biomechanically efficient to lift each leg with the downstroke of the other leg than it is to lift each one independently.

Since the muscles in your upstroke leg are relaxed during the upstroke, the net power for any given stroke is equal to the output of one leg minus the power required to lift the other leg. If this net power matches between left and right, then your pedal stroke is “balanced.” If it doesn’t match, it’s not balanced. Who cares about the absolute power output from each leg? And even if you had that information, what would it tell you that the relative output doesn’t?

I realize that a balanced pedal stroke sounds like a good thing, but what benefit do people imagine they get from going from, say, a 57/43 balance to a 52/48 balance? Again, it sounds better, but what’s the benefit? And if there’s no clear benefit, why do you care?

CXisFun

6 years ago

Reply to Penn Teller

God d*mn it, stop bringing reason into this! As you said, we’ve seen a rider is far better off concentrating on pushing hard(er) than they are wasting energy (mental and physical) pulling up on the back stroke.

Tim

6 years ago

Reply to Penn Teller

Great argument thanks. Yes that’s the way I see it and it appears to be aligned with the thinking of sports scientists hence I don’t get the silly snarky remarks that some spew on this website.

DCR

6 years ago

Reply to Penn Teller

Unfortunately, you’re simply wrong. And any person in the cycling power meter industry will tell you this – even if an IT guy or a mechanics guy. Even Power2Max themselves will tell you this straight up. It’s purely a marketing gimmick they have to implement. It doesn’t measure what you think it measures. Heck, even ANT+ and others have considered renaming this specific metric somehow, because of exactly this reason.

What’s funny is you say that ‘Plenty of studies have shown that cyclists, even pros, don’t actively pull up on their pedals’. Except, um, that’s not true – they don’t show that at all. In fact, one only needs to look at pedal stroke information on other higher end power meters to see how hilariously wrong this statement is; Verve’s Infocrank can show this, as can Pioneer’s and the PowerTap P1 in their advanced software, and even Garmin Vector. Further, it’s a core reason why some people focus on pulling in the upstroke – to strengthen that. There’s an abundance of data showing people add power in the upstroke.

(Don’t confuse my above with me thinking power balance has much of a value otherwise either, but this isn’t reporting power balance and it’s so easily tricked and non-correct it’s silly.)

Michal

6 years ago

Reply to Penn Teller

@Penn Teller

While upstroke is not as significant during power phase as downstroke, it still can throw L/R way balance off . Especially during high power intervals or low inertia riding (steep climbs, indoor training) it can mess up spider based “L/R balance” data to the point it can be totally reversed (and therefore obviously wrong).

The only devices that can measure L/R balance accurately are power meters with two separate sensors for each leg (two pedals, two crank arms or crank arm + spindle combination).

Andrew

6 years ago

This could be the option I’ve been waiting for! I was about to upgrade from a Power2Max Classic to a Type-S with their current upgrade offer, but I’ve been sore for a while about how much better my shifting is on my other bike that uses Shimano chainrings. With the NGeco spider I could run Shimano rings on my Rotor crank and have the best of both worlds!

Robin

6 years ago

I couldn’t care less. The big thing here is the pricing on a crank based power meter that measures power from both legs. Such a crank for $490? These are the salad days for people shopping for PMs.

Tim

6 years ago

Reply to Robin

And better news is that their mtb ngeco will be compatible with Sram mtb cranks which means three bolt mount and therefore I don’t have to sell my Q156 XX1 cranks to get power via quarq

Keith

6 years ago

I love how this will help add some more industry confusion. Single sided, dual sided, and total. This is a total power measuring device, not a dual sided since dual implies two sided, this cannot differentiate. But it was a valiant try.