Tacx Neo Smart Bike Issues with Power

I have had issues with the overall feel of the bike from day one. At lower watts it’s feels okay, but ramp that up a little to around 220 watts or higher and the feels is all wrong. My FTP is 260 watts, I can hold that power for 20 minutes no problem, no effort or sweat. I can hold 320 watts for 6 minutes. But trying to do 5 minute intervals of 220 watts was unmanageable.

It feels about 20% harder than it should and generally feels like cycling through water. There’s no feeling of free movement that you’d find with a chain on a regular bike. It’s just constant hard resistance. Also constantly feel like I’m chasing power: cycle up to 250 watts and it starts pulling you back down, so you put more effort in, back down again, more effort and so on until it’s completely unmanageable.

For the price I paid for it, I am huge disappointed and unhappy that I am a guinea pig that’s bankrolling you guys while you slowly figure out how to actually make your product work. It’s firmware is at 0.4, not even full release. Imagine buying a new car where only 2 of the gears worked and they reassured you that they’d slowly but surely fix this over the space of a year.

As a result my training is completely messed for the year. This is after making huge progress using a Tacx smart trainer and Zwift for years. So it’s not like I’m new to this. I know how it feels at different watts, and this isn’t right at all.

  • I fully agree - did 2 workouts today, flat and with a little descent and it doesn't feel right! I’m very disappointed...normally if you drive flat and stop pushing and Watts the cycle should run smooth and not needing constant Wattpressure to keep speed. But with the Neo you can cycle -5% downwards and still need to push 200 Watts tonget 30Km/h! Thats way of being realistic...

    I expected more!

  • Exactly, what’s really ridiculous is that my Tacx Genius was perfect. It spun up like mad going down hill so you had to go up All the way through the gears, just like being outside. This doesn’t do anything close to that.

    but no responses on here, no reply from Garmin. I emailed technical support and simply got the usual “is the firmware up to date”, “video yourself riding for us”. But really, what will that achieve. It works as they have intended it out of the box. It just doesn’t work very well. So until they fix it with an update, it won’t improve 

  • I have a similar issue - trying to figure it out.

    Do you also feel the pedal stroke being less smooth than it should be? For example, standing up is almost impossible for me - the pedaling is just so choppy.  It's really bizarre - impossible to hold a standing ride, like it's trying to constantly adjust resistance or something.

  • A little yes - the best way to describe hows its "working" is that if I ride up to say 250 watts, my cadence will be like 80. Then it instantly starts dropping power so I have to keep spinning up. When I hit 110 I end up having to go up the gears. The power still continually keeps dropping unless I keep going up through the gears or increase my cadence and effort to ridiculous levels. This is in ERG mode.

    On my TACX Genius, I could (in erg mode) pick a middle gear and just stay on that gear permanently. I didn't have to keep shifting constantly. Its beyond annoying. I have an almost £3000 waste of metal sat in my house.

  • I think our issues are a bit different.

    Mine does something similar to yours as well, but I thought that made sense. On the road, it takes a lot of power to increase cadence on a certain gear, but then holding it takes less (think about going from a standstill on a high gear).

    My issue is that the pedal stroke is choppy. For example, if I ride standing up, I'm constantly hitting air pockets if I don't maintain extremely perfect 360degree pressure.  I also have an "ERROR" message on the display.  Further, if I plug it in, even just tapping the petal causes the engine to run for minutes (maybe indefinitely).

    It's like my bike thinks I'm going downhill or something. 

  • That doesn’t sound good, sounds to me like you need Garmin to ship a replacement. Have you tried going onto the Tacx utility app and clicking the reset to factory settings? 

  • ik heb precies het zelfde probleem heb alles geprobeerd bij 150 watt is alles normaal maar daar boven beginnen de problemen 

    normaal kan ik 220 watt 20 min volhouden nu is dat 150 watt ben er ook wel een beetje klaar mee heb ook geen plezier van deze dure uitgave 

    kan ook nergens iet vinden hoe ik dit moet oplossen met de tacx app geen fout meldingen 

    hoop dat jullie iets weten hier van of dat tacx het probleem oplost 

    groetjes jean 

  • Idem hier , als ik bergaf rij moet ik even goed watts blijven trappen of ik ga automatisch trager rijden ....,

    is natuurlijk ook een Workum maar niet echt realistisch met buiten fietsen.

    Nu heeft hij af en toe een lawaai dat lijkt of ik op een betonmixer zit . Het komt van de crankas , lijkt me .

    hopelijk hebben ze een goede naservice bij Garmin !?

  • Any update on this issue?  I just bought a used tacx neo 2t and yes, when doing a saved pre-workout with my edge 1000, when riding z4 (AROUND 245 WATTS) at 20 sec approx it starts making it impossible to pedal on a good cadence. Even I stand up but it looks like if I am not making it ot the target power

  • Interesting to read this. I'm in the market for the Tacx or Wahoo smart bike and based on all the reviews the road feel of both of these were supposed to be close. I went to a large bike shop that have both of them on display and went for testing. I was hoping for the bikes to be rather equal, as the Tacx is a lot cheaper over here (2600 vs 3500). But the differences are (unfortunately) massive based on my short test. The Wahoo has a very natural roadfeel. Also a very natural free spinning mode. It does what you expect it to do. You can also happily cruise along. When I tried the Tacx, the feeling is rather weird. Like you are continuously fighting the bike and need to feed it to keep it moving. It is sluggish and feels very heavy, thick, like ploughing through mud or so. At 90 rpm it is sort of ok, but when you lower it to 60 rpm it even feels heavier - even though the watt output is lower. Like you have to work to get the inertia moving again of this virtual flywheel. I was wondering whether I'm the only one, but apparantly not. I will try another shop to see of the model on display was faulty or. But reading from this, you also seem to encounter this experience.