Not good news, part a billion: Stages

[Philster]

Interestingly, Power Meter City isn't discounting Stages product. They just have a pretty low key warning that you may be out of luck if you purchase.

[Mr. Pink]

Damn. I'm not a power meter user, but I was in the market for one of their indoor spin bikes, which my gym uses. Love them.

[weiwentg]

Originally Posted by Philster

Interestingly, Power Meter City isn't discounting Stages product. They just have a pretty low key warning that you may be out of luck if you purchase.

Imagine if they wrote a similar low key warning about the accuracy of the native Shimano PMs.

[benb]

Originally Posted by Philster

Interestingly, Power Meter City isn't discounting Stages product. They just have a pretty low key warning that you may be out of luck if you purchase.

Didn't know about this site.. cool.

It is interesting looking through there that there are plenty of other options but Stages seemed to have stayed pretty affordable right up till now.

For me personally I would really like to continue to use cranks that actually matched whatever group I picked that just have the PM added. Either OEM or something like what Stages or 4iii do, not stuff that is a completely new/different crank design that doesn't match anything else.

[FriarQuade]

The bike industry is a giant game of Jenga at the moment. Most of the big guys are turning the corner on their inventory situation but it's going to continue to play out for a while. From the inside, you're always waiting for spring and hoping that will fix all your problems. When it doesn't you're out of options. I imagine there's a couple more of these announcements that will come before mid summer.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by benb

For me personally I would really like to continue to use cranks that actually matched whatever group I picked that just have the PM added. Either OEM or something like what Stages or 4iii do, not stuff that is a completely new/different crank design that doesn't match anything else.

There are power meter cranks that will completely match the rest of the groupset from all 3 major makers (Shimano, SRAM, Campagnolo), but there are serious disadvantages to all 3 options. Shimano's power meter crank has major accuracy issues, so it is more of a power guesser than a power meter; the SRAM power meter crank appears to be accurate and reliable, but it is disposable - the power meter is built in the chainring, so when the chainring is worn out you'll need to replace the power meter; and Campagnolo's new power meter is not only very expensive, but first reports are that it has poor accuracy.

The next closest option is to use OEM cranks with replaceable spiders, and use an aftermarket spider. Several SRAM cranksets have replaceable spiders, and there are multiple makers of SRAM compatible power meter spiders (both 3 bolt and 8 bolt). The same crank arms used in Campagnolo's power meter cranks are also used by SRM and Power2Max, so these will also closely match Campagnolo drivetrains. For Shimano, the only options I'm aware of are Stages and 4iiii, which will mount their power meter modules to OEM crank arms. A single sided crank arm system will be cheaper, but it may provide less accurate results if a rider's legs have different power outputs; a double sided crank arm will be more accurate (and can show how much power is contributed by each leg) but will be more expensive than a spider based power meter.

[prototoast]

Originally Posted by Mark McM

There are power meter cranks that will completely match the rest of the groupset from all 3 major makers (Shimano, SRAM, Campagnolo), but there are serious disadvantages to all 3 options. Shimano's power meter crank has major accuracy issues, so it is more of a power guesser than a power meter; the SRAM power meter crank appears to be accurate and reliable, but it is disposable - the power meter is built in the chainring, so when the chainring is worn out you'll need to replace the power meter; and Campagnolo's new power meter is not only very expensive, but first reports are that it has poor accuracy.

Sram offers 3 types of power meters, one that's built into the chainrings, one that's built into the spider, and one that's built into the spindle. Only the chainring power meter is inseparable from a wear component.

https://www.sram.com/en/sram/road/pr...levancy&page=1

[Likes2ridefar]

Originally Posted by prototoast

Sram offers 3 types of power meters, one that's built into the chainrings, one that's built into the spider, and one that's built into the spindle. Only the chainring power meter is inseparable from a wear component.

https://www.sram.com/en/sram/road/pr...levancy&page=1

The $483 option is tough to beat. Rock solid in my experience.

[unterhausen]

When I looked at the "brands" page at Power Meter City, that clarified things for me a little. That's a lot of brands, it's not like Stages was competing against 4 companies anymore.

[mtb_frk]

DC has some further details.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2024/04/...ZE3RH_776lm6FW

[benb]

Originally Posted by unterhausen

When I looked at the "brands" page at Power Meter City, that clarified things for me a little. That's a lot of brands, it's not like Stages was competing against 4 companies anymore.

Right, and when you have the situation where everything is outsourced to Taiwan this is actually a pretty simple system once everyone knows how to build them. You are inevitably going to have new brands come along.

PMs started out as niche things that were so expensive because they required a bunch of new engineering and development, at some point we hit some kind of inflection point and they have become commoditized. The computer parts were probably fairly expensive to develop 20-25 years ago, but now it's all commoditized and my guess is something like a stages barely has $25 worth of electronics in it and all the R&D for new stuff is a much bigger component of the cost.

If we end up with a bunch of Asian brands that cost less but work just as well as everything else those will cost less and there will be no real reason not to use them, especially if they are just tacked onto Shimano/SRAM/Campy cranks or spindles or spiders or whatever.