Polar Power Meters???

IndyRider said:

Does anyone have any experience with the power meter produced by Polar? I know that it works off of chain tension. Is this method reliable? Would you recommend the product? Thanks.

IndyRider

Yes, yes and yes. You'll find plenty of detractors, particularly those who have spent a lot of money buying more expensive power meters and those who are trying to sell those more expensive systems.

My Polar system is very reliable and consistant. The results are easily verifiable by comparing results on hills with calculated power levels and people have done testing of multiple systems on the one bike to get comparisons and generally the Polar results compare favourable.

Any complicated measuring equipment will have errors and calibration issues and even if the absolute values are slightly different between systems, so long as the system you use is consistant you can track your progress and set training levels and Polar works just fine for this.

pod said:

Yes, yes and yes. You'll find plenty of detractors, particularly those who have spent a lot of money buying more expensive power meters and those who are trying to sell those more expensive systems.

My Polar system is very reliable and consistant. The results are easily verifiable by comparing results on hills with calculated power levels and people have done testing of multiple systems on the one bike to get comparisons and generally the Polar results compare favourable.

Any complicated measuring equipment will have errors and calibration issues and even if the absolute values are slightly different between systems, so long as the system you use is consistant you can track your progress and set training levels and Polar works just fine for this.

Have not seen one of these. Can you explain how they measure the chain tension?

Also, agree with your comments about calibration and ultimate accuracy of any power meter. If the readings are consistent, that's the important thing.

Very reliable and the repeatability(sp) is great.

I would definately recommend one.

dhk2 said:

Have not seen one of these. Can you explain how they measure the chain tension?

It detects vibrations on the chain. The harder the chain is being tightend (you push harder on the pedals) and it will vibrate faster. Think the strings on a guitar. I think you need to input chain weight and length among other things.

They are fairly accurate from what I've heard and definitely a gadget that makes it more fun to ride you bike! And that is (I guess) the most important factor in buying stuff for a bike, right! 🙂

an interesting review of three power measuring systems: biketechreview.compm review.htmOpen ↗

Strid said:

It detects vibrations on the chain. The harder the chain is being tightend (you push harder on the pedals) and it will vibrate faster. Think the strings on a guitar. I think you need to input chain weight and length among other things.

They are fairly accurate from what I've heard and definitely a gadget that makes it more fun to ride you bike! And that is (I guess) the most important factor in buying stuff for a bike, right! 🙂

Strid, thanks for the answer. Hadn't even thought of monitoring vibration, but if chain length and weight are known, suppose that tension would determine the frequency.

We go on and on here about how essential the PM is, but agree with you that fun is what it's about. I'll have to look into these a bit more.

My old coach has a Polar PM, and with that you have to set it to correct chain weight and lenght aswell as wheel circumference and all the other settings. So you're right that's exactly how it works.