After nearly two decades of selling a successful hub-based power meter, PowerTap has expanded its wattage-measuring offerings with a set of pedals and a spider/chainring combo. The PowerTap P1 pedals weigh a claimed 398g and will retail for US$1,199 / £1,000, while the C1 spider and rings will sell for US$699 / £TBC.
For years, the power meter market had essentially two players: the steeply priced and spider-based SRM, and the more affordable and hub-based PowerTap. In recent years, however, a variety of new players have jumped in, from the spider-based Quarq and Power2Max systems to the crank-based Rotor, Stages and Infocrank options to the pedal-based Garmin Vector and Polar Look Power.
PowerTap president Jeff Frehner told BikeRadar that it's been hard for the company to watch new competing products come out while engineers worked on the pedal and spider systems, but that they are pleased with the new PowerTap power meters. Interestingly, Frehner said PowerTap had initially sought to buy MetriGear, the spindle-based power meter concept that eventually became Vector, but that "we got outbid by Garmin."
Further, Frehner and longtime company consultant Dr. Allen Lim said they still believe that the hub is still the most straightforward place to measure a rider's output. "The hub is still the simplest and the best," Lim said. "You have two things to measure: torque times angular velocity – how hard you're pushing and how fast you’re pedaling. You just have to measure bending on that tube, and how fast it’s going around in circles. With crank arms, spiders and especially pedals, there is a lot more going on." PowerTap certainly will continue to sell its hub and wheels, but adding power meters in two other components certainly gives the company and riders more options.
PowerTap also released a new G3 disc brake road hub power meter and a Joule GPS+ computer with Bluetooth.
PowerTap P1 power-meter pedals
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Available later this spring, the P1 power-meter pedals broadcast in Bluetooth Smart (aka 4.0) and ANT+, following suit from the Stages left-crank power meter that offered the dual-band in 2013. Unlike the Garmin Vector power-meter pedals that have outboard 'pods' hanging off the spindle, the P1 pedals have all the electronics and the battery — one AAA per side — contained in the 196g pedal. As a result, they are a little bulky but Frehner said they are waterproof and can handle getting banged around.
There is no accelerometer like in Vector and Stages, so cadence is instead measured through a digital encoder.
Available in late June, the PowerTap C1 spider power meter will bolt onto virtually any compact crank will a 110 BCD. (It won't work on Cannondale Hollowgram.) You cannot use your own chainrings, but must use the set FSA has made for PowerTap. There are three available chainring options: 50/36, 52/36 and 53/39. Because of the nature of the C1 spider, you cannot use a ring smaller than a 36.
