Power2Max experiences

I’m looking to purchase my first power meter and I am leaning towards Power2Max NGECO mostly due to cost (~$650) and decent reviews from what I’ve read. I have a few questions for those with P2M experience:

-Any issues to be concerned with?
-How’s the US support if any?

I’m also closley considering Quarq, probably due to them being more known, or at least to me… Or the Vector 3 dual. I do not have plans for another bike so swapping between isn’t a concern.

Thanks in advance.

I’ve had an NGEco on my Yeti for a little less than a year. I’ve had zero issues and there is now both an Android and iOS app to update firmware.

I’ve benchmarked it against my Quarq and it’s very close.

I haven’t had to deal with support, but when I ordered it online originally it came very quickly (within 2 business days).

I’m a happy camper :+1:

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I have had 4 P2M’s over the years and have had zero issues with any of them. I had a Type S and an NG on previous road bikes. Sold both of those and I currently have the NGeco on both my road/gravel bike and my MTB.

Having owned the NG before I see no point in buying it over the Eco. I actually prefer the coin cell battery over using the charging cable and the additional metrics you get from the NG just are not enough for me to justify the cost.

When I bought the NG I also bought a new Rotor Crankset with it. I had some trouble with installing it and had to go back and forth with customer service to troubleshoot the problem. Turned out to be a defective bolt from Rotor. They had me send the whole thing back and they re-installed the power meter onto a new crankset. Was honestly a super easy experience working with them to solve the problem and they covered all the shipping costs.

The two Eco’s I have now I installed myself and they were both really easy.

I just got the MTB one a couple weeks ago and didn’t even look at other options because my experience with them has been so good in the past.

Hope that helps.

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I have 2 type S, one on road bike and one on gravel bike. I can’t speak to the customer support since they have been so reliable!

They are pretty good about answering questions before purchasing.

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I have two bikes, each with the Type-S. One was bought in 2015 and the other in 2016. They have been bulletproof. They just work! No calibration needed! Can take either bike out on the local climbs and for a given power w/similar conditions, the time is about the same which shows both PMs measure about the same. I have also done extensive testing and comparison w/my Tacx Neo. Everything lines up nicely.

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I have a NGeco, and I can say its been faultless…
I’ve never had an issue, or even had to think about it.
Nearly knocked the battery cover off one day, but number wise, perfect.

Though the AU distributor was a little hard to get hold of and end up having to email Germany, but he got back to me after that :stuck_out_tongue:

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I have long term experience with two Type S and two NG. Absolutely bulletproof, rode 3 of them extensively in parallel with P1 pedals. Almost identical readings. Furthermore, I appreciate not having to auto-zero them, P2M does it automatically.

Otherwise I have had a lot of bad experiences with powermeters: Stages, three times replaced under warranty. P1, two times replaced under warranty. Quarq, one time replaced under warranty.

Just my experience

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I’ve been using the cheapest NG Eco with Gossamer for 1,5 year or so. Totally faultless, needs no actions at all but exchange battery 2 or 3 times a year. It just works so I do not know anything about the support. The crankset is of course the heaviest one in the world but you can’t have everything in that price - bulletproof, reliable, cheap and lightweight :slight_smile:

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I have had an FSA Powerbox (P2M kit inside) since they first came out (was it 2015?) and never had a real issue. When first released the battery life wasn’t great but the first firmware upgrade extended that hugely.

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I recently got the ngeco, first power meter I’ve used and it’s been spot on so far. Customer service prior to purchase was good, they talked me through my options with a BB86 bottom bracket to ensure I ordered the correct parts.

Its fitted to a gravel bike which I had been running with 48/32 chain set but this isn’t an option with power2max so I went for a 50/34 compact and installed a larger rear caseete (11/34).

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I’ve just received Favero Assioma DUOs and they are great. Also you can get them for $650-10% with DCRainmakers code from clevertraining.

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I’ve got the FSA Powerbox on my bike, which is a rebranded NGeco.

It’s been faultless to be honest in the year or so i’ve had it.

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I was pretty set on the ng eco - but couldn’t quite work out which option to go for with the cranks at the time. Kind of wish I had now as I realise I’ve got a BB386 bottom bracket so there was no reason to stay with Shimano!

But just wanted to say it’s really great to see a thread like this where it seems this company are making great products that aren’t stupidly expensive.

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I bought a NGECO last year on black friday…got it for $490 and they included a set of Praxxis chainrings. Install was easy and it paired easily with my Wahoo Bolt…Haven’t been able to ride it yet due to a really crappy winter her in Reno. Hoping it is as bulletproof as everyone here and DC Rainmaker have said.

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I’ll add my experience as well. I purchased a Type S in 2017 and the little rubber plug for the bolt hole broke trying to pull it out. Contacted CS and they sent like 3 immediately. I cannot say a single bad thing has happened. I’ve run out of battery a couple of times but it’s mostly because I never really think about it. It just works. I recently purchased an NGeco for both my gravel bike and mtb and everything works perfectly. I cannot recommend them enough.

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I’ve been running the Eco on my 1x gravel bike since last fall. As others have said, it just works. Great price, fast shipping, easy install, plays nice with my Wahoo, and if you really want extra metrics (L/R, torque, etc) you can buy them in the app at a later time.

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I’ve had the NG for about a year. Love it. No problems at all. I thought the extra metrics would be useful, but I never use them. It was depressing to find out how bad my Kickr’s power reporting was.

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Just a word of warning on the “advanced metrics”, L/R balance reported by any spider bases pm is only estimated and not measured. And therefore, can be nonsense or not. I’ve ridden quite extensively with a real L/R measuring pm (Powertap P1s pedals) and P2M/Quarq in parallel on the same bikes, respectively.

P2M/Quarq L/R is nonsense for my legs.

Here from dcrainmaker:

Estimated Left/Right Power: This became all the rage just prior to true left/right units coming out, starting with the Quarq RED unit offering left/right power. That platform works by essentially splitting your crank in half and assuming that any power recorded while pulling up is actually coming from the left side, whereas pushing down is from the right side. Thus, an estimation. It’s good, but not perfect. Note that even with true left/right power (below), there’s actually very little in the scientific community around what to do with the data. While you may think that perfect balance would be ideal – that hasn’t been established. And some that have looked into it have found that trying to achieve balance actually lowers your overall output. The only thing folks agree on is that measuring left/right power can be useful for those recovering from single-leg injury. The PowerTap C1, all Power2Max units, and all SRAM/Quarq models currently on the market use this method.

Actual or True Left/Right Power: This is limited to units that can measure your power in more than one location. Thus why we see it on pedals, as well as the more expensive crank-arm or pedal based power meters. You can’t measure it directly at the spider, instead you have to measure it upstream of that such as the cranks (Stages LR, ROTOR dual system, Infocrank’s dual system, Pioneer’s dual system, WatTeam dual, Shimano’s dual system, 4iiii’s dual system), pedals (Garmin, Favero Assioma/bePRO, Polar/Look, SRM/Look pedals).

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I had a FSA powerbox for a year. Had one issue trying to upgrade the software with a IOS device after my purchase. The powermeter got ”bricked” during the upgrade. Good support from P2M and they told me to try with a android device. Had to lend another phone and the issue was resolved.

The app on IOS is updated and the upgrade process worked on IOS the last time.

Other than that, spot on and super happy.

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I just wanted to say thank you to those who provided their experiences. I picked up my P2M a few weeks ago and installed it without a hitch. It couldn’t have been more straightforward. I’ll circle back after a few months with a follow up review but so far I have zero complaints.

Justin

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