14 November 2024
When the JetBlack Victory was announced this past summer, it sent waves through the smart trainer industry. In one shot, it pretty much knee-capped all of the existing sub-$1,000 trainers, if not most of those above it too. After all, it had everything most typical $1,000+ trainers had: WiFi, Race Mode, heart rate bridging, high accuracy claims, solid resistance specs and more. It could even be bought with the Zwift Cog, or a standard cassette – your choice.
But as always, the proof is in the pudding. Or, in the test lab over plenty of trainer sessions. And at this point, I’ve got more than enough trainer sessions on the JetBlack to shake a stick at. Inside, outside, me, my wife, on Zwift, on TrainerRoad, on IndieVelo, on Rouvy, and plenty more. Via WiFi, Bluetooth, and ANT+. I’ve done them all.
Thus, the question is – does it earn the best trainer title? Or at least, the best bang for your buck? Let’s dig into it.
Note that JetBlack sent over a media loaner to test out. As usual, this review is not sponsored (nor does any company get to preview anything I review), and I don’t take any advertiser money from any companies I review. Once this unit goes back, I’ll go out and buy my own for any future testing needs. If you found this review useful, you can use the links at the bottom, or consider becoming a DCR Supporter, which makes the site ad-free, while also getting access to a behind-the-scenes video series. And, of course, it makes you awesome.
The Key Tech Specs & Cassette Options:
Here’s the quick and straightforward version of the specs of the JetBlack Victory. In many ways, it is somewhat similar to the previous JetBlack VOLT, except this is an entirely different beast internally (more on why in a second):
– Direct drive trainer: This means you remove your rear wheel
– Flywheel: It has a flywheel weight of 4.7kg (same as before)
– Cassette: Currently offered in Zwift Cog V2 virtual cassette, compatible with 8-12 speed bikes, though practically compatible with any bike/chain that you can physically mount on the trainer (axle-wise). Also shortly going to be offered in mechanical cassette (see details below).
– Sound: Essentially silent. Only the sound of your drivetrain is heard.
– Handle: Yes, and cleverly wrapped in orange bar tape.
– Protocol Compatibility: ANT+ FE-C, ANT+ Power, Bluetooth Smart Trainer Control, Bluetooth Smart Power (everything you need). However, note that while fully compatible with other apps, you can *ONLY SHIFT* with Zwift if you have the Zwift Cog. So, this will work perfectly fine in ERG mode on TrainerRoad, but you’ll be going nowhere fast on Rouvy or IndieVelo without shifting. More on that later.
– WiFi: Yes, Direct Connect to all apps via WiFi
– USB Connectivity: Yes, Direct Connect via USB (except, nobody supports it today)
– Zwift Race Mode: Yes, 10 Hz
– Unique Party Trick: Can rebroadcast your heart rate sensor within a single channel, ideal for Apple TV Zwift users (who are Bluetooth channel limited)
– App Compatibility: From a protocol standpoint, anything, but from a practical standpoint, just Zwift for simulation mode due to the aforementioned shifting limitation.
– Skewer Compatibility: All the skewers and adapters you could ask for: Road 130mm, 135mm, 142x12mm, 148x12mm
– Max Incline: 16% simulated grade
– Max Wattage: 1,800 watts resistance
– Stated Accuracy: < +/-2.0%, auto-spin down calibration
– Built-in odometer: Tracks your distance via the JetBlack app, for all trainer rides
– Power Cable Required: Yes, power block compatible with 100-240v
– Pricing: $399USD, €449, £399, and $749AUD
In terms of availability, the company has been shipping units for a month or two now. But of course, they’re in hot demand. They’re producing containers each week being shipped to North America and Europe, but realistically speaking, if you (or your bike shop) hasn’t placed an order yet, you’re looking at a late December or beyond date for your trainer. Obviously, orders placed earlier are arriving weekly.
In terms of cassette options, you’ve got essentially two core options:
Option 1 (default): The included Zwift Cog (V2). Shifting while on this cassette only works with Zwift, though ERG mode works with any application/trainer.
Option 2 (coming soon): Mechanical cog. The company will be offering a standard mechanical cog instead, for the same price.
The key thing here to understand is the trainer itself is *FULLY* compatible with all of the standards that all platforms users. Thus while it does support Zwift’s proprietary Zwift Protocol (ZP) for virtual shifting, it also supports ANT+ FE-C & Bluetooth FTMS.
But for initially shipping units, those are equipped with Zwift Cog rather than a regular cassette. Starting later this year they’ll be offering it with regular cassettes. Of course, you can always just swap out the cassette yourself. If you’ve got an extra cassette lying around, or just go buy one (~$50), you’re good to go. And that’s exactly what I did as well:
Swapping a cassette takes about 3-5 minutes, and is what many other trainers still require anyway (and was the norm for the better part of a decade). Having pre-installed cassettes is actually relatively new in the last couple of years.
In my case I stuck a Shimano 12-speed cassette on there without issue.
Unboxing & Setup:
First up is getting the unit unboxed, which is pretty straightforward. The box is an assortment of cardboard, and thankfully avoids any living room snow-creating foam insulation:
Inside you’ll find the below parts:
Essentially this is divided up into:
A) The main trainer bit itself
B) The two legs you’ll attach
C) The Zwift Click
D) Some tools and bits
E) The power adapter/supply
Here’s a closer look:
To get started you’ll take the legs out and align them to being orange up front, and white in the back. This matches the coloring under the legs of the trainer frame. It’s a clever touch that Zwift initially did with JetBlack when they co-launched the Zwift Hub.
Putting the legs on takes about 2 mins. Or, 4 minute if you somehow ignore the colors and have to re-do your work.
Next, you’ll attach the correct axle adapter to either side of the JetBlack Victory. On the left side (side with the handle), you’ll simply just place it in there. Whereas on the right side you’ll use the little included wrench to tighten it in.
And with that, you’re done.
Oh, wait, you should plug it in. On one hand, I feel obligated to mention it. On the other hand, it’s kinda like when you finish an Ikea project and you have some large leftover part. The adult part of your brain hopefully kicks in and says “something important is probably wrong”, whereas the kid part of your brain might be saying “bonus extra parts!”.
That said, from a technical perspective, yes, the external power is required for resistance control. Else, it’s just going to spin without much resistance. There are some trainers, like the Tacx Neo series, that can do without power. But those are few and far between. With that, let’s use it.
Daily Riding Basics:
As one might expect, the first step is mounting your bike to the trainer. On a normal cassette, you don’t need to think about gearing too much here. But with a Zwift Cog, you’ll need to give it a few seconds of thought. As with all direct drive trainers, you’ll remove your rear wheel entirely, and place it on the trainer, then insert the rear skewer or quick-release adapter into the trainer to secure things. Same goes for placing the chain on the singular cog.
[The next few paragraphs only apply to the Zwift Cog-equipped variant, if you don’t have an orange cog-laden JetBlack Victory and are using mechanical, skip on down past the buttons]
Now, before you pedal, you’ll need/want to ensure that you’re in the right physical gear first. That’s because shifting on the Zwift Cog is done via the Zwift Click (virtual buttons), however, first, you’ll want to ensure your physical gear is perfectly aligned. If you don’t, the moment you pedal your first crank rotation, the chain will fly off the cog and make a horrific sound. Don’t worry if you forget to do this step, the horrific sound will stop you in your tracks.
Instead, take a second to shift up/down, aligning your gearing/rear derailleur to this new center position. Once that’s done, you can then take advantage of the Zwift Cog V2’s ability to effectively micro shift, or ‘index’ to be even more precise.
To do so, first, pick the physical gear that’s the quietest. Next, rotate the inside of the Zwift Cog (where the numbers are, with your hand), one click at a time, testing each one to see which one is quietest. It’s really as simple as that. Alternatively, you can also just look at the chainlink visually when you rotate the Zwift Cog, since you’ll see when it’s straightest.
Oh, and just to be clear, there’s absolutely zero electronics inside the Zwift Cog. It’s merely a single metal ‘cog’, some springs, and plastic. Here’s one accidentally taken apart:
With that all set, we’re off to start using it. The next thing you’ll do is attach the Zwift Click to your handlebars. The two little buttons on the Click is what lets you shift up/down. You cannot shift with your regulr shifters on the Zwift Cog, else, loud horrific sounds will occur (and, it won’t actually shift). In fact, on my SRAM bikes the have eTap/AXS, I just simply remove the battery and place it in my helmet (to ensure I don’t forget to put them back in next ride). That keeps me from shifting physically.
You an attach the Zwift Click anywhere you’d like, but I find the best spot to be where my thumb wraps over the handlebars towards the inside.
Depending on exactly which production batch you have, your Zwift Click will either be all-black, or colorful. They switched to more colorful ones starting in early fall. Functionally/technically identical.
With all that settled, if you’ve got the Zwift Click/Cog, you’ll probably need to update the Zwift Click firmware. To do so, crack open the Zwift Companion App on your phone, and search for Zwift hardware, which lets you update the firmware on the Click. It only takes a second. There is no firmware on the Zwift Cog, as there’s no electronics inside of it.
Meanwhile, given it’s a JetBlack trainer, most of the functionality will be managed through the JetBlack app. This lets you update firmware, do a manual calibration, ride without any app, configuration WiFi, as well as pair heart rate sensors. In fact, let’s do those last two now. The reason you might want to pair WiFi is that it can sidestep some ANT+ or Bluetooth Smart connectivity issues in your environment. Further, it enables Race Mode, which results in far faster update rates of your power numbers. In any case, connecting to WiFi is as simple as selecting it from the list:
Meanwhile, for the heart rate sensor bridging, this lets you get around a two-connection limit on Apple TV. Specifically, Apple TV is only able to connect to two Bluetooth sensors (plus the remote). So, in the case of indoor training, your trainer is your first connection, and the second connection is the Zwift Click (required for shifting), therefor, your heart rate sensor puts you over the limit. Instead, JetBlack will ‘bridge’ the data via the trainer, much like a tunnel. Additionally, it can also help in scenarios where you have an ANT+ heart rate sensor, since it’ll turn it into a Bluetooth signal. But given virtually every heart rate sensor sold in the last 5-7 years is dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart, that’s probably more rare these days.
It’ll simply scan for nearby sensors on both ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart, and you can select to pair it. Then, from there on out, it’ll automatically connect to the chest strap and re-broadcast it so you can see it in Zwift as a heart rate sensor.
(That said, as of this publishing, I was having issues with ANT+ heart rate sensors in re-briding mode, specifically when connected via WiFi. It’d cause ANT+ drops with the sensors, due to overloading of the chipset used in the JetBlack Victory. The company has confirmed they found an issue in the first 200 units produced this summer from which this was part of, and already switched to a different chipset long ago. I’m awaiting a unit to confirm that change.)
With everything set, we’ll crack open Zwift and get paired up. Obviously, if you’re using a different app other than Zwift, it’ll look different (and I’ll cover those down below), but the core of it is the same: You’re pairing to the trainer. In the case of the JetBlack Victory, you can pair to it via ANT+ FE-C, Bluetooth Smart FTMS, or WiFi. While the JetBlack Victory advertises a USB connection option, no trainer platform to date supports that. Previous attempts by other vendors to get that going have also failed, since no standard exists there, and until Zwift supports it – nobody else will bother.
Above you can see I’ve paired the JetBlack Victory as a Power Source, Resistance controllable trainer, cadence sensor, and even my heart rate via it. Meanwhile, for the ‘Controls’, that comes from the Zwift Click.
That option to pair the Zwift Click is super important, because without that, you won’t get any shifting in Zwift. At all. Instead, Zwift will simply assume you’re on a regular trainer and that you can shift physically. If for some reason Virtual Shifting isn’t working, you can always ensure it’s enabled in the settings within the game:
In fact, while you’re on that page, you’ll also see the ‘Trainer Difficulty’ setting. Note that by default Zwift will be set for 50% trainer difficulty level. This changes how the game simulates gradient. To understand what this means, assume you’re coming up on a 10% gradient climb, it’ll actually only feel like a 5% climb (if set for 50% trainer difficulty). This won’t impact your in-game speed (since that’s based on wattage), but does impact how the climb feels to your legs, and which specific gearing you’ll use.
Now given the JetBlack Victory is a smart trainer, it’ll change resistance automatically in a few different ways, primarily driven by different applications/methods. But most of this all boils down to two core methods:
ERG Mode: Setting a specific power level – i.e., 190w. In this mode, no matter what gearing you use, the trainer will simply stay at 190w (or whatever you set it to).
Simulation (SIM) Mode: Simulating a specific outdoor grade – i.e., 8% incline. In this mode, it’s just like outdoors in that you can change your gearing to make it easier or harder. Wattage is not hard-set, only incline levels. For a JetBlack Victory configured with the Zwift Cog, this mode will *ONLY* work with Zwift, via the Zwift Click.
In the case of simulation (aka slope) mode, the JetBlack Victory can simulate from 0% to 16% incline – the same as the KICKR CORE. While other higher-end trainers can simulate above 20% these days, I continue to question how many people actually want to ride such a gradient. When I’m outside doing any road rides with more than about 12% gradient, it just sucks – let alone 14%, 16%, and more. But a 24% incline? There’s just no reason I want to relive that scenario voluntarily indoors.
Now, to shift as you go up/down these hills, you’ll use the Zwift Click. This simply iterates through one continuous 24-speed virtual drivetrain. One tap makes it one increment harder, tap the other way, makes it easier. Pretty straightforward. You’ll see your current gear located in the upper left corner of Zwift – shown here in “Gear 17”:
Responsiveness is instant in my testing. Note that from a technical standpoint the Zwift Click (buttons) aren’t talking directly to the trainer. Instead, they’re talking to the Zwift app running on your tablet/phone/TV, and then in turn that tells the trainer how to simulate that particular gearing combination. I’ll dive into this more in the ‘Compatibility’ section, on why that matters for 3rd parties.
You’ll find that depending on your power outputs, you’ll mostly be floating within a few different gears. For example, the vast majority of my riding on flat terrain floats in the 14-16 gear range. Give me some mild hills and I’ll probably go down to 12-13, and a sprint and I’ll probably increase gearing into the 17-18 range for a bit more power. Rarely am I sub-10 in gearing (the easiest gears), or above 20 for long. Point being, while I still prefer real bike shifters, you’ll find you’re often no more than a few button taps away, and the reaction time is essentially instant.
Thus getting to road feel/simulation. In other words, how does it feel? It feels essentially the same as other trainers in that 4-5kg flywheel realm. This has a 4.7kg flywheel (the CORE has a 5.4kg flywheel). Generally speaking, the larger the flywheel, the more inertia you’ll feel (in a good way). However, that’s hardly the only factor. The exact internal gearing arrangement can also heavily influence that (good or bad). Point being, going back and forth between the KICKR CORE & JetBlack Victory, I notice no difference in inertia (such as the acceleration of sprinting or slowing down).
Speaking of that internal gearing, here’s a photo of the insides:
I had stupidly managed to accidentally drop my disc brake blocker down into the itty-bitty slot, and had to remove the 6 screws to get it out. Hardly a big deal, taking only 3-4 mins. Notably, you can see how JetBlack separates the upper compartment (where sweat/liquids can get in), from the lower compartment (where the electronics are).
Lastly, why about noise? Again, pretty much the norm here, and also dependent how clean your bike is, and whether or not you’re running a standard mechanical casette, or the Zwift Cog. In either scenario, there’s a low hum of the trainer like most trainers, but it’s otherwise essentially silent. As with all smart trainers, the volume (loudness) of the trainer is dictated by your gearing, not the actual wattage. So essentially, using the big ring in the front will result in more noise than the small ring.
But again, the noise level here (heard in the video), is essentially non-existent.
App/Connectivity Compatibility:
The JetBlack Victory is fully compatible with industry standards for both ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart. Though, to what extent you can leverage those will depend a bit on which cassette you have on their. As I’ve probably beaten to death by now, if you have the Zwift Cog on there, you can only use Zwift for simulation mode. However, regardless of which cassette you have own there, you can always use the JetBlack Victory for ERG (structured workout) mode on any trainer platform. So if you use TrainerRoad for example, there’s no issues using that with a JetBlack Victory and the Zwift Cog.
Nonetheless, the cassette is merely a mechanical thing you stick on the trainer, under the covers, it supports the following standards:
ANT+ FE-C Control: This is for controlling the trainer via ANT+ from apps and head units, and includes power & cadence data. Read tons about it here.
ANT+ Power Meter Profile: This broadcasts as a standard ANT+ power meter, with cadence and speed data baked in. [*Currently disabled in Oct 2024 firmware, JetBlack looking to re-enable it soon.*]
Bluetooth Smart FTMS: This is the industry standard for apps controlling the trainer via Bluetooth Smart, and includes ANT+ power and cadence baked in.
Wireless (WiFi) Direct Connect: This uses WiFi built-in, to apps on the same WiFi network, this includes power/speed/cadence data, along with trainer control
Notably though, the Victory doesn’t transmit plain ANT+ power or cadence in the current firmware. It did over the course of the fall, but the current firmware got rid of it to try and deal with the stabilization of the concurrent WiFi usage. I’m hoping that comes back given the new chipset is there. You can still connect to it via ANT+ FE-C (in passive mode) from most bike computers, and some watches support Bluetooth FTMS as well for reading power, such as the Apple Watch, AmazFit T-Rex 3, and COROS watches.
In my testing I’ve used the JetBlack Victory with numerous platforms, including Zwift, TrainerRoad, Rouvy, and IndieVelo. I’ve had no issues with any of them.
As I noted above, the JetBlack Victory does have a USB-C port on the back for potential usage down the road as a wired connection to apps. But I see almost zero path forward on that, unless Zwift randomly decides to do adopt it. Which seems incredibly unlikely given Zwift’s historical and current actions around the Zwift Protocol. Other companies in the past have tried to force Zwift’s hand to implement wired USB options they added to their trainer, only to have nothing happen.
That said, it’s possible that JetBlack could very likely support generic $20 USB-C ethernet adapters, which I think would basically solve the wireless issue, for those struggling with it. That would just leverage the existing DirCon protocol that the WiFi side already uses and requires absolutely zero work from Zwift, and would work instantly across all trainer platforms that already support DirCon/WiFi today (which is everyone). Alternatively, they could develop their own ethernet adapter. We’ll have to see what they do long term.
Also note that the JetBlack Victory supports high-frequency data update rates, more commonly known as ‘Race Mode’. This mode updates at 10hz (10 times a second). You’ll see this in-game by just how fast the power numbers change, compared to the once-per-second change you’d see in traditional trainers without race mode.
Finally, for lack of anywhere else to mention it, the JetBlack Victory supports the Zwift Ride just fine, a configuration I’ve used for a number of rides. That’s because the JetBlack Victory supports the Zwift Protocol (aka Zwift Ready) and thus is fully compatible with virtual shifting.
Power Accuracy:
As always, a trainer is largely only as good as the power data coming from it. Most companies have made great strides in this area over the last few years, and JetBlack has themselves been a very strong contender in the accuracy department for a number of years. The thing is, every time trainer companies change flywheel or other internal mechanical bits within a trainer, it’s kinda like starting over (and this is equally, if not more true, with Wahoo/Tacx/Elite). Thus, I treat accuracy testing the same.
In any event, I’ve been testing the JetBlack Victory in basically three core setups:
1) My road bike: Configured with Quarq RED (road 2X), and Favero Assioma Duo Shi power meter pedals
2) My gravel bike: Configured with Quarq RED (gravel 1X), and Favero Assioma MX2 Pro power meter pedals
3) My wife’s road bike: Configured with Quarq Force (road 2x), and Garmin RK200 power meter pedals
We’ve been rotating through these various setups, using both ANT+, Bluetooth, and WiFi recording options, to validate across all of them (and thus, as I’ll explain, how I ended up with this review delayed, and JetBlack issuing new firmware to fix issues I found).
Let’s start off with some basics, an ERG mode workout. This one first in Zwift, then we’ll look at TrainerRoad. This ERG workout had some longer sections, as well as some shorter ones, but nothing super short. Here’s the data:
Note that the JetBlack Victory (like past JetBlack trainers) doesn’t have the option to turn off ERG-mode smoothing. This means that the values it reports are artificially perfect (flat). And often, it’s just reporting what you told it value-wise to be set at. Thus, the value of having other power meters confirm that data. As you can see above/below, these are all within about an 5-8w spread (Quarq vs Favero vs JetBlack), with the Favero and JetBlack mostly within a 2-4w spread. All of which would be roughly within 2% of each other, depending on how you wanted to define it.
Looking at one of the longer 8-minute intervals, you can see I’m basically floating between 255 and 265w, which means the trainer is doing a good job at keeping things in check and there’s no wild swings here (yes, I know this below zoomed in graph looks kinda wild, but that’s mostly a scale perspective thing).
Taking a look at the mean-max graph, we can see on average the spread here was about 7w across the board, or about 1w difference to the MX Pro dual-sided pedals.
Oh, and finally, cadence is perfect:
So let’s look at another ERG (structured) mode workout, this time from TrainerRoad, here’s that data. In this case, for fun, I did a calibration 15 mins in, though saw no difference in the pre/post-calibration values. Here’s the chart for the main sets:
Again, basically the same difference as above, which makes sense as they’re the same units – just separated a week or so.
Here’s the mean-max graph, again, also about a 7w spread across all units on 300w:
And then finally, the cadence. This did include a few odd blips from the JetBlack Victory. I can’t quite figure out what caused that, as it was just steady-state near the end of an interval, but no speed changes or power changes.
Next, my favorite 30×30 test (done in TrainerRoad). I do this for all trainers and smart bikes to test responsiveness and how quickly it can change between significantly different power levels, but also whether it overshoots/undershoots. This test has two pieces to it. First, is the accuracy piece. Here, that’s easy, it’s perfectly fine:
(Note: This is a different bike, my road bike, configured with SRAM RED 2024, versus my gravel bike configured with SRAM RED XPLR 2024.)
But the second part of this test is what matters – how stable and quickly does it make the jump from ~145w to ~450w? The ideal timing for trainers is 2-3 seconds. Any faster and it’s like hitting a brick wall (seriously, you don’t want sub-1s changes of that spread), and any slower and you significantly cut into micro intervals:
But as you can see, it delivers on exactly 2 seconds. TrainerRoad triggers the transition 1 second early (by design), and then exactly two seconds later it’s arrived at the set point:
And of course as shown above, it’s very stable at that set point as well, no meandering or drunk-uncle’ing.
Ok, with that all sorted, let’s then look at SIM mode, short for ‘simulation’ mode, which is the mode most common in Zwift and other applications that control the gradient to mimic in-game climbs/descents. First up, we’ve got this ride on one of my favorite routes in Zwift: Sand & Sequoias. This is frankly *the best* smart trainer testing route out there. It’s got a nice flat section for doing flywheel high-speed tests (as trainers acts differently there), and then it’s got rollers for testing both climbing and responsiveness to gradient changes. It’s perfect. Here’s that loop:
Once I zoom in on some surges, you can see all the units track very closely:
As well as even lazy sprints, such as this:
That said, I did see a bit of separation on one sprint, here, where it overestimated the power for one second (the remainder of the sprint was back inline):
But that is the singular exception I can find in all of my data sets from the last few months. Everything else has been solid.
Ok, so with all the power accuracy bits largely solid, there is one issues I came across, which was dropouts of the ANT+ data streams. This issue occurs when your app is connected to the trainer via WiFi, and you are leveraging ANT+ in some capacity. That could be recording from the trainer (such as on a Garmin watch), or, using the heart rate bridging feature, and the HR sensor is paired via ANT+. In this case, dropouts of the ANT+ channel can and will occur in certain production batches, such as this:
After bringing this up to JetBlack, they set about trying to figure out what was going on. To save you a slate of time, TLDR is that after multiple firmware updates and a month of dorking around, they determined that the communications chipset in the first 200 units wasn’t up to the standard they needed (including my test unit), causing dropouts specifically when ANT+ was used concurrently with WiFi (an admittedly rare scenario). Interestingly, they had already changed chipset providers prior to my issue, which was vaguely related. JetBlack says the new chipset that’s already been shipping for about 45-60 days now, resolves this overloading issue (which caused the dropouts), and all units currently in shipping containers are with the new chipset. Since the change after those first 200 units, JetBlack has shipped the remainder of units (thousands) with the new chipset.
A new unit with the new chipset has been sent, but hasn’t quite arrived yet. I’ll update this section accordingly to ensure the dropout issue in that combination is resolved.
In any event, in terms of accuracy of power and cadence, I have zero issues with this unit. It’s solid, and on-par with the best of any other sub-$1,000 trainers.
(Note: All of the charts in these accuracy sections were created using the DCR Analyzer tool. It allows you to compare power meters/trainers, heart rate, cadence, speed/pace, GPS tracks, and plenty more. You can use it as well, more details here.)
Wrap-Up:
As I said back this past summer when they first launched the Victory, if JetBlack can deliver on their product announcement promises, then JetBlack will have not just a winner on their hands, but one that will absolutely undercut a huge chunk of the indoor trainer industry, especially the sub-$1,000 units. From my testing over the past few months, it appears they’ve delivered on doing exactly that.
Outside of very specific individual requirements/preferences, I’d struggle to see why you’d spend money on anything else. We haven’t seen this big of a slam-dunk in a long-long time in the sports technology realm. And that’s especially true for the sub-$800 trainers (aka Wahoo KICKR CORE, Elite Avanti, etc…). For the $899-$999 trainers, namely the Wahoo KICKR V6 and Tacx NEO 2T (current/new-normal pricing), the appeal becomes unique features such as Wahoo CLIMB support in the case of Wahoo, or downhill drive in the case of the NEO 2T. Both have a few other minor reasons beyond that.
And obviously, you can pair this unit with the Zwift Frame (the bike part of the Zwift Ride). This way you get WiFi connectivity, Race Mode, and more.
Of course, the only big catch is simply getting ahold of one. Most pre-orders through December are sold-out already, and I suspect reviews like this will only deepen that hole. While JetBlack is manufacturing as fast as they can, the monthly manufacturing output targets they’re aiming to hit over the next 6 months are nowhere near enough for even a fraction of the demand they face.
Ultimately, this will shape the landscape of trainers going forward. Wahoo desperately needs to refresh their now 6-year old KICKR CORE trainer, and while Elite delivered the technically and feature-wise very solid Avanti, priced where it is, it’s going to be tough long-term once JetBlack gets ahead of demand. But that’s a story for a different day.
With that, thanks for reading!