The 10 Best Bike Trainers
Special Honors
Wahoo Kickr Core Smart Trainer The Kickr Core has a 12-pound flywheel that helps to recreate the inertia experienced when riding outdoors, and it can simulate climbing grades as much as 16 percent. It offers multiple connectivity options, allowing you to use an app on your phone to seamlessly adjust the resistance as you train, and can support users up to 250 pounds. wahoofitness.com
Elite Supplying a whole range of trainers from classic, wheel on and direct-drive models, to smart and interactive trainers that provide fundamental data via smart devices, and mimic different road conditions. Elite has been offering unique and cutting-edge products to the cycling world for forty years. elite-it.com
Editor's Notes
April 09, 2021:
These versatile trainers make it possible to practice and train indoors by holding the bicycle steady and supplying resistance to the rear wheel. They are useful for training sessions when the weather is unfavorable, or for pre-race warm-ups. They can also be used for specific, targeted types of workouts that may not be possible near your home, such as uphill climbs or interval training. Since they mount to the back axle, they are easier to use than a bike roller and reduce the risk of injury or damage to home furnishings.
Bike trainers range considerably in price, depending on their various features and method of creating resistance. During this update, we added the Alpcour Portable, which similar to the Bell Motivator 2.0 and the Sportneer Fluid is an affordably priced option that is ideal as an entry-level model for novices. It features a stainless steel frame that offers good stability, and a handlebar-mounted controller that lets you adjust the magnetic resistance without leaving your seat. The popular Kinetic Road Machine 2.0 Fluid was replaced with the Kinetic Road Machine Control, which now features electronically controlled resistance that can be adjusted instantly via their training app, and conveniently, Kinetic offers the first six months subscription for free. Finally, we added the Garmin TacX Boost, which is notable for its quiet operation and sturdy build. It provides ten levels of resistance which can be adjusted while cycling via a lever, and an optional speed sensor supplies training data, and is compatible with most popular apps, such as Zwift and TrainerRoad.
December 29, 2019:
Bike trainers come in a variety of types, so we wanted to make sure our list reflects that. Direct-drive models, like the Tacx Neo 2, Elite Drivo II, and CycleOps H2 are generally going to be the quietest. Since the machine takes the place of your rear tire, rather than having your tire spin on a metal roller of some kind, the only sound users will hear when training on them is the sound of their bike. All three also connect to a smartphone for third-party app integration, and offer a wide resistance range that makes them suitable for casual and avid riders alike.
Though there are many benefits of direct-drive models, their cost may put them out of reach for many. The next best option is going to be a trainer that utilizes fluid resistance, like the Sportneer Fluid, Saris CycleOps Fluid 2, and Kinetic Road Machine 2.0 Fluid, since most feel these give a more realistic ride than ones that are based on magnetic resistance. Just like cycling on the road, fluid trainers get harder the harder you pedal, thanks to the liquid inside getting thicker as its temperature increases.
Stepping down further in price, and in how realistic they feel when training one on, we have magnetic resistance models, like the CycleOps SuperMagneto Pro, Bell Motivator 2.0, and Rad Cycle 1112. While these are almost always louder than the other two and don't offer as much resistance, their lower price tag makes them ideal for casual riders who are just looking to log some extra miles and burn some calories.
Training In All Conditions
The heavy flywheel provides resistance simply from its weight, the movement of which gets harder or easier depending on the gear you select.
Hitting the road on your bike isn't always an option. Often, the weather refuses to cooperate, pouring down rain, blowing impossible winds, covering the roads with snow and ice, etc. If it was your only means of transportation, you'd probably brave the elements nine times out of ten to get yourself to work, or school, or to see the person you love. Other times, when you're just looking to get a ride in, to get your heart rate up perhaps in preparation for a long bike journey or race, you'd be out of luck.
Fortunately, the bike trainer exists for you to get all the benefits of a long, difficult ride with none of the environmental risks like weather, bad roads, and worse drivers. The trainers themselves fall into one of two major categories, after which there are subcategories based on their mechanisms of resistance. The two major categories are trainer stands, and full-sized trainers. The former is much smaller, built to work in conjunction with the bicycle you already have, while the latter is much larger, as it could likewise be considered a stationary bike complete with pedals, gears, a seat–the whole works.
The full-sized trainers work just like your bicycle does up to a point. Instead of having wheels that roll along the ground to meet resistance, these machines use either large fans or heavy flywheels, both of which you turn as you pedal. The fan increases resistance progressively the harder you work, as the blades push back against the air in direct proportion to the power you provide. The heavy flywheel provides resistance simply from its weight, the movement of which gets harder or easier depending on the gear you select.
The trainer stands on our list support your bike with indelible power of the triangle, locking the back wheel's axle into a kind of metal hammock to keep it balanced. They provide resistance in one of three ways. Some use little fans that work in the same progressive manner as described above. Others use a magnetic system that has a fixed resistance similar to the flywheel, to which you can make minor adjustments by changing gears, or major adjustments by manipulating the trainer itself.
A slightly newer form of resistance exists solely in these smaller trainers on our list, and it's fast becoming the most popular system among riders. This system uses fluid to create resistance, much the same way that a high-end rowing machine actually uses a chamber of water to give you the experience of rowing under weigh. Instead of feeling like you're riding in water, however, the progressive resistance of the fluid systems gets the most respect from riders looking for something to give them the feel of the road.
Balancing Your Options
Making a decision from among the highly rated bike trainers on our list is going to start with that major division we talked about above, and that will, in part, come down to the amount of space you have to dedicate to your training. If you have a glut of space, the full-sized trainers provide the incredible benefit of being able to simply hop on and train whenever the mood strikes you. You won't have to go through the process of hooking up your bike and then having to unhook it when you want to take it out.
You won't have to go through the process of hooking up your bike and then having to unhook it when you want to take it out.
If your space is more limited, you might not have the luxury of keeping a full-sized trainer anywhere, which is far from the end of the world. In fact, using the same bike you take on the road for your indoor training has its perks. For example, training on a full-sized machine is likely to give you a slightly different sitting position than you're used to, a different feel for the handlebars, and different sensitivity in the gears. Using the same bike to train that you take out on the road or into races will ensure that you have nothing but the feel of your machine in your bones, which could mean the difference between placing first or fourteenth.
Once you've decided which major category suits you and your space the best, you'll have to pick a resistance method. As we went over above, fan and fluid resistance will provide you with a progressive feeling of resistance that more closely resembles the road itself.
Fluid is by far, according to riders everywhere, the closest approximation to the feel of the road, but its popularity has created a number of players whose fluid systems aren't as nice as the top tier, therefore, you can bet that the feel of the resistance is one of the major sacrifices in the cheaper models.
Training For Danger
It doesn't seem to matter that we've had bicycles on the road for more than a century; drivers don't seem to want to see us. The US Department of Transportation reports that about 2 percent of all traffic collisions in the country involve bicyclists, resulting in over 800 fatalities in 2015. Even if the weather's nice, if you live in town or city without a lot of dedicated bike lanes, it might be a good idea to do more of your training indoors.
The trainer has long been a solution to the problem of dangerous roads and inclement weather. Bike racers have used homemade trainers of one kind or another since the 1880s. These were often vertically situated devices that looked more like stationary unicycles with handles than anything we'd recognize as a bike today. By the 1890s, however, full-sized frames built with stationary moorings that more directly mimicked the racing position gained popularity among riders.
Other riders and inventors of the time put together sets of wooden rollers that rotated beneath the tires of the same bike they used on the road. These were the precursors to the smaller trainers on our list, and they were much more difficult to operate, since the rider had to balance the bike as he went along.