Ergo Review

Here's a video of my first ride on the ergo.

Now, for my first impressions.

Good:
This is what's been missing from my training. Seriously. This is the first time I've been able to do true sprint workouts indoors and feel like I'm getting all the benefits of riding outside. No wheel slip, no worrying about tweaking my frame on the trainer, and no more shredding my good tires.

It also saves me a lot of time. I can just get on and ride, instead of spending time mounting my bike on the trainer. It also has multiple gears, so I don't have to waste time changing them and swapping wheels.

It's super-stiff and stable, which inspires confidence.

The fan blades keep me cool

Not-So Good:
It's loud. Really loud. Since my sprint efforts are relatively short, it's not an issue for me, but I could never do longer endurance workouts on it.

No brake. The wheel takes a while to spin down and the fan blades are quite sharp, so I've got to figure out a way to attach a brake in case one of my kids gets too close. I'm instilling the "fear of the ergo" in them, but I still don't want to take the chance.

No way (yet) to get a good measure of speed. Since the wheel itself is accellerated over 300%, it's inacurate to measure at the spokes. I'm currently measuring at the second chainring (which spins at the speed a wheel would), but this speed isn't affected by changing gears, so if I'm in a harder gear, it looks like I'm going slower even though the wheel may actually be spinning faster. I've got a couple options I'm looking into for this, which I won't bore you with.

Once I get the last two issues resolved, the only real downside is that it's really loud, which is something I'm more than willing to deal with for a quality workout.