Anyone upgraded from kickr snap to kickr core? Or just kickr core owners feedback

General Discussion
1

I have a kickr snap. It sucks. Actually it’s ok if you use it on trainer difficulty 50% and ride around zwift only on flat routes - but that kind of sucks.

The moment you go near a hill, it just seems completely unrealistic and feels like you’d have to output 500-1000w to spin the pedals.

A similar thing happens in erg mode. I know to avoid the trainer bogging down you have to keep your cadence up, but whilst it might be fine during a workout if you need to go from 150 watts to 170 watts it just seems to go ridiculously too hard around 200-watts or so.

Now you might be thinking perhaps I’m just not fit enough to output 200 watts. But I can have the trainer not in erg mode, riding along on the flat and I can go up the gears until I’m riding over 200 watts - and output much higher for a short time. Team GB are not going to phone, but I’m sure I’m not as bad as the kickr snap seems to suggest on hills and erg mode.

This doesn’t seem to be a problem with zwift because the same issues happens on any and all software I’ve used with the snap.

I can use wahoos own app where you can manually change the resistance in various ways - setting it as a percentage, a level, a wattage or a ‘sim mode’ - and on, say 15% resistance I can easily spin up a gear and see 250 watts, but if I put the erg mode at 250 watts I can’t turn the pedals even if I start spinning like a loon during the low resistance after you stop, it’s just impossible.

And TBH although I’m not necessarily that fussed about erg mode, I’d like to explore more of zwift than just the flat routes (and even the few hills on these are frustrating, e.g the volcano circuit)

I’m not talking 12% gradients here, I already have the difficultly on 50% and zwift says 3%-6% on some of the flatter routes so it should be giving me 1.5% to 3% - gradients that you’d feel IRL and select a lower gear but you wouldn’t be in your lowest gear standing up struggling to turn the cranks. I’ve done all the usual spindowns and trying different bikes and tyres.

At this point if the snap is normal (and just bad) or mine is broken - I don’t care.

What I actually want to know is, if I buy the £579 kickr core with year of zwift will it have the same issue? Has anyone here upgraded from the snap and its improved things in this respect?

Do hills in zwift (on whatever trainer difficulty) feel ok on the kickr core?

TIA

2

The Kickr Core will be much better, I went from a wheel on dumb trainer to the core many years ago and it was an amazing difference, so much better!

3

I went from a Snap to the Saris H3…night and day difference for the experience. But in the end, at 100-105 kg (me)…it sucks to go uphill.

4

Yeah that’s what I’m hoping.

Thanks for the replies.

I actually did a factory spindown earlier in a last ditch attempt to see if I could improve it. I have no recollection if I’ve done a factory spindown in the past but it’s likely I did many years ago) I thought they’d removed this option completely with the various updates to wahoos app and from reading other people’s attempts to find what exactly to tap and how many times.

That did seem to improve it quite a bit. I got the erg mode in wahoos app up to 260 watts and I could still spin, and in the sim mode put the bike in its lowest gear and I was able to spin the gear up the imaginary hill seeing 230ish watts comfortably as high as 6% on that.

Which, somewhat ironically, gives me more confidence to replace it now that it’s working better :grinning:

5

I made the decision last year to get the Core, replacing a Snap that had done five years of Zwifting. I was using the Snap together with a Stages L-only power meter, but even then I had the same issues you are describing. I am very happy to have made the transition to the Kickr Core. After the recent firmware updates with auto calibration etc it’s even better.

6

Good to hear. Thanks Andreas.

I’ve ordered it earlier today so in a couple of days I’ll discover for myself.

Although, as I said, a factory spindown improved my kickr snap.

1 Like
7

Ok, and having spent all day cleaning my kickr snap for its new owner, vacuuming the garage, cleaning my bikes, lubing the drivetrains whilst staring longfully at the new box in the corner of said garage I finally unboxed it, put the legs on, only to discover the plastic case is rubbing against the belt and making an awful noise :frowning_face:

Doesn’t seem like it’s a difficult fix but youtube suggests you need a 2.5mm allen key and, of course my set has 2mm and 3mm…