Hello Zwifters,
It has been almost 2 months now that I’ve bought a smartbike (Bodytone DS60 Bluetooth), mainly to heal up my knee after surgery. I wanted to try Zwift to bike with online friends, and it appeared that my FTP was quite high (340 FTP) compared to theirs. It seemed weird since they were biking since many years, and I’ve just started biking. So I wonder if some of you had a problem regarding the power (in watts) calculation of their home trainer (maybe some of you have the same model as mine ?), and if so, is it possible for me to calibrate it correctly ?
I am a bit overweighted, and I’m a former pretty good runner, so I know my legs have potential, and my friends told me it could help my FTP to be higher than theirs, but the gap seems really big.
Best regards,
LM
Welcome to the forum
Since that bike does not list any accuracy on the web site I would assume they use a very simple formula to estimate the power and it is probably overestimating.
You should send your question to the dealer or manufacturer. I glanced at the manual and didn’t find any calibration instructions. Other comments about the Bodytone DS60 on this forum are not promising. It’s probably just not very accurate. Installing power meter pedals would fix the problem, but that would probably cost more than the bike.
To understand the accuracy, you could also try doing an FTP test on a friend’s trainer and compare the results.
This is not Smart Bike…it’s Spinbike. It has manual resistance.
Power is measured from and not dedicated Powermeter…it can’t be calibrated.
Thank you for all you answers. I had an opportunity to buy this kind of bike at a cheap price, and I’ll probably switch for a real home trainer at some point. But before that, and by reading your messages, I wonder how much realistic my rides are on this type of device. Is this close from what you feel on a real home trainer ? Is my training even useful for training vo2 max / burning calories / preparing for real outdoor biking on this kind of device ?
If you are using it for training vo2 max / burning calories / preparing for real outdoor biking then you should be ok, as long as the device measurements are repeatable.
The Zwift workouts are based on your FTP, so if you do a FTP test on that trainer and it read 30% high then the workouts will also be 30% high so you will be doing the correct level of training. It is like having a scale that measure 20kg heavier you can still use it to track your progress but you won’t know exactly how much you weigh.
It is not good for racing or comparing to other people.