The end of tacx neo 2t & garmin for zwift

General Discussion
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With Garmin looking to steer away from virtual shifting will this be the end of tacx neo & garmin from zwift?

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I don’t see the problem, I have a Tacx neo 2T here and have no problems with real shifting.

There are also other cycling applications out there aside from Zwift.

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Whilst virtual shifting seems to be popular there is no immediate danger of actual gears being replaced.

Many prefer the realism of actual gears.

Myself included.

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Since Garmin acquired Tacx in 2019, it seems like the once-innovative brand has stagnated. Before the acquisition, Tacx was a leader in the indoor cycling world, with products like the Neo 2 and Neo 2T, which was developed before the deal. But since then, what’s happened? The only notable product they’ve launched is the 3M, which, let’s be honest, was priced completely out of reality.

Meanwhile, new players are stepping up with competitive products, like the BlackJack Victory, which you can get for just $400 and more features than the 3M. It’s clear that Tacx’s market share is likely feeling the pressure. The problem seems more complex than just virtual shifting —there’s been a lack of innovation and value. Garmin’s influence might be holding Tacx back from delivering the kind of groundbreaking trainers we once expected from them. It’s disappointing to see a brand that was once at the forefront of the industry now playing catch-up.

What do you think? Is Garmin to blame for Tacx’s slump, or is it something else

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I feel like it could be very simple for garmin by just joining the party, and allowing zwifters to virtual shift would make them relevant again.

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Indeed, large corporations sometimes adopt a mindset that may overlook customer preferences, but hey!, Wahoo, despite being a micro company with sales well under $100 million, has likely frustrated numerous customers by not providing virtual shifting for the v5.

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I don’t even know what v5 is! Haha

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lol sorry the Kickr V5 -previous version released in 2020.

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I thought that was? Don’t they even sell a version with the zwift hub already installed on it?

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Yes they do -the Core and V6, but Wahoo originally promised a firmware update to provide virtual shifting to V5 and later they retracted, so a lot of the V5 owners are annoyed about it… many actually purchased the Zwift play waiting for the upgrade!

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Note that all the TACX trainers are on sale, except for the Move. I would tend to believe that something is coming.

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But they’ve clarified this position by saying hardware restrictions mean that the V5 cannot be firmware upgraded and thus no virtual gearing.

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Wahoo has still managed to disappoint part of its customer base. I received my V5 at no cost as part of a third exchange for my Kickr 2018, which had the well-known issue. Since the last trainer I bought was in 2018, I’m not upset. However, for those who purchased the V5 just two years ago at full price, I’m sure it’s a real letdown.

Ps: the hardware limitation is nonsense; you never announce publicly you’ll provide an upgrade without been 100% sure you can get it done, but Wahoo is a very small company, so I understand.

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Zwift could have implemented Virtual Shifting in the same way that IndieVelo did, making it hardware agnostic. Instead, they’ve chosen a method that lets them control the API and which currently favours their own hardware and that of their (current) partner.

Personally, I can’t understand anyone making a hardware purchase today that relies on the ongoing existence and support of Zwift.

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Well it’s simple. There are 3 alternatives

  1. Another virtual cycling app
  2. Watch or listen to something else (netflix, iplayer et al / youtube / spotify)
  3. Look at the wall

I’d suggest that only one of these has any link to hardware, and that there really is no alternative to zwift. Most of them simply don’t work at all the way I’m using zwift (streaming from a desktop PC to the garage I have my trainer) The market for virtual cycling software is a bunch of companies who have taken an idea that’s kind of obvious but a good one but they all suck at software development and / or don’t have the money to throw at it.

As such zwift just happens to suck less. Probably because they’ve had more money to waste than most of the alternatives, and perhaps a little bit more time. It’s not good we all know that. I remember a decade ago thinking they were hiring people who said they liked cycling and others who clearly had no idea what their job actually was. Rather than the overweight guys covered in cheeto dust that big tech employ to sit and write code all day - that’s who I would have developing software. Software developers not cyclists.

But, it’s still the best - and Garmin won’t change that. Garmin looks at everyone else’s software, copies it and everyone just uses the one they were. They tried to replace strava and failed - and this makes no sense, Strava have no clue at all what they’re doing - they add features for people who don’t give them money then they remove features, then they add them again, and then remove them again and then the phone app crashes so they just remove the features. They can’t cope with zwift (obviously their idea was a few hundred, perhaps a few thousand people in a local area riding a segment a couple of times a week - it wasn’t designed for a virtual segment with tons and tons of people setting times and riding around in loops - but zwift could have done what veloviewer did and had better analysis software than strava - how big was the veloviewer team? 50 people? 500 developers? 5000? It’s probably one guy and he’s not even covered in cheeto dust and he’s managed to create something I paid for whereas I will never give strava a penny directly)

Strava had tons of people using it but didn’t capitalise on that at all - I think any idiot could have made strava hugely profitable and that veloviewer et al show how trivially you can develop software better than strava can.

Nevertheless Garmin decided they were going to replace strava and did - and no one is interested. Similarly for geocaching - Garmin weren’t happy selling all the hardware that geocachers and cyclists and runners used, they wanted to control the software as well (in spite of their firmware showing they are completely and totally useless at software development) and even with free services they failed.

So they will fail if they try to replace zwift - doubly so if it’s a subscription service.

And that’s why Garmin’s current “£400 of free stuff included” with neo 2t is just laughably silly. It’s towels and bottles? I mean you can stand at the side of the road during a cycle race and people throw bottles at you. Who has ever paid for a cycling bottle? And a towel, unless you’re single you’ve got a cupboard full of them right? Big towels, little towels. Old towels, new towels, fluffy towels. And it includes a few months subscription to their software? No one wants that. It’s worth nothing. And HRM - everyone already has one.

And we all picked zwift, otherwise we wouldn’t be here moaning about it would we? And given that you picked zwift the only sane option, if you own a bike, is to buy a kickr core with a year of zwift included.

You know MS became a big software company for 2 reasons

  1. They realised they were a software company not a hardware company
  2. Everyone selling the hardware included their product - and they paid for it not the user.

So it makes no sense at all there’s only one trainer that has a year of zwift and it’s one of the cheapest ones.

The reason I don’t own a more expensive kickr or a neo 2t is simple : they don’t include the software I want.

And once you’ve got that year of zwift, well why not try the virtual shifting? If it sucks you can just remove the hub and put the cassette off your wheel on it.

Bottom line here though is, if I’m going to ride indoors all year around for years then I’m going to buy a wattbike atom - and that has virtual shifting. So any company that sells a smart bike and says they aren’t interested in virtual shifting are idiots right?

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I agree on that. I don’t think that the current implementation provide a plus value for the users as it could have been done like IndieVelo. However, for Zwift, they can control (and lock) the market. I still hope that an open standard will be implemented in the future.

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Well I’ve not tried it but if it’s in software and done by using erg mode then it’ll likely suck in the same way that erg mode can and often does. Compared with the trainer getting data and calculating resistance.

Difficult to see how zwift can have locked the market given that 2 versions of the wattbike atom, 2 or 3 Wahoo smart bikes, one from tacx and one from stages exist have virtual gearing?

I can’t imagine any competitor of zwift or company that makes hardware for indoor cycling even fretting for more than 30 seconds that zwift are a competitor in hardware terms. Zwift’s hardware is a joke isn’t it? They spend a lot of time and money on a concept bike that looked silly and then canned it. They’ve made a few cheap plastic ‘poundland’ toy controllers, and they’re currently demonstrating they can’t even pack a piece of hardware in a box safely for postage. There’s really nothing impressive about the zwift ride either. It’s not completely bad, but it’s not a game changing piece of hardware. I think a bicycle is better in every single way, and, quite obviously zwift rides needs a trainer anyway so every sale of a zwift ride is a sale for someone else making a trainer.

And if anyone likes zwift from a software perspective well they are in the market to buy hardware.

The rebadged jet black trainers might be a bit of a threat to the cheaper end of the direct drive trainer market. Do you get a kickr core or whatever the new jet black one is called? At the moment we know how much wahoo sucks, and not how much Jet Black do. So I doubt the price difference is going to dent wahoo’s sales a great deal unless they prove really reliable - and if they’re just burning VC to undercut the price well that will fail disastrously. But, at the moment it’s easier to speak to the pope than to zwift support so I’m not sure I’d want to be in that queue if my trainer had an issue.

All we really want is for zwift to make their software much, much better and for it to work with anything and everything. I don’t want their CEO to look at the share price of Krispy Kreme rising next week and him to decide zwift need to start making donuts because this appears to have been the sole motivation behind them doing hardware. Peloton envy. Which was short-lived anyway. It was pretty obvious that society wasn’t changing for keeps because of a virus.

Forget the hardware, do the software - because the biggest flaw in the space now is the software. There’s I dunno exactly how many but more than 5 people writing software that draws some kind of virtual world with virtual cyclists on it and connects to a trainer - and they all suck none of them are close to being finished or feature complete. So that’s the day job. Do that and hire people that can do that and then people will pay for that software.

But locked in? Remove 1 lock ring and my trainer will work with any software.

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I believe it adjusts the incline value. Sim mode still works properly.

It’s undeniable that people are very excited about the Zwift Ride hardware. The vendor lock-in aspect makes it a product I would not consider but I imagine they are looking at the product launch as a success. I do fear for those customers after the warranty expires, or if more pricing pain comes and they start to wish they could use any other software, but it’s their money and I can’t save them from themselves.

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