Zwift power vs head unit power with Stages PM

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Has anybody noticed a power difference between the Zwift power numbers and the power numbers displayed on your head units?  I use a stages PM and a Wahoo Elemnt computer.  I use the wahoo to compare the power numbers broadcast to Zwift and the head unit and the Zwift numbers are ~30W higher than on the Elemnt, even though both are receiving the same output from the Stages…  I saw the same thing in both training and free ride modes.

My smart trainer is a wahoo kickr.  The kicker in all of this is that if I set my power source to be the kickr (in Zwift), the the Zwift power and head unit power are almost identical.  It’s almost like Zwift manipulates the Stages data somehow and outputs a different value on the screen

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Hi, 

Are you using a different power smoothing on Zwift vs your head unit? ie, 3 seconds vs 5 seconds? 

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I did some more troubleshooting.  The head unit was reading the power broadcast by the kicrk, not the power meter, so, long story short, the stages and the kickr don’t match…and, the difference is ~10-15W @ 230…thanks for following up.  P.S.  I tried different smoothing 

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I get very different power numbers between my STAGES and my KICKR.  SO much so, I only use my STAGES for power.  My KICKR typically overestimates power and it does not do so consistently.  (It will get easier as time goes on).

When using zwift I use stages for the PM and KICKR for the controllable trainer…

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