Wahoo Kickr Core vs Zwift Hub One vs Van Rysel D500
In this battle of the budget direct drive smart trainers, we pitch three of the best against each other to find out which is best for your indoor riding in 2024was released in 2018, it brought top-tier direct drive smart trainer tech down to a much lower price point. These days it's hard to see why you would spend more, and we've got our hands on three of the most popular mid-range indoor trainers to put them head to head.
> Wahoo releases single-sprocket Kickr Core Zwift One smart trainer and Zwift discontinues its Hub One The original Kickr Core allows you to choose a cassette of your choice at checkout, but the Van Rysel requires you to purchase this separately. If this does happen to be a 12-speed cassette then unlucky, because that freehub body for the D500 is currently sold out, with no time frame given of when you can expect stock to return.I am also disappointed to say that I’ve been having other compatibility issues with the Van Rysel trainer too.
Clearly the Wahoo and Zwift win in this regard, but the vast majority of riders won’t be troubling either figure, so it's kind of neither here nor there and probably won’t be a deciding factor for you.What these figures do mean is that the Wahoo and Zwift trainers can simulate up to 16% climbs, while the Van Rysel only goes up to 12%. This means that there will be a few virtual climbs on indoor apps where you could max out with the latter, but rest assured, it won't be any easier.
The Zwift Hub also has power reporting plenty good enough to use as a benchmark, being well within the accuracy range that Zwift states, and it's very repeatable. As with nearly all trainers, it is worth calibrating the trainer every now and then. But in both geared and single-speed builds, we've not seen the power drift away from believable numbers.
Now, it has to be said that this used to just be the semi-accepted norm with indoor trainers, and it’s only the likes of Tacx, Wahoo and Elite’s excellent recent trainers that have seemingly solved this problem. The problem isn’t bad enough to completely write off the D500, because it's still functional and the scale of the problem is far, far less than on some other trainers I’ve used. But, it’s an area where Wahoo and Zwift are clearly leading the way.