Tacx Neo 2T Smart trainer

The Tacx NEO 2T Smart is the next generation of what's already a well-regarded trainer. The new unit offers more powerful resistance at low speeds and is capable of very quick ERG power changes. It's quiet and capable, with accurate power numbers, and continues the trend of NEO trainers being excellent, although the ERG mode is a bit hardcore compared to some.

If you're unfamiliar with the Tacx NEO family of trainers, it's one of the benchmark direct drive trainers out there. Unlike its direct competitors – the Wahoo KICKR, the Saris H3 and the Elite Drivo, among others – it doesn't use a belt to drive the resistance unit from the cassette. The connection is direct, and the flywheel is virtual, rather than being a big block of metal that you spin up to speed.

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Tacx claims the NEO 2T can simulate a flywheel up to 125kg, way above the physical flywheels on other units, and the design also allows the trainer to directly drive the rear wheel, so it'll keep up speed when you're resting on descents, ready to pick up your effort again at the bottom. It's also able to generate its own power, so if you like to take your trainer to warm up before races then you can get full interactivity with your favourite training app in the middle of a field if you want.

The trainer has two hinged feet that flip up for storage, and looks a bit like the Imperial shuttle that Darth Vader used to knock about in.  It doesn't come with a cassette, so you'll need to factor in the cost of that, but other than that it's good to go, accepting all the axle standards you're likely to throw at it.

It's ANT+ and Bluetooth compatible for both reporting and for trainer control. It can simulate up to a 25% gradient and offers up to 2,200W of resistance at an accuracy of +/- 1%, which should be enough unless you've devised a way for both you and a friend to ride at once.

In terms of the look of the trainer, the only clue it's a NEO 2T and not a NEO 2 is a glossy racing stripe, and a T. The changes are internal, and mostly concerned with the strength and positioning of the magnets.

The NEO 2 is a great trainer, which could replicate pretty much anything. One thing it did struggle with though was hard sprints from low speed, where the resistance unit wasn't able to offer enough resistance, and you could induce some slip. The new trainer has more powerful magnets which are aligned differently, and those changes mean it's able to cope with those low-speed sprints much better.

It's not really something that I do a great deal of, but if you're into your sprints from a standstill then the NEO 2T will probably suit you better than its predecessor. For the rest of us, you're unlikely to notice that change, although you might notice the different feel of the ERG mode; more on that in a bit.

Setting up

Setting up the NEO 2T is simple enough, assuming you have a cassette. Fold the feet out, fit the cassette, make sure the end caps are the ones to fit your frame and lob your bike on top. It took me about 10 minutes from sealed box to being ready to go; you don't even need to plug it in if you don't want to, although you don't get the powered downhills if you don't. The power lead is nice and long if your power socket isn't ideally placed.

If you can't leave your trainer set up then it's easy enough to pack away too, and folds into a pretty compact unit. It's heavy and doesn't have a nice balanced handle like the Wahoo KICKR so it's a bit more of a struggle to move about, but it's not that much of a chore.

Linking the NEO 2T to a variety of training apps using both Bluetooth and ANT+ didn't present any issues: everything worked first time.

Once you start riding you'll probably notice that the NEO 2T is very quiet. All direct drive trainers are these days, and the NEO 2T is as quiet as any. Certainly it's not as noisy as my bike's transmission, and nowhere near as noisy as my fan. The motor is well balanced, so there's not much vibration through sprung floors or into your neighbour's flat below. As with all the NEO trainers you get the natty mood light that shines on the floor and gets angrier in colour the harder you go.

The NEO 2T resistance unit, like its predecessors, is capable of replicating road conditions. So if you're on Zwift and riding across a wooden bridge you'll feel the thunk-thunk-thunk of the planks underneath your wheels. It's very clever and not by any means essential, but it does add a layer of realism to the ride that you don't get with other trainers.

Power: repeatable and believable

The NEO 2T's resistance unit isn't exactly the same as the NEO 2, but it's a similar beast, and it has the same characteristics. Those characteristics are: it's very good at giving repeatable numbers that you can trust to be pretty close to what you're actually putting out, and generally it reads at the lower end of what I'd expect from my legs, given a few years of trying all sorts of trainers and power meters.

Here's a plot of the power from a Zwift race I did, with the NEO 2T plotted against my Garmin Vector 2 pedals, which I've used to benchmark loads of trainers over the years and I'm confident are pretty accurate.

You can see that the average power numbers are about 2.5% apart, comparing power measured at the pedals with power measured at the rear wheel. Given that there are losses associated with getting the power from the pedal to the rear wheel, you'd expect the NEO 2T to register slightly lower numbers, and it does.

It's also noticeable that the two lines are closer at the start of the race, and less so the further through you go. I'm not sure what caused that in this instance: I'd already completed a 20-minute warm up, so both pedals and trainer were up to speed. I suspect it's my form on the bike suffering and that being reflected in the plots. I tend to mash the pedals a bit more when I'm tired, so maybe the Garmins were thinking there was more in the tank than there actually was, or maybe the NEO 2T was under-representing the fluctuating power a bit. Or a combination of both.

The graph above is that warm up, a 20-minute set of stepped intervals. You can see that again, the two lines match each other very closely, with the average power only about 1% different between the two.

Let's zoom in on one of those intervals though...

This is a ramped interval that goes from about 350W to about 400W over a minute. You can see at the start that there's a peak well over 400W before it settles into the interval. This is something you often see on intervals when a trainer is in ERG mode: the trainer/app combination adds a bit too much resistance at the start of the interval and needs to slack it off a bit to get to the correct level. The redesigned internals of the NEO 2T make it capable of making big resistance changes almost instantaneously, and that's what it does in ERG intervals. It's pretty brutal: as soon as you hit the interval it's just a wall of resistance, and you have to really push to get the interval going, which also contributes to the power peaking.

Compare that to this trace of a set of intervals from the Elite Suito trainer. The pickup of resistance on the Elite isn't as quick as the NEO 2T, and the result is that you work into the interval a bit more gradually, which is a lot gentler on the legs. It's not like one approach is right and one wrong, but I prefer the feel of the Suito here, even though it's not quite as good at holding power at a set level. The NEO 2T does that much better, but some intervals – for example, the sprint intervals at 300% FTP on the Jon's Mix session in Zwift – are almost impossible: it's like cycling into a brick wall.

> How to get started with Zwift

The work that Tacx has done on the resistance unit should mean that it's capable of doing pretty much anything, but at the moment it feels a bit like it's turned up to 10. It needs to be backed off a notch, or maybe user-configurable for feel. Some people might like the current feel.

The flip side of that is that if you're riding around in Zwift then the gradient changes in the game are more quickly and accurately represented. On the Suito, for example, if you're riding the rollers at the start of Titan's Grove then it can sometimes feel like the climbs on the trainer are lagging behind what you're seeing on the screen a bit, and that's never a problem with the NEO 2T: as soon as you see the gradient tick up you can feel the hill kick in.

The NEO 2T measures cadence using a passive sensing system, and it does a bang-up job. The two traces of the trainer and the pedals here – which of course can directly measure the cadence so should be spot on – are mostly indistinguishable, and the average is almost exactly the same. Certainly it's as good as you'd ever need it to be, and much better than the Saris H3, for example, which uses algorithmic detection and isn't as good.

Overall: another top quality NEO trainer

There are lots of great direct drive trainers out there and the NEO 2T is certainly up there with the best of them in terms of build quality, power accuracy and ride feel. At £1,199 the NEO 2T is priced above what I'd consider to be its direct competitors. The Wahoo KICKR and Elite Drivo 2 are both a penny under a grand, and the Saris H3 has dropped to £849 RRP.

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If you're not going to be spending a lot of your time doing sprints from a standstill then it's also worth looking for an older NEO 2 unit at a discount; you'll probably not notice the difference between the two, and you might save yourself a few quid. I prefer the feel of that older unit in ERG mode as well, although I expect subsequent firmware updates to the NEO 2T will address that, or (hopefully) allow users to tune the feel to their preference.

If you're looking for a top-end indoor trainer – and can find one, there aren't many for sale out there right now – then it's easy to recommend, as are its competitors. At that top level I'd say the Saris H3 is the best value right now, and the NEO 2T – with its better cadence sensing, road feel and the ability to power itself – is probably the pick in terms of features. Whether the extras are worth the £350 hike will depend on how much you value them, and what you'll be doing with the trainer.

Note: The Tacx Neo 2 Special Edition is currently discounted to £699.99 at Wiggle. 

Verdict

Great quality indoor trainer with accurate power reporting and some unique features