# Tacx Flux 2 Trainer Review (2020/2.1 Edition) // Details, Tested, Accuracy

**Channel:** DC Rainmaker
**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74iZal7Uv0
**Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/V74iZal7Uv0

## Chapters

- 0:11 — Flux 2.1 Release and Specs
- 3:08 — Setup, Pairing, and Road Feel
- 5:42 — Noise, Resistance, and ERG Performance
- 9:33 — Accuracy Testing and Reliability Issues
- 12:32 — Value Verdict and Closing Thoughts

## Transcript

**[0:11]:** hey folks raid you see your america.com here and has been two years - like - number two years since this thing here the tax flux - it was announced it was announced on July 8th 2018 at year of life the year they actually did it in July and yet it's finally working mostly now if you've been following along with this giant - year long saga basically this thing was announced then didn't actually for another six or seven months basically January of 2019 and then started shipping I tested it and it pretty much sucked the accuracy was horribly off off 10 plus percent which does a lot to be off and it's pretty rare for me to put the top of my page do not buy this trainer it is bad and it's been bad all the way up until April of 2020 so like more than a year after it came out attacks has been

**[1:02]:** shipping this thing and it's out there and finally in April 2020 you got a firmware update and with that firmware update is supposed to fix the accuracy stuff but to imply it was just a firm rope it would be sort of skipping over a few things so first off this is the tax - smart but technically speaking this is the tax flux 2.1 smart it's actually a separate hardware version than the original one that we started with two plus years ago now from an official Garmin standpoint there's no like additional markings on this that says this is 2.1 it's just you have to know now if you look at the actual unit you can see some minor nuances as to whether it's a 2 or a 2.1 primarily on the cassette adapter on the freehub there but if you're buying this thing now then it's a 2.1 version and between the 2.0 and the 2.1

**[1:49]:** version there's some internal changes in the actual resistance unit itself that makes it respond faster and more accurately there's also a bunch of other random things that are more like manufacturing tweaks but the main thing is around the accuracy bits that enables that firmware update to make the entire trainer more accurate now before we get into all that what you didn't probably see there is it actually hit my laptop on the way down I thought it'll be pretty smooth but but it wasn't but before we get to all that let's talk some basic specs first off is the inclined resistance only flux 2.1 is it eighteen percent when the flux to is originally in balanced it was actually 15 percent but they've since tweaked it to 16 percent some well in line it's also can resist two thousand watts of your power if you can do that at 40 kilometres an hour pretty standard run-of-the-mill

**[2:35]:** specs for the particular price range speaking of which 899 bucks on top of that you get all the normal aunt plus and Bluetooth smart connectivity me you can use with the trainer odor Kingdom apple or sufferfest or you at the point all the usual stuff you'd expect one more last bit aspects being the flywheel way to which is seven point six kilograms is a physical flywheel that's the gray spinny thing that's in the back there and generally speaking the heavier the flywheel the more realistic from a road feel standpoint news however on the flux series that's actually a similar to flywheel weight as well and that comes in a thirty two point one kilogram okay

**[3:08]:** so getting right into things once you've got all unboxed keep in mind it does not come with a cassette like most of the trainers in this price point except for they'll eat sweet oh you have to buy except cassettes if we cost you about fifty bucks or so fifty sixty bucks and you're need about ten to twenty dollars and tools if you don't already have them installing like I said is super easy it takes between two and five minutes typically just pop it on there and you're good to go when it comes to pairing up your trainer it's pretty straightforward you can take your app a choice Swift for example I need go into the pairing menu and you'll see the flux two listed there and now in cases lift I see it here is on appletv I see it as a controllable trainer which means it'll control the resistance going up and down so

**[3:46]:** can simulate a different grade for example like 5% or 10% or even 16% and then you'll also see the cadence shown there as well as the power from the power meter side of it so those three things come under one channel and then you have an additional free channel in the case of Apple TV for your heartrate broadcast if you want as well the same thing works also in trainerroad you can see here doesn't my ipad paired up as a smart trainer and that I can go and control that from the app so I'll set the given wattage so for example 200 watts or 428 watts or whatever the case may be from your app so with that let's get on the bike and on the bike we're going to talk about noise and Road feel but before that if you're fond of this video useful or interesting or something like that just simply whack

**[4:25]:** that like but in the bottom there it really helps up this video and the channel quite a bit so here we are on the bike and on the flux to itself the first thing we do is just show you kind of acceleration bits a little bit was the road feel whatnot so right now on Swift we're on slight incline but 2% or so and we'll get back to the sound so you can hear that in just a moment here so you can see as I accelerate forward I get this few in my legs like a little bit of acceleration there initially which is nice in terms of that Road feel but sometimes like right then and there you just saw me slow down a split second that's these random surges that I see even though the the incline went from 2 percent to 1 percent it actually like slightly surged underneath me and I've seen

**[5:04]:** that a few times and it's that wrong with that as I'm shooting this I see that right there now here we are on flat to slightly downhill incline and it feels normal shifting through

**[5:20]:** no issues there it's all good going to a bit of a sprints here

**[5:29]:** and there you go right there again midway through that it surged its soon surge I'm at zero percent negative one percent a second ago but the power just does these were the things that aren't quite right so let's

**[5:42]:** talk about audio for a second right now you're listening to the audio through my lab mic so you're not hearing too much just sounds pretty clean pretty normal we're gonna go ahead and switch it over to the camera mic sounds like within the

**[6:22]:** and one of the things are smart trainers is the power outlet has no bearing on the audio or volume of the sound rather it's a speed so in this case I increase my speed here it'll get louder than ever but I think that quieter by Township so this bits here I do matically reduced the volume of the trailer because I'm no longer the fun train there and it's smaller in the front and it's much much quieter so that's useful if you're doing the orders in the workout for example you can get a pretty fine wire here and now you only curve the drivetrain and I could be doing 400 watts 500 bucks 800 watts and rig move and it sound exactly like this because it's all about the speed versus the findings whip right here so in this piece I thought it back just like the wood outdoors and that's when the volume when you

**[7:20]:** clear the drivetrain said melody sound that's my driving training but you can also hear that slight Rumble underneath it all and that's the trigger especially want to start to spread closer but there's more carefully out to speed

**[7:56]:** okay with these weaved Road feel aspects all covered what about earth modes and what about like trainerroad and other apps that are purely focused on earth mode as opposed to simulating going up grades and stuff like that in my case this was where this entire review two years ago fell apart if you remember way back then I found the accuracy was way off and all that kind of stuff and I'm happy to report accuracy as I'll talk about later on pretty good like I'm not really seeing power accuracy issues that seems to be good but accuracy really comes into kind of three general categories especially with earth mode number one is raw power accuracy is it accurate or the power meter as soon as I said yes that's that's good the second point is stability of the power so if I tell the trainer to go and hold 430 watts can it hold 430 watts

**[8:42]:** or is it all over the place and in my testing it's pretty good there - not perfect and it's definitely very speed dependent which is common for a lot of trainers especially kind of mid-range - budget trainers and if finally the last piece is how quickly can it get to that setpoint so again if I tell it to go from 150 watts to 400 watts how long does it take to get from 150 to 400 watts and in this case it ranged I would say between roughly three and six seconds give or take sometimes closer to three sometimes closer to six and keep mind that is a big jump and I'm doing that mostly for like 30 30 s and things like that so the sweet spot is really like two - for two to three seconds somewhere in there so this was a touch bit on the high side but for most people you

**[9:24]:** would never notice unless you're doing the 30 by 30 s with you know kind of high differences and watch their now before I dive into some of the bigger catches let's go quickly talk about power accuracy at the

**[9:33]:** desk and then come back here and talk about some of the other things I've seen okay now for the accuracy section I've done this a lot more in-depth on the website so check that out as well but I want to talk to two different sets here the first one is whiffed this is compared against a Corp d0 and if a vero a co more pedals and you'll see on the whole is pretty darn close if we go ahead and zoom in different sections here you'll see that all the units are within about 10 watts in most cases and it some work very well because that's sort of the nature of his whiffed and as you go up and down the different gene of inclines and declines but the vast majority the time it's something about 10 watts of each other which given the drivetrain differences that you'd expect to see from pedals to crank sitting

**[10:10]:** down to the rear cassette where the trainer is it's about right next if you look at trainer this is an ERG more workout this is a 30 by 30 workout so basically I'm just testing how quickly things we spawn back and forth you see that the cork is a little bit higher than I want to see here in almost 20 watts higher in most cases or some cases then the flux to the Vera I see almost sort of sits the middle about 10 watts higher still between the furn osteoma and the flux - I'm seeing pretty good alignment again you're seeing some drivetrain losses you know I've got some other data sets up on the in depth review on a site as well as much more kind of analytics around this but for YouTube I want to focus on some other issues I saw instead okay so with the power accuracy covered what's not to

**[10:53]:** like well a couple different things a first office some abnormalities that I've seen in the last week week-and-a-half despite using this for a couple months now really the last week and a half things kind of went down the crapper and in particular a couple different areas one I've seen some power spikes up to 2,000 watts which is way more than I can put out the second are power surges or it actually surges the resistance on the bike so I was doing a ride this past weekend and it was I was standing at like 200 watts and a whole Senate boom it surged to 500 watts which my legs just like again feel like running into a brick wall when you don't expect that to happen so that was less than ideal and in the inverse problem as well which was that I was climbing Mont 1/2 and Swift and then of course there and just

**[11:37]:** cruise along and boomed the power cut off entirely like just the resistance cut out the cadence display everything just cut out from the trainer to the app and it was just I had to wait like eight or ten seconds before it resumed again and you might think well this is just a typical like signal transient sort of thing except I don't really think so I've tested this in two different locations so at home I mean here I've tested across four different platforms so iPad Apple TV Windows laptop and on some connected garmr devices and I'm seeing across all those I've connected across a plus and blue to smart like this is sort of my jam and I'm pretty sure this is not a transient connectivity issue like I know those inside of now and this isn't it so in talking to text about it they're not really sure what it is either they're gonna start

**[12:22]:** digging into it and researching and all that stuff now but let's fit that aside let's say that this is just a single me issue and no one else is Scenic's again I'm not seeing much chatter about these specific

**[12:32]:** issues in forms and things like that the other part of it is really just the price to value if looking at the trainer from a price standpoint its 899 bucks the same as the wahoo kicker core that trainer is virtually silent when it's not broken but it's virtually silent and also the road feels just a lot better keep in mind the care core is just a Wahoo kicker from the previous year everyone who is thrilled to the Walker leader before now it's character core are the same price I'm probably gonna go to care court every time on top of that it's got dual Bluetooth smart connections like all these extra little things that are on the flux - there's nothing wrong with the flux 2 or 2.1 or whatever you want to call it now but it's just at that price point it's a hard sell for me and that's again ignoring some of the

**[13:16]:** issues that I've seen over here or so I don't know maybe it's maybe it's just not the time to buy a trainer anyways with that hopefully found this review interesting or useful or something like that if so go ahead and like that like button the bottom there or the subscribe button there is plenty more sports Technology goodness coming up over the next little while this is use the time period where we start seeing things for Eurobike obviously you're a bike isn't happening this year well it's supposed to happen November but let's be honest it's not gonna happen then so it's supposed to happen then then instead now companies are getting ready to announce stuff and so I think that same cycle new products will happen over the next you know a month and a half or so I don't expect any products to be announced in that November timeframe within the sports technology realm I'm

**[13:59]:** not not hearing that so I'll have to see point there being if you want to be a top all that new goodness coming out then hit the subscribe button so you get the dingdong Bell thing as soon as a new video pops up oh and if he wants a t-shirt you'll see in the description thing.you below there with that have a good one