The Zwift Hub indoor smart trainer is Zwift’s first foray into indoor cycling hardware. The American brand already has the lion’s share of the indoor cycling market with its enormously popular app, but it has always relied on the likes of Wahoo, Tacx, Elite and co to provide the hardware.
The problem with that was as good as the best smart trainers are, they can be a bit of a minefield of jargon for new users, and that created too many ‘barriers to entry’ for Zwift. One source tells me that Zwift’s biggest loss of users occurs after creating an account and before pushing the first pedal stroke. Those barriers included questions like whether a bike was compatible with the trainer, what adaptors would be needed to make it fit and if they were included, whether the trainer was compatible with Zwift, and more. All of these questions are hurdles that stood between Zwift and its potential customers, and Zwift was having to rely on those aforementioned brands to make the process less complex.
With the Zwift Hub, Zwift has essentially created a competitor product to those brands, with an eagle eye on making the whole process quick, easy and straightforward. On paper, it looks like they’ve done a very good job.
Originally, Zwift planned to launch two products. A trainer – onto which a user would mount their own bike – and a smart bike, which would be a standalone product that would theoretically be even easier to set up. However, after the boom of the pandemic came the bust, and Zwift was forced to lay off the team developing those products. Instead, Zwift went to JetBlack, a company already making a low-cost trainer, and licensed its design.
After a few tweaks, including a minor change of the physical form to accommodate a greater number of disc brake bikes, and an internal change to improve durability, the Zwift Hub was born.
Its biggest draw is the price. At £449 / $499 / €499, it undercuts direct competition significantly. In fact, it has the potential to rip the middle out of the market.
Until recently, the price spectrum comprised dumb wheel-on trainers up to around £200/$200, smart wheel-on trainers up to around $500/$500, low-end smart direct drive trainers to around £700/$800, and high-end direct drive trainers up to around £1300/$1400. With the Zwift Hub being a direct drive trainer priced at wheel-on-trainer money, if it performs as Zwift promises, then there’ll be no reason to buy a smart wheel-on trainer, and no reason to spend £700/$800 on the competitors.
Interestingly, Wahoo has recently filed multiple copyright infringement claims against Zwift, claiming the Zwift Hub is materially similar to its Kickr Core. Somewhat tellingly as to Wahoo’s motivations, however, is the fact that also included in the claim is the JetBlack Volt, which had been on the market for two years prior to the claims.
Nonetheless, if you’re in the market for a new trainer, the Zwift Hub is an incredibly appealing proposition on paper, but how does it stand up to that promise in the real world?
Design and specifications
As mentioned, the Zwift Hub is essentially an existing turbo trainer, the JetBlack Volt, with a few tweaks to improve durability and compatibility. I’d never used the JetBlack Volt before, but it comes with an impressive list of specs given the price, which of course are now shared by the Zwift Hub.
Those specs include an ability to provide up to 1800 watts of resistance, which is more than pretty much anyone can do besides bordering-on-professional road sprinters and track cyclists. Compared to similarly priced competitors, this is somewhat middling. The Elite Zumo – priced slightly higher, but regularly discounted – tops out at 1350 watts. The Lifeline Xplova and Pinnacle HC – both of which share a very similar visual form to the Zwift Hub and are priced at around 50% higher, though also regularly discounted – hit a ceiling of 2500 watts.
Zwift promises that its power measurement is accurate to within 2%, and following extensive testing, I have no reasons to dispute this, as you’ll see further below. Top-tier trainers offer accuracy to within 1%, but the Zwift Hub leads the way in this budget space, with Elite claiming 3% and both Pinnacle and LifeLine claiming 2.5%.
It can simulate gradients of 16%, which covers more than 99% of Zwift’s roads. Only a couple of stretches on a few of the most difficult climbs push higher than 16%, but given that Zwift’s default setting is to have trainer difficulty set at 50%, it’s only if you purposefully raise this to 100% that you’ll find the limit of the trainer. Even in this case, your trainer will simply hold a simulated 16% until the road eases again. Lifeline and Pinnacle go steeper at 18 and 20% respectively, but Elite’s Zumo tops out at 12%. Bear in mind that your chosen trainer’s difficulty will affect how important this is; at 50% difficulty, no climb in Zwift will top out even the Zumo in this regard.
While the specs are the easily-comparable metrics and Zwift is already looking competitive, it’s only half of the picture. Think back to Zwift’s motivations outlined earlier and you’ll recall a keen focus on simplifying the setup process for users. This starts right at the point of purchase but continues through and beyond your first pedal strokes.
Impressively for its price point, the Zwift Hub comes complete with the cassette of your choice. At the point of purchase, you choose the cassette you need, aided by video tutorials to help you make the right call, and it comes fitted. That’s one less thing to worry about in the setup process, and one less thing to buy.
When it arrives, the legs of the trainer are fitted, but the feet – the two metal bars that fit horizontally – aren’t. Unlike the Elite Zumo and many of the more premium products on the market, the legs cannot be folded away, so they need to be bolted into place before you start. To make this simple – fool-proof even – the bottom of the legs and the tops of the feet are colour-coded. Simply match blue with blue and orange with orange, and you can’t go wrong. It even shows a warning if you have it the wrong way around.
The unit weighs 14.8kg in total, and there’s no carry handle fitted to make moving it around easier. It’s possible to carry it with the central leg, but it’s not the easiest thing to do, so it’s probably best left in situ if you can make that work in your home.
The next part of the setup included mounting your bike, and for this, you’ll need to ensure you’re using the correct adaptors. The Zwift Hub comes with adaptors for all modern bikes, the same adaptors as all other turbo trainers nowadays, so this no longer needs to be a consideration when buying one over another.
However, where the Zwift Hub stands out is the way these adaptors have been packaged. Rather than in a clear plastic bag like they are on the top-end Kickr I reviewed recently, Zwift packs them onto functional cards; one for quick-release axles, the other for thru-axles. Printed onto these cards are instructions on how to use them, and the top of each card is cut to a particular width. By sliding the top of the card into the rear of your bike, you’ll be able to see which of the two adaptors you need.
The one small issue I found here was that an adaptor for quick release was fitted to my test sample, and this needed removing to swap over to the thru-axle adaptor. This adaptor is sunken into the cassette, and the included wrench couldn’t get purchase on it to loosen it. This meant removing the lockring, which isn’t a difficult task but requires a specific tool that I doubt many people will have.
Once that was done, and the bike was mounted, the next – and final – step is plugging it in. The Zwift Hub comes with three plugs for the UK, EU, and the USA, and I couldn’t help but notice just how long the cable is. This means there’s plenty of scope for where you place your trainer in your chosen room, without being restricted by where the sockets are. Just be careful to tidy up any slack cable as the last thing you want is to trip up the wife/husband/dog, not least for their safety, but the cable is a simple pull-to-unplug so it could easily spell the end of your race.
With everything plugged in, you’ll go to the Zwift Companion app, sign in to your Zwift account, head to ‘more’ (the three dots bottom right) and then to ‘Zwift Hardware’. It will automatically search for – and hopefully find – your Zwift Hub. Bluetooth is becoming almost ubiquitous in this space, but the Zwift Hub will work with ANT+ too, for those using ANT+ adaptors.
Once paired, it’s here that you’ll update the trainer’s firmware when new versions become available, but it’s in the main Zwift app that you’ll perform calibrations, also known as a spin down.
With that said, Zwift tells me that automatic calibration is coming to the Zwift Hub, but for now, it must be done as a spin-down in Zwift. Interestingly, if you’re planning on using the Zwift Hub with another app, you’ll need to check that it will allow you to. TrainerRoad doesn’t currently offer it, so for some of my workouts, I’ve needed to go to Zwift to perform the spin down before returning to TrainerRoad to train.
And on the subject of training, that leads me nicely onto the trainer’s performance in use.
Performance
Prior to using the Zwift Hub for the first time, I’d spent a few weeks on the considerably more expensive Wahoo Kickr, and the first thing I noticed on my first ride was that the flywheel held a little less inertia, which is to be expected given at 4.7kg, it’s more than 2.5kg lighter than the one I was comparing to. This manifested itself in a slightly more ‘draggy’ feeling through the pedals, but nowhere near that of a wheel-on dumb trainer. Like pedalling through a shallow puddle rather than a pool of custard.
What surprised me though, was that after around five minutes, the feeling faded totally; it had simply become the norm. There’s no denying that the more premium trainer was slightly nicer to ride, but my learned expectation of how a trainer should feel through the legs shifted, and I no longer felt as though I was missing anything. The point of this little story is that someone buying the more affordable Zwift Hub instead of a top-tier trainer might not have as nice a ride feel, but it’s not a feeling you’d miss, even if you did experience it.
Elsewhere, the experience was unspectacularly fine. Sounds negative, I know, but I don’t need a turbo trainer to wow me, it needs to work consistently, quietly and effectively, and the Zwift Hub does just that.
It is stable in use due to the extra-wide front leg, but be aware that it doesn’t have height-adjustable feet – although none do at this price point – so anyone with uneven ground will need to smooth it out somehow. I find rubber matting does this well. There’s also no means to add any lateral movement, rocking or flex to the system, such as the Kickr Axis feet or the Tacx Neo Motion Plates, but again, this is usually reserved for much spendier units.
Throughout my time with the Zwift Hub, I have had zero problems with connectivity. It has been immediately findable at the start of each workout, and there have been no issues with mid-ride drops.
Power accuracy & responsiveness
One thing that you can’t do with the Zwift Hub is switch off the ERG Mode power smoothing. Therefore, instead of reading power numbers exactly as they come in, the Zwift Hub takes an average over a few seconds to create a doctored but smooth line.
Wahoo also offers ERG mode smoothing but allows you to toggle it on and off. To showcase the difference, here are two workout graphs from the same trainer (Wahoo Kickr V5) showing the effect of smoothing.
This doesn’t ultimately make all that much of a difference in day-to-day use, but it does make it more difficult for me to display the responsiveness of the trainer vs the workout I’m following. It also makes graphs look prettier, which a lot of people tend to like.
It doesn’t affect the accuracy over extended periods though, and in that sense, I found the Zwift Hub to be excellent. Better, in fact, than some trainers twice the price.
This image spands 45 minutes worth of a workout. You can see here that when compared to my S-Works Power LR power meter and Powrlink Zero pedals, all power sources tracked closely together, especially in the big rises and falls in power. However, what stands out here is just how closely the average and normalised power figures are. Between the Zwift Hub and S-Works crank, there’s less than 0.1% difference.
The comparison here isn’t quite as close, but still well within the 2% margin for error quoted, when you consider that the Powrlink Zero are accurate to within 1% and the S-Works are quoted at 1.5%.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture by now. The Zwift Hub is as accurate as it needs to be.
There have been reports of the Zwift Hub power drifting at the latter part of workouts due to an increase in temperature in the unit. Zwift says that in order to avoid this, the user should perform a spin-down after around 10 mins of riding. I wasn’t doing this, but had no real issues, as shown in the image above, which covers the final 10 minutes of an hour-long workout.
To test the trainer’s responsiveness, I always perform a VO2 Max style workout with short intervals at big power jumps. This particular workout jumped from 122 watts to varying higher wattages.
This step jumps from 122 watts to 398, and you can see the power graph (yellow line) jumps almost perfectly in line with the workout, with most of the step-up happening over the course of a single second.
This step was from 122 watts to 444, and the power step was immediate again, but taking around two seconds to get to the target power.
Over the entire workout, power spikes had an average pickup of around 2-4 seconds, but bear in mind that data is smoothed. In reality, I think it’s actually quicker than others. This means resistance is heaped on quickly for high intervals, and you’re up to power quickly. It’s good for short sharp workouts where a longer pickup would eat into the quality of the interval, but it can also be a little jarring if you’re not paying attention, as happened to me a couple of times. Especially with the lower inertia of the flywheel really accelerating the feeling of the brakes being slammed on.
Finally, just a quick note on cadence and there’s more good news. The Zwift Hub measures cadence using an algorithm, rather than a sensor, whereas both of my other power meters – a crank based and a pedal based – are aware of how many times they’re being turned. There’s a little bit of choppiness with the cadence dropping for a couple of seconds here and there, but it continually self-corrects and isn’t actually noticeable during the workout.
Verdict
Overall, this has been more akin to a love letter than a review, and for that, I am not apologising.
I will not try to convince you that the Zwift Hub is a better turbo trainer than the top-tier Wahoo Kickr or the Tacx Neo 2T with their bells, whistles and high price tags. It’s not. They’re both better, the Zwift Hub doesn’t have quite the same ride feel, nor does it have some of those added features that add realism and enjoyment to the ride. However, that’s about as useful as telling you a Volkswagen Golf isn’t as good as a Ferrari. If you can afford the Ferrari, get the Ferrari, but if you can’t, the Golf is still an excellent car.
If you can afford the Kickr, get the Kickr, but the Zwift Hub is an excellent turbo trainer. And not only excellent for its price, but excellent.
The Zwift Hub offers performance that punches well above its price tag, and while the £449 / $499 / €499 is still not an insignificant sum of cash, it represents better value for money than any other turbo trainer on the market.
In fact, to that point, I’ve just browsed the major cycling retailers across the UK and the USA, and I only found one direct-drive smart trainer that undercuts it. One. Across the entire bike industry. That’s the Pinnacle HC at Evans Cycles in the UK at £399.99 (opens in new tab), currently on sale at a ridiculous 43% off. Plenty of other trainers have been discounted, but they still sit at a higher price than the Zwift Hub, that’s how good value it is.
A product that offers great value for money deserves the plaudits it gets, especially during a period in which the cost of living is inflating at exceptional rates. The market for smart trainers is about to change. Smart wheel-on trainers are about to become redundant, and mid-tier models are going to need to adapt or lose out. Zwift has changed the game.
| Attributes | Notes | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | Easy to set up both hardware and software. You need to fit the legs, but that’s easy and tools are included. Unlike its competition, you don’t need to fit the cassette. | 10/10 |
| ERG Mode | Power smoothing can’t be switched off, but that’s a personal preference. It works exactly as it should and that’s all you can ask. | 10/10 |
| Ride Feel | The ride inertia is a little lacking compared to the best trainers. However, its price-point competitors are wheel-on trainers, and Zwift Hub is in a different league to those. It’s closest direct-drive competitors offer similar feel, so it’s hard to mark it down by much. | 9/10 |
| Power accuracy | It offers 2% accuracy and I’ve seen no data to dispute it. It’s not market-leading, but it leads this price-point and matches those at twice the price. | 10/10 |
| Connectivity | Offers the common protocols of Bluetooth and ANT+. I’ve not experienced a single problem in my testing. | 10/10 |
| Noise | Hovers around 60db in my tests. While averagein comparison, it’s still quieter than drivetrain noise and not a problem with neighbours or family members. | 10/10 |
| Stability | Perfectly stable, even under hard efforts. No complaints here. | 10/10 |
| Storability | At 14.8kg, it’s portable enough, but with no carry handle or folding legs, it’s best left in situ if you can. | 7/10 |
| Value | At retail price, the Zwift Hub is by far the best value trainer on the market | 10/10 |
| Total | 96% |
