Wattbike have announced a new second generation of their training bike for the Zwift home user. I reviewed the original Atom and the original Wattbike Pro, which permanently changed the way I train, so I have a very positive view of the Wattbike brand.
This second generation is an exciting development in indoor training for a number of reasons. Firstly, the original Atom was a strong product that I enjoyed using. It looks great – so it fits into the home more nicely than a normal smart trainer with a bike attached. Like many new products to the market, it had a few teething issues but settled down into a reliable and popular product, that brought ERG mode and the variable resistance training you need to get the best out of apps like Zwift, TrainerRoad, RGT, Sufferfest etc.
As we’ve seen with a number of competitors, the second generation is an opportunity to take the tech inside original unit and the overall sophistication of the product up to a new level. So with the respect to the Atom, the original industrial design still looks great and fits well in a home or home gym environment, so that doesn’t need “fixing”. A Wattbike Atom is not the type of product that your family will say looks like it should be tucked away in the garage out of sight (even though, that’s where many will live).
For the next generation unit, Wattbike have been working on the internals. The new Atom boasts a number of welcome upgrades including:
- A new electromagnetic resistance system that reacts faster than before – Wattbike promise instant changes
- 1% accuracy which is as good as you’re going to get/need
- Faster, more realistic gear changes (no doubt thanks to the new resistance unit)
- Higher maximum Wattage to 2500W and the ability to simulate up to 25% gradients
- New flywheel and cranks sensors. The new crank angle sensor reads “48 times per revolution, compared with the two per revolution of the Atom launched in 2017, enabling the bike to make faster decisions, adjusting the resistance system without having to wait for either a half or full turn of the pedals”. Wattbike also claim that the 2nd generation unit’s Flywheel and crank angle sensors read your data 1,000 times per second for accuracy of +/- 1% across the full power curve.
The next generation Wattbike Atom is available from July 1st for £1899 in the UK and if you’re interested, you can sign for more information at: https://wattbike.com/gb/product/atom
A further interesting development from Wattbike is their recent focus on wider health, which has emerged out of the Covid-19 crisis. Wattbike have always had sports science close to their activities as opposed to just making trainers for athletes to use and like myself, they saw their tools as ways for people to help minimise their risk of contracting Covid-19 through strengthening VO2 max and our bodies immune systems. I wrote about this recently and found Wattbikes own content around this topic very helpful: https://wattbike.com/gb/blog/exercise-immune-system-and-covid-19
Wattbike have also set up a webinar series to take this topic further and I’ll be listening in. If it’s something you’d like to explore more, here’s the link to the webinars: https://wattbike.com/gb/wattbike-webinar
Thanks for reading
