[emb-fit]

Go to any half decent bike shop and say you'd like to spend that much on a bike/trainer and they will bend over backwards to make sure you get exactly what you want and need. They will very likely even throw in a custom fitting using all the special tools they have at their disposal.

Not sure what twiddling you are doing with resistance and elevation, smart trainers pick the resistance based on what the app tells it to do in real time.

By no means can a 'large' chunk of the population afford $2,500 up front plus $60/month.

With a real bike on a trainer some people might even decide to try riding outside, who knows...

[cycomanic]

People here really underestimate the cost of a decent road bike. If you don't have a bike already and want to only do indoor riding $2000k is best spend on an indoor bike not on a smart trainer + road bike. If you want a reasonable trainer you definitely want a direct drive, which rules out the snap so you are already in the territory of a wahoo kickr core or elite direto at about $700 and $1300 will give you the absolute bottom of the line in road bikes (not that one necessarily needs more for indoor riding). Then come the issues of maintaining the bike, generally the indoor environment is not really suited for road bikes. On top of that the quality of ride experience is going to be significantly worse. The noise from a bike on a trainer is much louder than an indoor bike.

Now that said, should you buy a peloton? Unless you're interested in indoor spinning classes don't. Get a tacx neobike, the wahoo kickr bike or the stages bike. They are much better bikes and allow you to use any of the many training platforms out there (zwift, rouvy...). If you're just interested in indoor spinning classes, just get yourself an indoor spinning bike without all the fancy electronics.

I've been riding competivily for a long time and when I moved to Northern Europe from Australia and needed to get myself a trainer for winter, it still made the most sense to get the tacx neobike despite already owning 2 roadbikes and a cyclocross bike.

[djrogers]

> By no means can a 'large' chunk of the population afford $2,500 up front plus $60/month.

Where did you get $60/mo from? GP mentioned $50 which is also off base... A peloton sub is $13/mo. The only way you could pay $60/mo is if you’re financing the bike.

[gpanders]

Peloton has 2 subscriptions available: one for just the app without the accompanying bike which is $13/mo, the other that accompanies the bike which is $40/mo.

[rconti]

I see huge numbers of folks on Peloton groups who have gotten into outdoor cycling as a result. It's actually a near-constant stream of folks on the FB groups asking for advice.