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I'm a frequent road and (less frequent) mountain cyclist, and I've got a Peloton (just did my 500th ride on it on Friday AM, in fact). I've attempted to answer this question before for others, but honestly, I've only ridden zwift once, on someone else's setup, so I can't compare how "good" the experience is. That said, despite my involvement in the cycling world, I still have no idea how to Zwift. I know I need a bike, a trainer, some kind of device to play the 'game' part, a display, and sensors. Presumably the smart trainer has power built in, but I don't know if I would want BT, or if I'd want ANT and then an ant dongle for my computer/tablet. I know the words Zwift, Watopia, Sufferfest, TrainerRoad, and about 37 others, but don't know the relationship between them. I don't how how the whole ecosystem fits together, what I download, who I pay, and from watching others struggle with it, it's pretty clear there's a non-0 learning curve. I know for a fact that I COULD figure it out, but that doesn't mean it's for everyone, or all cyclists, or all cardio enthusiasts, or all people into spinning. From the cycling groups I'm in, whenever Zwift comes up, it seems like people are always discussing what components to get to work best together. I'm sure once you get the 'right' components it just works, but it sounds fairly fiddly for newbies. I also hate riding a real bike indoors. When we had a mag trainer, my wife and I NEVER swapped the bikes out; she wanted me to do it, and so the 'wrong' bike was always on the trainer, and it always felt so damn fragile to me. I'd definitely want to use a dedicated bike for a smart trainer, not one I try to ride outside. Another (admittedly minor) factor is size. I actually realized that I physically cannot fit a bike+smart trainer in the space our Peloton bike goes in our workout area (with a Peloton treadmill and Precor elliptical). I'm pretty active in a handful of Peloton FB groups, and it definitely feels like there's a tendency for folks who use Peloton and ride outside to head towards Zwift for their indoor training, but there's also a significant percentage of people who went the other direction, or tried Zwift and didn't like it/found it boring/etc. The video game competition aspect of it looks like a lot of fun to me, but not enough to bother investing in a setup. So, that's my 2 cents. While I didn't personally make the purchasing decision, I've made a lot of similar ones -- pay a bit extra for something that just works, where someone already did the research and made the decisions for you, and you don't need a new hobby or project to make it work. The same reason I use Apple devices, the same reason I bought a Synology instead of building my own NAS. |