Wahoo Fitness introduces Kickr Steer steering add-on for indoor riding
Wahoo Fitness has today added yet another piece to its indoor cycling ecosystem. The new Kickr Steer is a hardware add-on that attaches to your existing drop bars, allowing another degree of control to the RGT Cycling indoor cycling simulator (which Wahoo purchased last year).
“Previously, a users’ position on the road was automated, with riders using their power to move around other cyclists,” reads the accompanying marketing spiel. “Now with RGT Steering, maneuvering around fellow riders becomes part of the experience, adding a new level of strategy and engagement to virtual rides. Similar to real cycling outdoors, riders can find the sweet spot in the middle of the pack, push the pace at the front, cut a sweeping corner to gain position or pull around to mount an attack. When combined with Race Radio, riders can communicate and interact, to benefit from group dynamics.”
The device itself attaches with a custom (and very burly) aluminum out-front computer mount. Once the mount itself is installed on your bars, the platform simply clicks on to the end of it with a handy quick-release mechanism with no tools required. In the middle is a platform to hold your RGT-connected smartphone.
To “steer”, you simply use your thumbs to push on the big paddles located on either side of the Kickr Steer. This tilts the platform – and more specifically, the accelerators embedded within your phone – sending a signal to the system that you’re trying to steer. Each set of paddles is two-tiered for easy access from either the hoods or the drops.
On the surface, this seems like a neat add-on to the RGT Cycling interface. However, it’s hard not to see an awful lot of glaring holes in this particular bit of hardware.
For one, there’s the mount, which relies on you having a 31.8 mm-diameter round bar (which is becoming increasingly less likely, particularly at the high end of the market that’s more likely to find appeal in this sort of thing). As far as I can tell, there is no way to adapt the device to other out-front computer mounts given the dedicated quick-release interface. The phone platform is also little more than a phone-shaped recess in a plastic shelf with no means of rigidly securing the thing, and no way to accommodate a phone or phone case that doesn’t have a perfectly flat back. In other words, if you have a Popsocket or anything similar, you’re out of luck.
The even more fundamental downside is this only works with Wahoo’s own RGT Cycling – as in, not Zwift, not Rouvy, or anything else (although the lack of Zwift compatibility perhaps shouldn’t be surprising given Wahoo filed a patent infringement suit against Zwift last October).
By all accounts, RGT Cycling is a fine indoor cycling software platform, but the lack of Zwift compatibility feels like a critical shortcoming that will only add to the hardware oversights. More importantly, it will make the Kickr Steer a complete non-starter for many. At best, it seems the seeming collapse of Wahoo Fitness’s relationship with Zwift is making the Kickr Steer far less impactful than it likely could have been; at worst, it’s essentially DOA.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but consider this: Wahoo is only just now launching this thing, and it’s already on sale for half off the US$100 / AU$160 / £90 / €100 retail price.
Read into that however you’d like, but that doesn’t sound promising to me.
More information can be found at www.wahoofitness.com.
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