Today Look has announced two interchangeable power meter pedals, their Look KEO Blade carbon road pedal power meter, and their X-Track SPD-based power meter pedal. These two pedals share the same internals, allowing you to buy one set, and then an extra set of pedal bodies to swap back and forth between road and off-road. On the road side, Look’s new pedal is by far the lowest-weight power meter pedal on the market, while on the MTB side, it has the highest drop-rating on the market.
I’ve been testing these in various iterations over the last few months, however, despite that, this isn’t an in-depth review like I normally would release. I’ll detail why lower in the ‘Accuracy’ section, but as the famed bike-shop saying starts “I was just riding along…”, when things went…well…very wrong. As you’ll see, Look has taken these issues very seriously, even bringing engineers up to the DCR Cave this past weekend to disassemble and autopsy the unit. But this does mean my full normal review is slightly delayed while they get to the bottom of things. Again, more on that down below.
Nonetheless, these pedals mark an interesting point for Look. Many may not realize Look is actually one of the cycling companies with the most power meter pedal experience. In fact, one could argue that no company has made as many power meter pedal variants as Look. They first started in 2011/2012, developing Polar’s power meter pedal system. From there they transformed that slightly to be their own short-lived iteration. Then in 2018, they partnered with SRM for their EXAKT road-based power meter pedal. SRM went on to develop their own MTB version solo-cup, the X-Power, albeit that too has now been updated with Look-made pedal bodies.
All of which brings us to these new pedals, which are built entirely from the ground up. That’s notable, because if you know my thoughts on the previous Look-driven power meter design, which required very specific installation tools or positions, this does away with all of that. Just simply install like any other pedal, and you’re done.
With that, let’s dive into it. Oh, and as usual, this isn’t sponsored in any way. Look has sent a total of four sets of pedals up for evaluation and review, plus another 1-2 sets likely arriving in the next day or two per the details down below. Once I’m done reviewing them, I’ll charter a semi-truck to get all these pedal sets back to them. If you found this not-review useful, you can consider becoming a DCR Supporter, which gets you access to behind-the-scenes videos and an ad-free dcrainmaker.com
The Key Specs:
Here’s a quick look at the key specs of these pedals, with the slight differences noted for both road & MTB side, which is essentially just the weight and 0.1mm difference in stack height.
– Claimed accuracy: +/- 1%
– Temperature Compensation: Yes – active temperature compensation
– Auto-Zero Capability: Yes
– Manual Zero-Offset Capability: Yes
– Connectivity: ANT+ (unlimited concurrent connections), and Bluetooth Smart (max 1 concurrent)
– Cadence Transmitted: Yes (30-180rpm)
– Left/right Balance Transmitted: Yes
– Cycling Dynamics (or similar): No
– Oval/Q Chainring Compatible: Yes
– Weight per pedal: 130g (for Road), 202g (for MTB)
– Battery type: Rechargeable
– Battery life: Claimed 60 hours (recharge time: 2hrs)
– Water Resistance: IPX7
– Operating Temp Range: -15°C to +50°C
– MTB Jump Drop Height: No limit
– Max Cyclist Weight: 120kg
– Q-Factor: 53mm (both)
– Stack Height: 10.8mm (road), and 10.7mm (MTB)
– Included 3-year warranty
Probably the most notable takeaway from the above is actually the weight of the carbon road pedal, being far below any of their competitors. The battery life is basically the same as the other rechargeable units, and the other operating specs are relatively similar. The single concurrent Bluetooth connection is a minor bummer though.
Here’s what’s in the boxes, note that the spacers are not included in the final production box – as Look said all their testing indicates it’s simply not needed.
From a pricing standpoint, here’s where things stand:
Power Meter System Pricing:
Look KEO Blade Power: $679/659EUR (single sided sensor)
Look KEO Blade Power: $999/999EUR (dual set)
Look X-Track Power: $759/749EUR (single sided sensor)
Look X-Track Power: $1,099/1.099EUR (dual set)Pedal Body Pricing:
Look KEO Blade Power: $125/pedal
Look X-Track Power: $150/pedal
Note that if you register your pedals (as part of the setup with the app), then you get access to the crash replacement program, which includes 50% off parts in the first year, 30% the second year, and 10% in the third year.
The Pedals & Usage:
Setup of the pedals is easy since you’re simply using a pedal wrench to attach them to your bike. Technically you’d torque them to spec, but practically speaking if you simply put them on rather tight that’ll be the right spec after 5-10 minutes of riding and a couple of hard sprints. For power meter historians, what’s most notable here is that the wonky tools and specific angular placement of past Look power meter pedal systems are now gone. Simply install the pedals like any other pair of pedals and be done with it.
Now once you’ve got the pedals on the bike, you’re going to use the Look app to do any configuration you need, as well as displaying quick one-off metrics with the pedals (a live view of sorts). Of course, it’s still transmitting via ANT+ & Bluetooth for connectivity to head units, but the app is handy for quick checking of settings/connectivity, as well as firmware updates. As with any pedal-based power meter, that includes ensuring the crank length is correct, which you can also do on your head unit. The same goes for zero offsets.
From a charging standpoint, they include small little charging clips, which are USB-C on one end, and then magnetically attached to the spindles on the other side. They also include a dual-USB cable with it, so you can charge both pedals at once. Charge time is 2 hours, and battery claim is 60 hours (which seems to be trending properly for me).
From there you’ll pair it up via ANT+ or Bluetooth Smart to your bike computer/watch/etc, I had no problems using it with both Garmin and Wahoo units (via ANT+), as well as the Apple Watch Ultra (via Bluetooth Smart). I’m sure I also paired it to a few other apps along the way over the past few months for fun too.
Once riding, you’ll see total power, power cadence, power balance, as well as torque efficiency and pedal smoothness:
You won’t however see any cycling dynamics (only shown on Garmin head units). Look hasn’t enabled such a feature at this time on their units. Certainly from a competitive checklist standpoint (vs Garmin & Favero), that’s a gap. Though I suspect most people don’t actually look at those metrics after the first few rides, of course, to each their own.
Of course, the big ticket item that’s unique here is the pedal spindle swapping capability. When you buy an extra pedal body set, you get the tiny little tool that can remove the end of the spindle (three prongs basically that stick into the spindle). Here’s what that spindle looks like inside:
Then from there you can swap it from the road side to the off-road side. Or, vice versa. Or, in case you somehow manage to break a pedal body. The process takes about 5 minutes, maybe 10 minutes the first time you do it. I’ll include how that all works in my full in-depth review. As with Garmin’s similar process, I don’t see this as something you do every week or even every month. But rather, mainly seasonally, or if you needed power on MTB but normally ride road, you might do it once or twice.
Still, one of the things I asked Look was: What’s your sales pitch here? What are the reasons someone would buy these pedals over Favero at a lower price?
Obviously, there are some easy answers they focused on, such as the pedal spindle swapping capability, as well as the lower weight on the road side, and a longer warranty (3 years vs 2 years). But they also had two areas they noted that they felt were notable. The first is on the off-road pedals, in that their X-Track system power meter pedals don’t have a max drop or category limit. In the case of Favero’s MX Pro pedals, those have a specific Cat-3 limit, which means drops of no more than 24”/61cm. Whereas Look doesn’t have a limit.
Look says that with one of their pro MTB teams using the pedals for the last year, that having the higher drop limit was a requirement from the start.
The second item they noted was around the power transfer through the pedal, and they had this little image to show the areas of each pedal that power is transferred through from your cleat (since while a pedal is a larger platform, it only makes direct contact in a few spots). They noted that they had the largest surface area for that power transfer:
(Note: Image provided by Look with coloring, I did re-do the titles though, so the fonts matched the site.)
The last area that’s frankly the most tangible one for most consumers, is distribution and availability. Simply put, you can apparently walk into bike shops in North America and Europe today, and start buying this pedal. And then from a servicing standpoint, the same is true as well. That’s something that obviously Garmin matches (at a higher price), but is harder for Favero to match. Of course, inversely, Favero basically gives you a lower price in exchange for not having to deal with the logistics side of global distribution.
In any event, in terms of the pedals themselves and riding, when they worked, all was good. But of course, there’s a reason this isn’t a full in-depth review today, so let’s get into that.
So What Happened Was:
There’s a famous quote from legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager: “If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it’s an outstanding landing.”
Turns out, that applies here too.
I’m not going to focus on the pre-production sets that I’ve had since December. After all, they are pre-production. Instead, I want to focus on the production units that arrived about 10 days ago. These were off the normal production assembly line, picked randomly, albeit Look did note they did one extra QA pass on the accuracy side before sending them to me. As I’ve mentioned before, companies will sometimes do extra QA passes, but based on my historical badges, it certainly doesn’t appear to have helped their odds of passing my power meter testing. Heck, maybe it even curses it.
In any event, my wife and I decided to divide and conquer this final set of production pedals for the first few days. She’d take the LOOK KEO Road set, and I’d take the SPD set. Then I’d eventually take over the road set as well. After I got her set installed on her bike and did a quick sanity check of a few minutes against the known-good trainer, I was happy with the initial accuracy being within a few watts. But then the next day when she did a hard interval workout, the results were all wonky. It had a significant 20-30w offset the entire time.
Confused, I sent the data over to Look, and then swapped them onto my road bike + a different known good trainer. The results there were pretty good, right in line with what I’d expect. I then did another trainer ride, with the same good results:
I also did multiple outside rides with good results:
Look did some digging and found a rare firmware bug that could cause one of the two pedals to not perform the zero offset properly, causing the total power offset my wife experienced. Because I would have zero offset again (as she did too), it basically reset it. My wife didn’t do anything wrong, she was just the unlucky person that the bug surfaced on.
(One thing to remember here, is that these pedals all share the same internal spindle. Meaning, the fact that one set died and the other didn’t isn’t actually indicative of the pedal body type, but rather just bad luck for that particular set, as you’ll see.)
In the meantime, I started testing the final production SPD set. Usually, I start with indoor rides, and then work my way up to messy outdoor rides (usually road first, then MTB). Roughly operating on the theory to ‘prove on the easy stuff first’. In this case, I did a number of indoor trainer rides, and all looked pretty good. It did seem like it took a bit longer to settle after moving between bikes than I usually see, but nothing that’s a red flag.
After being happy with things, I then got my stuff ready and headed out for some MTB action. It has rained a lot in the last few weeks. And while the actual MTB route itself drains really well, there were some connector sections with deep water. Basically, a pond.
I went through that, and things got funky quickly (totally dropped out). However, they also concurrently got briefly funky on the Quarq XX1 power meter. The 4iiii Precision dual system did not drop out. At first glance I assumed it was the head unit and being confused about the power meter being submerged. But after 8-10 minutes, the Look SPD unit was still refusing to connect. Finally, though, it did, but at a seemingly slightly higher offset. I then proceeded to ride the beach for 60-90 minutes, including occasional draining tide saltwater crossings and more.
All of which, I should point out, is totally fine for these pedals. Look has been very clear that both the initial pond immersion, subsequent saltwater immersion, and even further pond immersion (getting back), were all well within spec. The same goes for me spraying down the bike afterward. In my case, I literally had video of all these things, and they looked at it and said it was way below the thresholds they do for their own testing. Nonetheless, aside from the slightly higher values, the pedals were fine for the rest of the 2.5hr ride.
In any case, I get back from the ride, clean things off, and get ready to head back out two days later.
And it’s that next back out mountain biking when things went very wrong:
To say the pedals were unhappy would be an understatement. They were showing anywhere from 1,000w while easy pedaling, to 4,000w, to nothing at all. While the pedals would transmit cadence just fine, the power balance between them varied from 100%-0% to 92%-8% and just nothing at all.
As a result, after more testing from afar, Look decided to drive from their HQ in France, up to the DC Rainmaker Cave/Studio in Amsterdam to investigate in person, on the bike in question. They arrived Sunday afternoon and got to work disassembling the pedals and starting the initial autopsy.
They found some concerning elements inside the left pedal, on the spindle, indicating at least one clear manufacturing defect. It appears that the defect, potentially in conjunction with the salt water which was also inside the pedal body, caused things to go downhill very quickly. They noted that water actually can get into the pedal body, it’s designed to handle that. But it’s not designed to handle it within the section it got to, especially salt water – they actually test that in the lab too.
At the moment, based on further investigation back at Look’s HQ on Monday, all signs are pointing towards the manufacturing failure, combined with “droplets of seawater” resulting in the failure. But they continue to investigate, as well as follow-up on the manufacturing side (which happens there as well).
Power Meter Comparison Specs:
Now, as I noted a few weeks ago, I plan to do a complete comparison between power meter pedals. There’s a lot of them here to look at. Except, I had planned for that comparison to go live tomorrow (a day after my review). Obviously, it’s a bit silly to do that until I get validation that the Look SPD pedals are happy.
In the meantime, for funnies, here’s the comparison on weights. Note that for the non-Wahoo units, I didn’t include extra cleat weight, whereas in the Wahoo I mentioned it. The Speedplay mounting hardware on your shoes is substantially more than the other units (2-3x). And since most people are comparing Look vs Look, or Shimano vs Shimano cleat types in terms of weight, it’s most interesting to just look at the pedal itself.
Road Pedal Weights:
Favero Assioma LOOK KEO-style: 152g per pedal
Garmin Rally Look KEO: 165g per pedal
Garmin Rally Shimano SPD-SL system: 159g per pedal
Look KEO Blade Carbon: 130g per pedal
Wahoo POWRLINK ZERO Speedplay: 138g per pedal + ~78g mounting (cleats/baseplate/screws)
(Each other system does have roughly 25-30g per cleat, depending on the cleat you use)
Offroad Pedal Weights (SPD):
Favero Assioma MX Pro: 191g per pedal
Garmin Rally Shimano SPD: 221g per pedal
Look X-Track Power: 202g per pedal
SRM X-Power SPD system: 194g per pedal
Again, a full comparison coming (hopefully) shortly, as soon as the situation gets sorted. Or, if the replacement set doesn’t sort the issues, then I’ll go ahead as-is.
Wrap-Up:
It’s great to see more competitors in this space, especially ones that offer reasonable prices. One of the things that DesFit and I were discussing in this week’s FIT File Podcast, is that we’ve seen such a massive consolidation of the indoor trainer industry (and competition) in the last few years, that it’s nice to see the inverse over on the power meter pedal side. While Look’s prices are higher than Favero’s, Look’s units are actually available in retail shops as of this evening, and have Look’s massive distribution channel behind it. And Look’s units are slightly cheaper than Garmin’s pedals, at least when Garmin’s aren’t on sale. Of course, there are lots of other minor differences, that may sway one towards one model or another.
It’s obviously too soon for me to make a recommendation one way or the other on these pedals, given the issues I had. Hopefully, though, this is a combination of initial teething issues combined with simply bad luck in having a bad pedal set to come off the manufacturing line. One thing I will say though is I’m impressed with how well Look has been handling it. At no point have they even hinted at trying to blame me, or my testing equipment, or anything else related to the process. They’ve clearly taken all the feedback in, and quickly worked to address it – or at least provide an explanation.
With that, thanks for reading!
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I try to avoid using Look pedals. Their carbon pedals are very good until the bearings need replacing, the bearings are not user replaceable and Look sell’s axles with pre-fitted bearings because of this. A pair of new axles cost more than a new pair of pedals, so their carbon pedals are just a disposable part to throw away after use.
Are these the same?
These do support bearing replacements. It’s $50. Here’s the full price sheet from Look with all the other misc prices. Maybe I’ll pull it into the post above.
Hi
I’m interested in data concerning the differences in friction loss on the power meter pedals on one hand and a good standard/race pedal. Do you have data/thougths from this subject?
Many thanks.
Best regards
Tonino Tundo
I’ve never heard of anyone in the industry implying friction losses between power meter pedals vs regular pedals. Not saying it doesn’t exist, but it’s never been something that’s popped up in conversation (or comments to be honest).
Cheers!
The early Garmin Vector 3 added a few watts of friction, that’s for sure. Many of them would barely spin out of the box! Garmin eventually worked it out though and we all did some tightening of bolts etc. to sort it.
Even then though, my Vector 3 and Rally pedals don’t self right when unclipped whereas my very old Look Carbon Keo spin extremely freely. I don’t think this is related to being a power meter, it’s just bearings/grease I imagine, and any mechanic worth his salt will probably spin up some race pedals with a power drill and replace the grease with lighter stuff regardless of the pedals. Same for bottom brackets and hubs if you want the very least resistance where every watt counts. For us regular folk though, the additional wear that creates just isn’t worth it.
I imagine if you were keen Ray, you could work out how to measure the friction losses in a pedal. Although this one feels like a Lama Labs kind of rabbit hole!
Yeah, I suspect that rabbit hole would require a dedicated test rig to take out the human variability.
I’m a regular rider who does occasional triathlon races. I find the opposite with my vector 3 single sided power meter. They spin so freely I find then difficult to clip into as they are whizzing round. So much so I changed the right pedal back to my Ultegra SPD-SL which I find much easier to clip into anyway (I’m a right leg clip in-out person). I didn’t feel any difference once pedalling with 2 different pedals. I don’t know why but I find SPD-SL easier than Keo to clip into despite their similarities – I found a pair of PowerTap P2s similarly difficult. I have a Rally RS Conversion kit coming soon and will probably add a little bit more grease to stop the excessive spinning. A watt or 2 doesn’t matter to me.
So, Look has been reading comments, and relation to this specific item, here’s what they said:
“Seen in the article comments: power losses in pedals are extremely low (well below 1W) and not related to power/not power pedal architectures. It is related to gasket technology/tightness and grease type/quantity, with a dab of bearing adjustment/tolerance. The only thing we could brag about is that the bigger bearings that we put on the power pedal are of a higher load rating, but it doesn’t really matter as all our pedals ultimately have the “Look” rating and the true limiting factors are elsewhere. We take more pride in that they are from premium industrial bearing manufacturers and thus extremely durable.”
As you can see from the above, I appreciate their straightforward honesty in the answers – be it here, or elsehwere.
Thanks for posting that and thanks Look for the plain speaking comment. I have always found Look to be good bearing wise and the honest comment here makes me glad to have been a long term customer. Reminds me of some other vendors who come here and read the comments and respond. A little openness goes a long way and a lack of marketing fluff even better!
Are new Favero Assioma for road bikes coming soon? One of the pictures above shows Assiomas unknown to me, without the pod.
Haha I spotted that and was about to post too
Has Ray dropped an early announcement??
Weird – good catch, that’s actually their image (Look’s), I just re-did the titles so the fonts all matched. No idea why the pods are missing, but I certainly don’t have a podless road pedal.
(Insert shrug emoji here)
Actually, I see what they did. They simply used the non-electronic pedal option (if you buy a solo sensor). Makes sense for this image purpose, since it’s just showing the cleat engagement. If you search for the Uno variant, you’ll see that image. Kinda clever/smart actually.
FYI Windows key + ; brings up the emoji keyboard so you can insert it yourself in future 🤷♀️
Where’s the Windows key on a Mac? 😉
On Mac it’s CTRL + CMD + Space
ctrl+cmd+space brings up all the emojis
A Mac?! You used to be cool, Ray! I’ve obviously not been paying attention, I thought you were a Windows guy 🤣
Yeah, I had an issue with my Windows laptop where basically the number keys along the top would only work sometimes (it’s surprising how much you use the number keys in a simple paragraph). After about 6 months of that, I got sick of it, and just converted over to my Mac laptop that I used to just use for video editing.
The Uno dummy pedal without the pod is the right drive side pedal from all the images I’ve seen. This podless pedal is the left side – which they don’t make. So either its a new pedal or Look just took a photo of a right sided pedal and reversed it accidentally.
On a Touch Bar enabled Mac there is an emoji key on the Touch Bar when typing in a text field and if you press it you get a scrollable emoji selection.
You clearly underestimate the famed Favero spare parts portfolio: it’s SKU-772-58 , the part you need if you feel a sudden urge to convert Assioma Uno into Assioma Zero.
It rates very high in the list of most esoteric bike parts!
So you’re the one that liked the touch bar Richard! 😜
Favero absolutely does make, and sell, left pedals without power. It’s not a product that is being highly sought after, but their leadership wants to have powerless pedals in case anyone wants to run the same pedals on their spare bike where they don’t need power.
left: link to cycling.favero.com
right: link to cycling.favero.com
Can you do a table of all the PM pedals with stack heights (system – pedal & cleats)?
Yup! It’s something planned to be included in my refreshed pedal comparison post (basically this post here link to dcrainmaker.com – But built out with all the new offerings).
I’m already working on it, with really the only outstanding piece is ensuring the MTB pedal is suitable for MTB usage from an accuracy/reliability standpoint once the new set comes in.
One thing that I have been curious about, but not quite sure if it falls under this scope, is not just the comparison of stack heights of the pedals, but of the shoes / shoe systems also (2 bolt vs 3 bolt etc). It is nice that the stack height is similar between the road and the MTB pedal, but if the shoe has a different stack height, then the bike fit would vary if you switch shoes. Not a massive problem nor probably an issue for many people, but one I ran into when wanting to use my gravel bike as a road and gravel bike and be able to wear my more comfortable and light weight road shoes while out on long paved ride etc. I found it very challenging to find any data or ways to measure the stack height of the shoes. (I have since given up and just found more comfortable MTB shoes and got past caring about how it looked wearing MTB shoes on pavement!)
Ray, for those of us who ride with slightly wider q factors than 53, are there any options you would consider for a pedal based power meter?
This brings up the question on whether Look will let you use the Look spacers (+2mm) that Looks sells with these new power meter pedals ? I use these spacers with my Look Keo Blade pedals.
The Assioma Favero Shi is your friend here. These are spindle only devices that replace the spindle in a commercial Shinto SPD-SL pedal (Ultegra, 105 and RS500 but not Dura Ace). They result in about 10mm wider Q factor. Ray has done a piece on them before IIRC.
Great info, thanks for sharing. Knowing how they handled the problem is a significant confidence boost.
I’ve been casually considering purchasing new pedals after decades on Speedplay. How does the float compare across brands and road/off-road within brands- specifically these new Look pedals.
Any idea if they work with q factor spacers?
So were their problems with both pedals or only the SPDs?
Only the SPD set, but practically speaking, it was really just the spindle that happened to be in that set (one of the two spindles was dorked, they took the other apart, and it was fine). So had I swapped the road spindles to the SPD for funsies pre-puddle, we’d never had seen the issue. Or at least, not on SPD. Perhaps at some point it’d have reared up on the Road side then, depending on things that might have seeped in to the defective spindle.
On the power meters in general, does the supported cadence range have an effect on the transmitted power numbers? To calculate power, cadence needs to be determined and if it is out of range, will also power be missing? Or is it only the transmitted cadence that has range limits and internally they are able to handle wider range in their calculations?
Presumably there is no upper limit to cadence detection using an accelerometer like there is strain with a strain gauge as they will have an upper limit of detection. Torque comes from the strain reading x distance of the gauge from the centre of rotation. Which is why you have to input your crank length with pedal meters. PMs installed on spiders or cranks with have a known distance so you don’t need to manually input the distance. Power is basically just torque x cadence. So if cadence is messed up power will be too.
So basically, if your cadence is outside the specified range, the power numbers are incorrect?
The range 30-170 rpm seems somewhat limited, but seems quite common in the pedal meters.
Not really. There’s nothing wrong with a cadence < 30. It’s often zero if you are freewheeling. But if the cadence is wrong the power is wrong given power = torque x cadence.
I’ll check and see what happens above/beyond, or, I’ll just ask tomorrow.
Fwiw, most power meters I see have a lower cadence threshold at either ~19, or ~29. Upper cadence threshold seems to be either 170ish, or 220ish. I suspect there’s a very specific reason for those two common thresholds.
19 rpm +/- 1 rpm = 2 rad/sec. 29 rpm +/1 rpm = 3 rad/sec. From a mechanical engineering perspective, most torque calculations are easier to do in radians than degrees.
170/220 rpm seem less significant to me.
Ray wrote “…. Look did note they did one extra QA pass on the accuracy side before sending them to me. As I’ve mentioned before, companies will sometimes do extra QA passes ….”
I appreciate the full disclosure, but does this concern anybody else? It means Ray is reviewing a higher class of products than I can purchase at the store. Don’t know how to avoid this, other than Ray purchasing products randomly on his own which may not be feasible.
I actually do purchase quite a few, and frankly, they’re almost always better than what I get for review.
Somewhere, I wrote about this a while back. And in a nutshell, both from a theoretical standpoint and a reality standpoint, the extra QA passes that some companies do (some admit to it, some don’t, most don’t bother doing it), doesn’t usually catch the problems I’ve founds.
Up till the Tacx NEO 3M, every single Tacx unit prior to that had been seemingly QA’d prior to sending it to me. And every time, it required a second unit be sent out. Wahoo is probably operating at 50% success rate on trainers, and 100% failure rate on bikes.
Generally speaking, the failures that occur are within software, not hardware.
You’ve had the good luck with their bikes too.
I bought from a local bike shop that delivered two bikes (I have no idea who bought the second one), and mine was replaced within a month. They said that the other one was working fine to which I asked: ‘Do they actually use it?’. They didn’t know, and I never heard about it again. Disappointing/disappointed…
The really odd feeling that some purchasers ended up with bikes that lasted a long time is kind of bizarre. 🤔
Do you know which kind of battery they use? 18650 lithium ion?
Which company designed and developed this powermeter? SRM? Look? Partnership? Which company is the actual manufacturer?
Fully in-house Look: Engineering & manufacturing.
No cycling dynamics, no buy.
Waiting for the new favero assioma/new favero road pedals with keo look cleats.
Are the internal batteries replaceable?
Look intends to provide replacement parts and their manual [1] mentions part numbers. But they don’t mention the built-in batteries, like many manufacturers Look claims that the batteries will last long enough.
Point of view:
• Pedals are objects of permanent usage.
• Batteries are objects of consumption
At least that applies to the technology available in early 21st century. Therefore devices shall be not constructed in a way which renders is useless just because of the battery ages, exceptions apply where appropriate.
The Garmin Rally uses standard coin-cells (CR1/3N, 3 V, 1 per pedal or LR44 or SR44, 1.5 V, 2 per pedal) which are quick to replace. Furthermore you don’t need to connect the bike to an USB cable which is inconvenient[2]. The Rally requires only a few grams more weight which I consider negligible. The only item on my wish-list would be rechargeable coin-cells.
Powertap offers pedals which use AAA-batteries, which are available as rechargeable and non-rechargeable. But pedal body is in that case bigger because the AAA doesn’t fit into the spindle.
I’m sensitive to this topic because laptops and smartphones where already flat with replaceable batteries and actually some manufacturers (like Lenovo for ThinkPads) provide also built-in replaceable batteries for years. Other doesn’t offer batteries or only some months or use firmware to prevent battery replacement.
The manual mentions the distance rings and says that they’re shipped with the pedals.
[1] link to fmvdgixfb.filerobot.com
[2] Especially for people with mechanical group-sets which are not accustomed to charging 😉
Replaceable batteries are a major complaint point about Garmin pedals and others using them. They can become lose, leading to dropouts, battery caps can fly off, and the seals for battery caps could not seal correctly. Hence why for example Favero names their soldered glued on batteries one of their major selling points – it is much more reliable.
Comparisons to laptops and phones are somewhat misleading: A phone’s battery lasts about a day, meaning you reach 300-600 cycles (at which 80% capacity remain) in about 1-2 years. Power pedals like these Look or the Favero last 50-60 hours.
Assuming you are not a pro and can ride maybe 12 hours a week, a single charge lasts you about a month. To lose 20% of capacity it now doesn’t take you two years (that’s only 24 charge cycles), but 300/600 months, aka 25-50 years. Capacity loss is essentially a no-brainer.
Another source of issues with batteries is cell debalancing. Sometimes cells degrade at different rates and you lose capacity that way. Often this is an issue with high power use. Consider a battery vacuum, running it at high power will debalance the cells. You gotta charge it back up and run it empty at lowest settings a couple times and it sort of resets. I don’t think power meter pedals are subject to high spikes in power consumption.
Leaving really only defects in the batteries.
In summary, embedded batteries in power meters eliminate two major issues (drop outs and water ingress), and are only subject to 1 out of 3 risk factors for embedded batteries.
Regarding rechargable coin cells for the Garmin; Rechargable CR1/3N exist but they run at 3.7V instead of 3V. Might be within tolerances for the electronics, but obviously not covered by warranty.
That with the rechargeable CR1/3N sounds interesting but I prefer to stay within the specifications – as you mentioned.
Regarding reliability:
The older revisions of the Vector series used spindles for the battery covers made of plastic, which is bad. Newer revisions of Vector and the current Rally series use metal spindles for the battery covers 🙂
The industry “can” they just usually “don’t want”.
Hi Ray
When do you expect to hear from Look and/or complete your review?
Thanks!
David
Impatiently waiting as well 🙂
I don’t have an updated date for the review, as at the moment I don’t have an updated set of pedals.
Last I checked two weeks ago, and they had paused things a bit to understand more deeply what happened and ensuring it was prevented. I’ll hit them up again now.
Thanks!
Thanks Ray 👍
Hi,
is there some trick to get the x-track pedals paired to the app? It just wont work, the (iphone) app does not seem to find them. Connection to bike computers and zwift via bluetooth and ant+ work fine. Sorry to ask here, but Look support does not seem to answer, been waiting for a week without any feedback.
The pedals read at least 15 to 20 watts low, compared to 3 other PM (kickr core, assioma, power2max) which are all quite in line with each other. I have hope in a firmware update, but without the app….
Thanks, Matthias
Update: app on iphone still does not work but I have a workaround with my ipad. And after 3 rides the power values are more in line with my other PM. Happy days 😊
FWIW the iOS app works for me, I could change the crank length in the app. Once done I connected the pedals to my Wahoo Roam v2 and the crank length setting was correct.
Do they use the standard Look Keo cleats ?
Yup!
I just received my set of Road Powermeter Dual, it wis worth mentioning that they were delivered with USB-C charging clips and cable 🙂
Oh well, I was confused with Assioma… which are not USB-C, forget it 🙂
Haha…no worries – hope they work out!
Sounds like a new set of both was sent over on Monday, and should be there when I return from my current trip.
Actually I have an issue with the left pedal that does not wake up when it rotates, at this stage the only way to wake it up is to connect the charger. The right pedal wakes up immediately but as the left pedal is the master that does not really help. Not sure what to do so I opened a ticket with Look.
Hi Ray, just read the Favero article explaining their Instantaneous Angular Velocity (IAV) power system and am curious if the Look pedals work the same way. Thanks!
Hi Chris, Charles from Look here. We do use the same way to calculate power as it’s the only way that’s correct !
The “old” way is to use the average velocity of one turn, but it generates an overestimation on steep climbs, home trainers and with oval chainrings. In our experience it can be from +1% to +5%. IIRC Favero’s white paper explains it well and the order of magnitude of the errors that they find is correct.
Ray, thanks for the excellent first look. One thing I’m not clear on: Do you have any indication from Look that pedal dynamics will be coming in a future firmware update? These seem like the best Look-compatible option ATM, but I’d prefer to have this option, having had injury rehab in the past where pedal stroke analysis was key. Thanks!