Garmin & Zwift Announce Tacx NEO 2T & 3M Virtual Shifting

Garmin has announced that virtual shifting is now available on the Tacx NEO 2T & NEO 3M smart trainers, in conjunction with Zwift. Additionally, the Tacx NEO 2T is compatible with the Zwift Ride frame. Finally, both units are now compatible with Zwift Race Mode, which offers higher data rate connectivity.

Of course, Garmin is basically the last of the major trainer companies to come onboard with Zwift Virtual shifting, so much of what I’m going to quickly outline below is already commonplace (and has been for a year or two). Nonetheless there are always slight differences between the different companies implementations, and that’s no different here as well.

What’s compatible:

Garmin is launching compatible with two trainers:

– Tacx NEO 2T (from 2019)
– Tacx NEO 3M (from 2023)

These are Tacx’s top-two trainers, and their most recent smart trainers. The rest of their lineup hasn’t seen a hardware refresh since…umm…2018. And no, rebranding the Tacx Booster as the Boost in 2020 doesn’t count. Though props for trying! Now to Garmin’s credit, they did launch the Tacx NEO Bike Plus in 2022, and of course also the NEO Motion Plates in 2022.

In any case, only those two aforementioned trainers will get an update to virtual shifting, there are no plans for the older models.

Next, in terms of compatibility with virtual shifting you’ve got two options:

A) Use an existing cassette with the Zwift Play buttons, or the Zwift Cog+Click button
B) Use the Zwift Cog, alongside the Zwift Play buttons, or the Zwift Click.

Many people don’t realize you don’t actually need the Zwift Cog to enable virtual shifting. After all, there are no (none/zero/zilch/nadda) electronics inside the Zwift Cog. It’s merely just a simple metal cog, just like the cogs on your existing cassette (which likely has 9-13 pieces of metal).

Instead, all of the ‘smarts’ in this setup are in the buttons you put on your handlebars to control it. Zwift as a game has no idea otherwise. At present you still can’t buy just the Zwift Click buttons by themselves, so you either need to buy the Zwift Cog/Click bundle, or, the Zwift Play buttons (seen below):

Finally, if you don’t already have a trainer, Garmin.com is selling both the Tacx NEO 2T & NEO 3M for their existing price, but with a Zwift Cog/Click bundled instead. Zwift.com is not selling any bundled Tacx trainers however.

In any case, regardless of what you decide, it’s mostly irrelevant to the virtual shifting itself. So let’s get cooking on that.

Getting It Updated & Configured:

The first thing you need to do is get your Tacx NEO 2T or NEO 3M updated. You can do that via the Tacx App, simply pair up your trainer, and then check for a firmware update. It’ll offer the most recent version, and the update took me a couple minutes. Quick and easy:

Now, if you’re swapping to a Zwift Cog, that’s also easy too. You’ll need the Zwift Cog itself, plus either a cassette removal tool and chain whip (to get the old cassette off).

To install the new cassette you don’t really need the chain whip, since you can easily grab/hold the Zwift Cog itself to keep it in place while you tighten down the Zwift Cog cap.

As a reminder, the general advantage of the Zwift Cog compared to a traditional Cog is if you’ve got multiple bike types with a single trainer. For example, say an 11-speed road bike, and a new 13-speed gravel bike. Up till now, you’d have to either swap cassettes on the trainer if you shifted (in simulation mode), or, you’d have to have different trainers. Same goes for two different people in the family riding different bikes with different cassettes. This gets rid of that, because you align the chain to the Zwift Cog and then never physically shift gears.

The downside to the Zwift Cog (and Virtual Shifting), is that it’s officially Zwift only. While Rouvy does have compatibility, it’s on a best-effort case. So if you were to go to other 3rd party platforms that require shifting, none of those would work with the Zwift Cog.

Point being, if you already have a cassette on your Tacx NEO 2T/3M trainer, and don’t need multiple cassette types, I wouldn’t bother switching to the Cog (even if you still do virtual shifting with the Click/Play).

Finally, it should be noted that the Tacx NEO 2T is compatible with the Zwift Ride Frame, however, the Tacx NEO 3M is *NOT* compatible with it. This is simply because the frame won’t fit around the Tacx NEO 3M’s case/bulk.

Using Virtual Shifting:

Now, you’ll want to attach your Zwift Click button (either color is good, both are identical internally), and tap it once to wake it up. From there, pair up Zwift like normal:

At which point, you simply start riding. If for some reason Virtual Shifting isn’t happening, double-check that it’s enabled in the settings. You can see here the Tacx NEO-specific road feel options as well:

In fact, that’s probably the most notable and first thing you’ll notice when you make your first shift: The Tacx NEO 2T/3M will pulse/vibrate briefly, to simulate a shift. We’ve seen other units do this, namely smart bikes, but this is the first smart trainer to simulate this shifting vibration. It’s a nice tough, though, I’d argue just a tiny bit slower/delayed than we see on the smart bike side.

In any case, you’ll see your gearing in the upper left corner, just as you would with any other virtual shifting-compatible trainer/smart bike:

It was interesting to me to see just how much more power/torque the Tacx NEO series has in this configuration. I’ve ridden *a lot* on Elite series trainers this winter, as well as the Decathlon D100 trainer. For no particular reason other than that’s what ended up coming in for the review cycle over the winter. And in doing so, about half of that time has been on virtual shifting in some capacity.

However, on those trainers, I tend to do most of my Z2 riding in Gear 14-16ish, roughly (out of 22 gears). Meaning, towards the higher-end of the range. Whereas on the Tacx NEO 2T? Roughly gears 4-10. Vastly more range there, it’s astonishing compared to every other trainer I’ve tested the Zwift Virtual Shifting on.

Now, in addition to this, Tacx has also enabled Race Mode, which is the high-speed data mode on the Tacx NEO 2T & 3M.

Going Forward:

While it might seem slightly out of season for this to announce, one has to remember that Eurobike is next week, which is the premier cycling trade show event, and where we’ve seen the majority of indoor training hardware announcements made in the last few years. Sure, we always see others sprinkled throughout the year, but the big trainer companies have usually announced something there each year. Companies like Garmin tend to like announcing some of their things a touch bit earlier, such as we’re seeing today.

Meanwhile, I do think it’s notable that Tacx isn’t announcing virtual shifting for its own Tacx Training App platform. In talking to Garmin about why they aren’t doing Virtual Shifting in the Tacx app, they noted this was really about solving a gap for customers who are clearly already Zwift customers.

In any case, while this took approximately forever, kudos for implementing something that’s really well done. Now, can we just get ourselves a legit Tacx competitor to the JetBlack Victory, Elite Avanti, or Wahoo KICKR CORE? I mean, just asking for a friend.

Thanks for reading!

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