Zwift Click V2 In-Depth Review: The Best Deal in Sports Tech Today?

In a three-week period packed with an absurd amount of not just new product announcements, but highly complex products, I appreciate the simplicity that the Zwift Click V2 brings. But more than that, I appreciate the pricing. A mere $49 for not just the new Zwift Clicks, but also the entire Zwift Cog + Freehub adapter too. But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The new Zwift Clicks take the popular Click V1, and adds the core features of the Zwift Play controllers. Oh, and it doubled from a single-button click to two Clicks. Twins! This new variant includes the ability to navigate within game menus, do things like drop burritos, and even use SRAM-style shifting and steering. All in a package that’s smaller, more versatile, and far cheaper. Further, it becomes the de facto Click version bundled with new trainers. For example, the recently announced Elite Rivo will include the new Click V2 edition as it begins shipping here shortly.

As usual, I’ve been putting this new version to the test, alongside my wife, who has also been testing it. So, let’s get into it.

In the Box:

The box contents are simple here, including the two Clicks themselves, four bands to attach them to your handlebars, and then two little rubber mounting plates (to keep them from sliding around, depending on your bar type). Further, there’s a piece or paper or two that you (or I) won’t bother to read.

Here’s a closer look at things:

Got all that? Good, like I said – this is not complicated.

A Quick Comparison:

Just for completeness, and because everyone likes more sections in a review, here’s how the new Clicks compare to the existing single-pod Click, as well as the larger Zwift Play controllers:

See, I told you this section was quick.

Mounting Them:

One of the advantages of the original Click over the Play controllers was that you could kinda mount it wherever you wanted. Meaning, it worked for road bikes, triathlon bike aerobars, mountain bikes, cargo bikes, and gravel bikes. It did, however, fail at unicycles. Sigh.

The same applies here with the Zwift Click V2, except now with twice as many things to mount. Starting with the road/gravel bike, you have three common positions. First, is on the upper portion of the handlebars:

Then, you can do it in my preferred position, on the inside of the shifters:

Or, the outside of the shifters:

Got a triathlon bike? No problem, you can mount it to the aerobars:

And an MTB bike? Stick it on the handlebars wherever the heck you want (Zwift’s image combines it with the TT image, so you can see another TT placement below):

Now, I will say, I have one complaint about the new Clicks, notably, the rubber straps. They suck. It’s as if Zwift looked at all the bike computer mounts that have been using industrial-strength rubber bands for the past 16 years without issue, and said, “Nah, let’s throw that away and make this fugly, cumbersome, and annoying AF.”

Or perhaps they saw equally annoying band-design inspiration from Garmin’s new top-tube MTB Edge mount, and decided to double down on it, with four straps worth.

First off, unlike a simple rubber band, this has less elasticity, and thus, you have to find the right hole. No biggie, except then said hole leaves some amount of leftover length just flapping about in the breeze:

So, you need to solve that by re-hooking that back onto itself, but of course doing so often under the edge of your handlebars, and with very little room to spare (and, it seems to frequently pop back out again). But even better, you get to do this four times (twice for each pod). What’s more fun, is that unlike a bike computer mount that stays there for years mostly untouched, you’ll get to do this every time you put your bike back on your trainer when coming from an outside ride. Woot!

Look, just go to Amazon and buy the pack of 2,938 Garmin rubber bands for $9. This solves all your life’s problems:

See, much better!

In-Game Usage:

Ok, with all that Zwift strap/band bondage sorted, let’s start playing games with it.

First up, you’ll need to pair it from the pairing menu like usual. While Zwift does have a new pairing screen coming later this fall (probably in about a week or two), that’s not there today. That new screen cleans things up a bit on the pairing pieces:

The first time you pair it, it’ll walk you through a bit of a tutorial as well:

At this point, you’re ready to go. However, I will first point out that if doing virtual shifting (with or without a Zwift Cog), you now have an extra option to use SRAM-style shifting, as opposed to the existing/default Sequential style shifting. With sequential shifting, you’ve essentially got 21 gears in order (1 is easiest, 21 is hardest) with no front chainring replication (aka 1x). However, with SRAM style shifting, you simulate a front chainring (aka 2x), plus the gears in the back. You can enable this under the hardware tab in the settings:

And, if using said SRAM-style shifting, then you can choose from a few different gearing configurations:

Keeping in mind that to a certain extent, the simulation of these gearing configurations is heavily influenced by the exact smart trainer you’re using, and the inertia of the flywheel on said trainer. But we’ll save that complexity for another day (I cover it in most of my smart trainer reviews that leverage Zwift Cog, if using that).

Next, it’s worth noting that there is actually a setting in the game in case you prefer to orient your Zwift Clicks in a different direction. You can tap to rotate it in four different ways:

Nifty!

So, into the ride we go. The first thing to take care of is virtual shifting, if you want that (it’s not required). To make it easier, press the ‘-‘ button on the left Click. To make it harder, press the ‘+’ on the right Click. You’ll see your gears in the upper left corner HUD.

If using SRAM-style shifting, and you want to shift between your two front chainrings, simply hold both ‘-‘ & ‘+’ at the same time (just like in real-world SRAM), and boom – it shifts to the front ring. You can see this in the upper left HUD.

You can access the Action Bar menu by holding down the ‘Up’ button:

From here, you can use the left side to navigate around, akin to a bunch of arrow keys.

Likewise, you can also enter the full-blown menus any time from the handlebars, and navigate around those too:

It’s handy, and really removes any reason to need another keyboard/mouse/controller mid-game, short of texting.

When it comes to steering, you can do that by pressing left and right arrows, which simply slides you left and right, like all other existing Zwift steering devices.

And finally, in ERG mode, the +/- keys will change your bias, thus increasing or decreasing the intensity of the workout (e.g, from 100% to 102%):

All of this worked perfectly fine for both my wife and me during our workouts.

Wrap-Up:

Ya know, this September will be packed with expensive gadgets and sports tech products, but finally, this isn’t one of them. It’s not only priced reasonably, if not actually downright cheap for what you get in the package (remember, it includes the Zwift Cog too!), but more critically, it’s just super well executed. It solves the gap between the existing Zwift Play controllers that sometimes didn’t fit well on people’s handlebars, let alone mountain bikes and triathlon/TT bikes (or other smart indoor bikes). And it does so super well, allowing full control of the Zwift in-game functions.

Sure, I think the entire band/strap thing is a hot mess of overthinking a problem that I don’t think exists in real life, only to create a new problem. Thankfully, that’s easily solved by the bands you probably have stacked around your house/garage. If not, go steal some from a friend. If you’re riding Zwift, you definitely have a cyclist friend who has some spare bands.

Otherwise, props to Zwift for once again nailing a hardware product. For all the things people like to give Zwift crap about (sometimes well deserved), they continue to roll out excellent hardware products. Not just excellent in features, but also in price. This is another example of that.

With that, thanks for reading!

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