Bkool Smart Air Trainer

Bkool's Smart Air is its first direct drive trainer. It works well and has a wide range of resistance, and Bkool's own indoor training environment is well worth diving into. Overall, though, I'm not sure it's doing enough to knock the longer-established smart trainers off the podium.

• Pros: Well built, wide resistance range, effective ERG mode
• Cons: Calibration issues, rocker mechanism resistance too low, noisier than competitors, no native cadence sensing

In the box you get the trainer itself with a very solidly constructed steel frame and plastic resistance unit, a power lead, a cadence sensor (there's no native cadence sensing on the Smart Air) and various ends to slot in for different axle standards. There's no cassette, so you'll need to factor in the cost of one of those, too.

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Setting it up is simple: screw in the legs, fit a cassette, find the right axle ends, plug it in and go. The whole process took about 15 minutes.

Accuracy: very good after a few teething issues

Let's delve into some accuracy stuff first. The Bkool Air can't be user-calibrated, and my unit arrived reading high by about 8% compared to my Rotor 2InPower cranks which are at the top end of what I'd call accurate for me. That's enough of a discrepancy to make a hard workout feel (relatively) easy; 10 minutes at 92% of FTP is a very different experience to 10 minutes at 100%, after all.

I asked Bkool about this. 'Yes, we know it's something that can happen during shipping, mostly when we send the trainers from one country to another', was the answer. There are moving parts inside that create the resistance, so getting a knock along the way could send the readings out a bit.

The Air can be calibrated, just not by the end user. After a helpful chat with the support guys and a bit of remote desktopping, mine was back on track. Now the numbers look pretty good:

There's a very strong correlation between the two lines nearly all the way along, with the Air only under-reporting compared to the cranks in the sprint efforts. Across the range of efforts from below to above my FTP, it was more or less spot on. So, a happy ending, although if I didn't have another power meter to benchmark against I might have been none the wiser that the numbers were off if I didn't already know my FTP.

The Air has a claimed maximum resistance of 3,000W. That's a pretty meaningless number in that not even Chris Hoy in his pomp would have troubled it, but it does mean that the trainer can reproduce gradients effectively up to 25%, so you can climb the steep stuff in bottom gear if you want to. There aren't that many opportunities to do that on training platforms. On the Bkool simulator, though, you can hoick yourself up the Alto de l'Angliru, which tops out at around 25% if you're of a mind to take a bit of a beating. On Zwift the maximum gradient is around 17% at the top of the climb to the radio tower. That's hard enough.

Pushing the trainer hard gets the cooling fan going; it's a bit noisier overall than the other smart trainers I've tried recently, and the fan stays on for quite a while after you stop, but it's not like it's unbearably noisy.

Ride feel: good, with quick changes and accurate ERG

The overall ride feel of the Bkool Air is good. There's masses of resistance on tap, and the resistance changes are applied smoothly and quickly when you're riding in Zwift or on Bkool's own platform. There's enough weight in the system to allow a bit of freewheeling and not make the pedalling feel choppy when you've cranked the resistance up nice and high.

In ERG mode (short for ergometer – when your trainer controls the resistance level to keep you outputting your chosen watts) the trainer tracks very well across all platforms, with changes quick and predictable. Sometimes there's a slight lag moving from a high resistance effort to a low one, but that's something I've noticed before and probably it's down to the communication between the software and the trainer rather than any specific issue with the Bkool unit. It probably happens the other way round too, but you only really notice when you're working hard for a couple of seconds longer than you thought you'd need to...

Rocker mechanism: didn't quite rock my world

One of the features of the Bkool Air is that it has a rocker mechanism built in, giving 6 degrees of movement from the centre. That means the bike can move around underneath you, and you're not putting so much stress on your frame, which is a good thing when many manufacturers won't warranty your bike if you damage it riding indoors.

Get up out of the saddle and throw the bike about and there's plenty of movement there. I'm not entirely convinced by the implementation, though: the resistance against the movement isn't very progressive, and it's too low. That means that the bike moves around more than I'd like it to when I'm out of the saddle, and it also means that sometimes the bike leans a bit to one side: not much, but enough to be a bit offputting.

The other trainers I've used that have some lateral movement built in have been better: the Kurt Kinetic Rock 'n' Roll 2 has more resistance, and it's also adjustable for rider weight and feel; it uses the same system updated in its new R1 direct drive smart trainer. The Tacx Neo 2 doesn't move much, but it's enough to give a bit more life to the ride and take some stress from the frame, and your bike's always upright at a standstill.

Bkool Indoor: an impressive indoor training tool

The Smart Air comes with a three-month subscription to Bkool's indoor training app. That's the same as you get with the £349 Smart Go trainer, which is a bit of a disappointment; it wouldn't hurt the bottom line to extend the free period for buyers of the more expensive gear.

Bkool's online environment has come a long way in the past few years. There's more on it, and it's a bit easier to use than it used to be. One of the main directions of travel has been away from real-time video – which used to be the mainstay of the app – and towards 3D-rendered virtual projections of the featured routes. You can now ride virtual courses including classics like the Alpe d'Huez and the Stelvio, as well as a host of others.

One of the good things about the selection of routes is that they're not all big climbs, there are flat routes and lumpy ones – even some that are just descents. Many routes have a map view, a video and a 3D view, and the Simulator defaults to the rendered view. Most of the time I find that's the best one: it's nicer to look at, and higher quality than the video which is often fairly low resolution and taken from a motorbike that leans into the corners, which feels a bit weird when you're crawling round a hairpin.

The virtual display doesn't feel quite as slick as Zwift but it's come a long way in quite a short time, and now there's lots of detail, especially on the more popular climbs. It also means that you can see (and race) other riders in a session. You can join someone else's session or schedule one with your friends if you're all on Bkool. Then you can race it. As well as outdoor rides there are velodromes, and you can hop in and blast a few laps with other riders. That whole 'riding with others' functionality was the whole point of Zwift from the start but feels more like a work in progress in the Bkool Simulator, not least because there aren't as many people online at any one time. Also, the app needs a proper calendar that people can sign up to and ride together; it feels odd just jumping on someone else's ride.

As well as routes there's structured training. You can do an FTP test (5-minute and 20-minute versions are available) and there's a broad range of workout sessions that are tailored to your FTP. The Smart Air can use ERG mode to match your power to the session, and it works very well. There are video instructor-led sessions, which are like a cross between a spin class and a TrainerRoad session, and those keep you motivated and engaged.

Value: expensive at full retail

The bottom line here, really, is that the Bkool Air is entering the market at over £1,000, putting it in direct competition with the Tacx Neo 2 which for me is probably the best trainer you can buy right now. The Neo system has been around a while: it's on version two, with a lot of miles under its belt and some refinements for the second unit over the first. Other highly-regarded and well-established trainers – the Wahoo KICKR and the CycleOps H2 – have an RRP below the Bkool and perform as well, or better.

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Realistically, if you're considering spending over a grand on an indoor trainer then a newcomer like the Bkool is going to have to be better in some way than what's already in the market, or come in with the same performance at a lower price, if it's going to bag itself a big share. The Air does neither: it's not as polished as the Neo 2 overall, for a similar outlay. In a straight fight, it's the loser for me. It's already discounted online to well below the £1,000 mark, but then, so is the CycleOps H2 which is just as good. It doesn't have the rocking mechanism, but like I've said, I'm ambivalent about the implementation of that.

This isn't a bad indoor trainer at all. It's a good one. But it's not quite as good as some of the more established options out there.

Verdict

Good quality smart trainer with a unique design, but doesn't feel quite as polished as some of its competitors