I purchased the Cascade Fluid Pro as an alternative to outdoor riding in the winter''s cold. It Is a well made unit that recreates the effort of outdoors riding in the comforts of home. The power meter works flawlessly and shows I am generating about 300 watts at 20 mph. This is comparable to other commercial trainers at my gym. The unit is very quiet and you can easily watch training videos or movies as you ride. The only thing I can''t comment on is longevity. The great warrantee suggests a long life. I recommend this unit highly!
The flywheel is good and heavy, and on a test run with my road bike I was impressed with the coast-down, which allowed me to stop pedaling briefly without losing all my momentum much more road-like than trainers with lighter flywheels. Of course, the down side to a good, solid flywheel is trainer weight. These babies are not light, but there not any less portable than any other fluid trainer with a good flywheel (Kinetic, etc.)
The power display is nice and large, which is much easier to read than squinting down at a cyclocomputer. The foam pads that come with the clamp are a bit problematic, they don''t stick very well to the plastic because they are flat and the clamp is curved. Other than that, though, pairing the unit with the trainer was pretty simple (one of the kids put the batteries in wrong, so after I figured that out, it went just fine!). You will definitely want to pair it before mounting a bicycle, because it is very hard to reach the button on the trainer base once a bike is on the trainer. Much easier to flip the resistance unit over and pair it beforehand. Like any power measurement tool that is based on a resistance curve, your readings will depend pretty significantly on how tight you turn the knob and your tire pressure, so it takes a little experimenting to find the sweet spot where it matches up with an actual power meter, but I have found the measurements to be reliable once validity has been established.
So far we have been using the trainers pretty consistently for two months, and everything has held up beautifully. I was concerned since the team rides 29ers, but the trainers accommodated 29" tires no problem.
Buy Cascade Health & Fitness Fluidpro Power Bike Trainer, Dark Blue/Silver Now
