Powertap P1 Power Pedal Review

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Power can give you a great edge through your training or on event day. As they start to become more mainstream they’re making a big impact on the cycling community. The Powertap P1 pedals are a great solution if you’re looking to make your first move to power, or if you’ve been riding power for a while.

— HOW TO GET STARTED WITH A POWER METER —

Pedal power meters are often the power meters of choice due to the flexibility. They can easily be transferred between bikes without the hassle of swapping cranks. The Powertap version comes with two options. The P1 and the P1s single sided system, retailing at £799.99 and £427.49 respectively.

Out of the Box:

They come with all the relevant parts to just piece them together and go. Batteries, washers and cleats with 6 degrees of float. The Powertaps p1 pedals connect through both Bluetooth and ANT so you don’t have to worry about connectivity issues. You can sync them up to your watch, garmin or laptop/ipad easily enough.

The pedals house all the batteries and electronics internally, so there are no pods as there were with the old Garmin equivalent. Something that has since been fixed by Garmin however. The left pedals connects to wherever you’re storing the data, and the left pedal tells the right pedal what it’s up to accordingly.

Onto the Bike:

Other than a slight change in saddle height due to the difference in stack of the pedals, they ride almost identical. Sure, they’re slightly heavier than their Speedplay counter part, but out on the bike this is marginal. At 440g including washers and batteries, they’re not exactly weighing you down. The pedals were very easy to attach onto the bike and they were soon ready to go. As there are no pods and no torque requirement, the p1s fit like any other pedal.

— WHY YOU SHOULD TRAIN WITH POWER —

Calibration was very easy, there was no pre warm up needed. Once the pedals have been woken up you just make sure nothing is clipped into them, hit calibrate and off you go. You can be up and running 20 minutes after you take them out of the box!

Before using this power meter I’d used both a Power2max and a Quarq d2zero powermeter, but never pedals. Being used to Speedplay cleats it took a slight amount of adjustment to get used to the Look type cleats you’re limited to. As you may know Speedplay pedals don’t have a top or bottom, which made for a lot of fun at junctions & traffic lights.

— HOW TO GET FIT FAST —

We tested the data alongside other power meters and the numbers came out almost identical, no crazy spikes in power and no cut outs. Just solid, clean cut data. And the left-right balance was working great. The battery life is slightly on the lower side at around 50 hours, but other than that we’d thoroughly recommend this pedal!

The cleats leave a bit to be desired. Powertap claim the pedals should not be used with Look cleats, although the Powertap cleats don’t stick in to the pedals very well, it wouldn’t be hard to pull your foot out in an all out sprint. Also 8 hours into riding the pedals, the front end of one of the cleats fell off, far from ideal when we were nowhere near a bike shop!

— SHOP POWERTAP PEDALS —

Verdict:

The Powertap P1 pedals are a fantastic power meter that work straight from the box. As long as you can overlook the cleat issues, the rest of the product seem to tick the boxes perfectly. The data is very clear and accurate, and can be transferred bike to bike with no hassle or grief. They don’t quite have the same features as the Garmin V3 pedals but the novelty of all the extra data will soon wear off. Some of the more complex training tools haven’t been added but this could be solved in the near future. Otherwise the battery life is good, syncing and compatibility is great and the durability is fantastic, we’d recommend these to anyone!

  • 91%
    Performance - 91%
  • 75%
    Value - 75%
  • 85%
    Durability - 85%
84%