Here is my take on powermeters, I have 2. A stages and a quark. The stages was great but I had problems with it not reading properly and just not working at all. The batteries also seemed to get used up really really fast like every month I needed to replace one. I still have my Gen 2 stages laying around for later use on a road bike. Stages powermeters do not at all like water, they are not that good at not getting water damage and for a mtb this can be a problem. On the road should be fine. Also the locking rings that close on the battery compartment do get damaged pretty easy. When buying a stages just make sure you still have the warranty. They are great at solving issues and have amazing customer support. Now I always use my XX1 eagle Quarq. Its great. Easy to replace the battery, accurate and reliable and never enen replaced a batter yet!. I've had the stages die on me due to the battery being flat twice, it ate through batteries I tell you. Stages offer 1 year warranty. Sram/quarq offer 2 years. Hubs: not the most buget thing and can be a huge issue to be rebuild and sent out to be fixed. Also the chainline and chain resistance does affect how much power is sent to the hub so accuracy can be questionable in my opinion. Pedals: easy to swop between bikes but not 100% accurate my coach uses a sram red Dzero and thats also nice. These are great training tools and I can monitor my power gain over time using a stravistix plugin that even gives me freshness fittness form. Power is the greatest tool to train with and has benefitted me in a few races where I can plan my attack and just sit threshold and take a breakaway win. Stages is great and is definetely one of the best bang for your bucks. Personally I cant ride a bike without a powermeter, I just go mad and its not really something you can get a feel for at all. My stages also read weird power readings like 2000W every ride a few times and this messed with my TSS and stuff. then I could never see what my actual max power was. My stages broke so the insurance gave me a quark and then the stages just started working again for some reason... Just going to say it again, best pacing tool and also has contributed to quite a few strava KOMs for me. Especially the long 3min or longer segments. It absalutely transforms your fitness, highly reccomended. last thing is that you can pace any ride because without a powermeter you start your ride wayyy to fast and then fade towards the end. With a powermeter your power can be monitored and adjusted. Also pacing during intervals is absalutely amazing so say my coach gives me 4 x 3min intervals to do then I know according to my threshold I shoud pace them at say 345w and then I can actually hold that for all the intervals and always struggle with the last one. Without a powermeter you cant pace your intervals and always, always start too fast. I have seen when training with friends they ride away from me in the first interval and then in the second and rest I drop them easy just holding the same power as I did the first interval.
