Last month, Tacx announced their latest offering in the indoor smart cycling trainer market, the Tacx Flux. The Tacx Flux sits between the Tacx New and Tacx Bushido smart indoor trainer.
The Tacx Flux Smart Trainer is a direct drive trainer, which mean you need to remove the rear wheel and attached your bike directly to the trainer.
The FLUX has the heaviest actual flywheel with an effect of 23kg according to Tacx. The greater the flywheel effect, the more realistic the trainer will feel and cycling experience will be. In my opinion, this is an important feature to consider when buying a trainer and looking to spend hours of training time. In my own experience, the less realistic the trainer feel, the less time you will spend using it.
The Flux is a fully interactive smart trainer. With its dual band ANT+FE-C and Bluetooth wireless connectivity, it can connect to your device PC/MAC, or tablet and directly interact with your trainer software such as Zwift, Trainer Road or any other trainer software.
You can also train stand alone if you don’t wish to connect to any third party software and manually adjust the resistance. If you don’t connect the flux, it will simulate a flat road.
Electro Magnets
The Tacx FLUX Smart was built with an electro brake. By placing 8 electro magnets beside a rotating aluminum disc, eddy currents are created which generate an opposing magnetic field. In this way a non-contact, maintenance-free brake is realized that is also silent. These electro magnets allows riders to generate up to 1,500 watts. That’s more than 99.99% of cyclists need.
The Tacx FLUC can simulate inclines up to 10%. During descent, unlike the Tacx Neo, the FLUX doesn’t provide descent simulation and it will just release the resistance from the fly wheel.
Software:
The Tacx FLUX is fully interactive smart trainer which mean it’s ANT+ and Bluetooth compatible. It works with Trainer Road, Zwift, Bkool, and many other apps.
The trainer doesn’t come with a cassette, so you will need to provide your own. You can get a cassette for about $40 so it’s not really a big deal.
The trainer is priced at $899 and expected delivery in mid to late October.
