ANT+ vs Bluetooth

So… I bought an ANT+ dongle for my PC to solve the problem connecting my TACX Neo using Bluetooth. It does connect after a lot of faffing around each time I load a workout but that just gets annoying when you just want to get on and do a workout. Great… the Neo now connects instantly BUT… My first workout was (the UCI MTB workout) and straight away I noticed the long lags on some of the short intense efforts with some being so short that the trainer didn’t have time to reach some of the targets before they dropped again and even never attempted to hit them and just stayed on the previous target until the next one came along!. Checking back on the forum here and I realised that this is an issues with ANT+ apparently? Looks like I am back to square one and what do you guys/gals do if you use a similar TACX trainer…cheers

For short sharp intervals like that, I recommend riding in level mode, that way you use the gearing yourself to manage the intervals.

Te manages short sharp intervals better than ANT+ but even it has a bit of lag compared to a Wifi connection. To my knowledge,only thr Kickr v6? And the KickrBikev2 has Wifi. Not sure about the Neo.

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Thanks, My Neo doesn’t but I think the Neo 2 may have Wi-fi. I am happy with the Bluetooth reaction (literally about 2 secs) when it connects ok, which funny enough it did instantly this morning (kept the HRM on Ant+) and instant power change may be a bit harsh sometimes. I did the workout in ERG as that is what they recommended as they do with the pro rides? cheers

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I have the flux s and found the bluetooth hopeless on SYSTM (random drop offs in resistance every few seconds as if I’ve pedaled over an ice patch) but found ANT+ much more reliable. As you’re seeing though, there’s a 5 second polling time between power target updates on ANT+, so you can lose up to the first 5 seconds of an interval and/or add up to 5 seconds on to the end of an interval.
The bluetooth performance is so bad that I’m better off using ANT+ and taking this hit and in practice I’ve found that when there’s enough intervals the losses/gains average out anyway.

Not sure if it’s useful, but I’ve found a lot of connection issues I had came from my Tacx Training app being connected to the trainer (from calibrating the trainer), making sure that the app was shut down got rid of those.

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Thanks, my Bluetooth is fine once connected, it’s just getting connected to start off with