Completely wireless
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Maximum comfort
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Super-fast charging
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Promotional feature
The best ride of your life with TQ
If you’re a rider who wants to be able to ride that bit further and climb a little better, without sacrificing ride feel, weight or enjoyment, the TQ-HPR50 offers
you all that with the ride feel of an analogue bike.
It’s a good option for partners of very fit riders, cyclists who have less time for riding due to job or family, people who are core cyclists at heart and those who rode a lot in the past 20 to 30 year but are not as fit anymore and cyclists who live in extremely hilly and mountainous areas. It will also appeal to fans of some of the top cycling brands, including Trek, BMC, Pinarello, Willier, Scott, Stevens and Rotwild.
The TQ-HPR50 motor uses the same technology that powers the Mars rover, but adapted for cycling. It’s reliable and efficient as well as compact – you can’t fix
a breakdown on another planet.
TQ’s name is short for Technologie in Qualität meaning Technology in Quality. TQ has been engineering and building electronics since 1994. It’s gone from two employees to over 2,200, with its motors used not just on Mars but in the highest performance robotics, aerospace, and medical applications.
Do you remember the best
ridE in your life? How it felt
tojust fly up hills and as if
you could go on forever
W
The technology has certainly transformed indoor cycling and perhaps even cycling as a whole. For example, competitive athletes who would do their interval training back and forth on a public road can now get an even better workout without worrying about traffic and stop signs; elsewhere, the risk-averse can swap the early-morning winter ride in favour of a safe indoor spin and avoid the danger of dark wintry lanes or frosty roads; the racers can get their competitive fix without the cost or crash risk of a midweek criterium; and the time-crunched can jump onto Zwift for a race or a group ride at any time of day, knowing they'll be ready to continue their day as soon as the ride is done.
Cyclingnews' very own tech writer, Tom Wieckowski, who recently became a dad for the first time, is using Zwift to maximise his riding time without shirking his newfound responsibility or sacrificing family time. Read about that here.
This can lead to more consistent training, fewer injuries, and perhaps even less illness due to the avoidance of bad weather and the grime on the roads that often goes with it. For riders training with a goal in mind, whether that is a distance milestone or a local Strava segment, indoor cycling can lead to better fitness and improved results and ultimately surpass their goals. Just ask Mat Hayman, who used indoor cycling to train for – and win – Paris-Roubaix after he broke his collarbone earlier in the year.
The benefits go beyond the time savings, improved training, and risk avoidance too. In winter, many riders would typically see their weekly ride time shrink as bad weather and reduced daylight hours stop play, but the ability to jump on and go no matter the conditions means the fairweather among us can keep riding all year round, and perhaps most importantly of all, stay healthier.
Notably, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of health relates not only to the absence of illness or injury but a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being.
The physical benefits of cycling are well documented, but it is widely accepted that exercise can boost mental health, too.
Cyclingnews' very own tech writer, Tom Wieckowski, who recently became a dad for the first time, is using Zwift to maximise his riding time without shirking his newfound responsibility or sacrificing family time. Read about that here.
Expanding compatibility
To mount a bike onto most smart trainers, you need to consider two main things:
1. Is your groupset compatible with the cassette on the trainer?
Given you remove your rear wheel and replace it with a cassette connected directly to the trainer, you need to make sure that when you try and change gear, it will actually work. This will also have knock-on implications, potentially affecting which freehub you need too.
2. What axle adaptors do you need to use?
Your bike is mounted to the trainer using the rear axle in the same way an axle is used to hold a rear wheel. To ensure compatibility with multiple bikes with different axle types, smart trainers come with various adaptors. Without the correct ones, your bike either won't fit onto the trainer at all, or it will fit badly and may become damaged while riding.
Not only does the Zwift Hub One's expanded compatibility simplify the purchasing process and the initial setup, but it will also benefit multi-rider households and those with multiple bikes, helping everyone involved save time and money.
Perhaps you're lucky enough to have a few bikes in your stable. It's not uncommon for cyclists to have a 'best' bike for summer days, a less expensive bike for the winter months, and maybe even a gravel bike. Or perhaps your partner, housemates, parents, or even your teenage children have their own bikes, too, and will want to jump on Zwift once you're done. Now imagine those scenarios, but with each bike having a different groupset with a different number of gears. To swap bikes it could mean needing to swap the cassette and even the freehub, too.
With the Zwift Hub One's broad compatibility, there's a good chance it will work with all of your bikes, your family's bikes, and probably even your mountain bike. This means everyone can get involved, and you can keep on riding when your normal Zwift bike is in the shop for its latest service.
This not only saves faff time between rides, not to mention the oily hands that go with it, but it saves money, too. There'll be no need to buy spare cassettes and freehubs for all of the relevant bikes, and no need to remember which cassette goes with which freehub and which bike.
Multi-rider households
Smart trainers have become so advanced nowadays that they run approximately as loudly (well, quietly) as a household refrigerator, at approximately 55 decibels. This means the noisiest part of your indoor cycling experience is actually the noise of your drivetrain, especially when you clunk heavily between gears.
Your bike's drivetrain noise brings the average volume to around 60db, or that of an office environment, with shifts between gears hitting vacuum cleaner volume.
We can all live with the ambient noise of a refrigerator, but if someone started up a vacuum cleaner in your spare bedroom at 7 a.m. on a Sunday, it'd quickly become tiresome. Spare a thought then for those you live with – and even your neighbours – each time you clunk down the cassette on your early-morning trainer session.
The Zwift Hub, with its Click virtual shifting, removes this potential noise complaint by instead providing an electronic virtual shift.
This two-button device, which can be placed anywhere you choose – from your hoods to your drops or even your down tube for maximum retro – provides 24 virtual gears in a straight-through formation, regardless of the gear ratio on your bike. That means equal gearing no matter if you're on a road bike, gravel, cyclocross or mountain bike.
Not only is it quieter, but this setup can also help your components last longer, helping you to save money in the long run.
On top of the compatible freehub and spare cassette that you've managed to avoid buying, the Zwift Hub One saves you from wearing out your cassette, and its centrally-aligned sprocket means there's no cross-chaining to accelerate the wear on your chain, too. Mechanical groupsets wear out with use, too, and with the virtual shifter putting in a literal and figurative shift, you needn't worry about replacing your cables either.
Silent virtual shifting
Conclusion
In this post-pandemic era, much of the world is in a cost-of-living crisis, and while the price of everything else seems to be skyrocketing, Zwift's Hub Classic trainer made quality indoor cycling more affordable to the masses.
The repercussions of that alone mean that more people are able to reap the rewards of cycling, but the Hub One goes one step further.
Going one better than Spinal Tap and turning the dial beyond 11 and back round to one, the single-geared nature of the Hub One makes jumping into the sport of indoor cycling easier than ever, meaning more people on bikes, exercising, and living healthier lives.
The world of the smart trainer has grown increasingly crowded, making it no easy task to choose the best turbo trainer to match your needs.
"The single-geared nature of the Hub One makes jumping into the sport of indoor cycling easier than ever, meaning more people on bikes, exercising, and living healthier lives"
A study by Andrea L Dunn and colleagues in 2010 even concluded that there is increasing support that exercise can help to treat anxiety and depression, while a review of 129 studies relating to exercise and mental health by Kathleen Mikkelsen et al. concluded: "It is clear that exercise improves mental well-being and is a viable preventative or adjunct treatment option for improved mental health outcomes."
Anything that enables more exercise can only be positive, especially given that it can benefit social well-being too, regardless of the participant's age. Another study by Hiroko Komatsu and colleagues in 2016 found that ‘regular group exercise contributes to balanced health in older adults’ after testing 26 adults with a mean age of 74.
But like any new sport, Zwift – and indoor cycling as a whole – has its barriers
to entry.
Firstly, there's a setup cost. This includes buying the smart trainer and any necessary accessories (such as a fan to keep you cool). You might also need a computer or tablet, and you might even need the bike.
And secondly, there's a learning curve to be had. You'll need to make sure your bike is compatible with your chosen smart trainer and that you use the correct adaptors when setting up.
Enter the Zwift Hub One, which is tearing down those barriers to make indoor cycling as affordable and straightforward as possible.
You just want to ride your bike indoors; you don't want to have to learn complicated terminology and compatibility rules. Luckily, given the Hub One is compatible with almost all modern bike groupsets, there's no need to worry about choosing the right cassette when buying, whether the freehub will be compatible, or what the difference between XDR and HG is. Bikes are full of jargon, but indoor cycling needn't be. With the Hub One, as long as your bike has between eight and twelve gears at the back, you're good to go.
The process for axle adaptors is easy, too. You no longer need to dig through your bike's manual to work out whether your axle is 142mm or 148mm wide. Zwift's clever packaging for the axle adaptors includes a built-in measuring rule. Slide that between the dropouts, and if it fits, use that adaptor.
All of this simplicity means the learning curve is significantly reduced, meaning the barrier to entry is lower and thus, more people get to ride their bikes.
INside OUT
Quiet, smooth, and consistent—the virtual gearing of Zwift Hub One turns your bike into a smart bike.
VIRTUAL SHIFTING
The heart of Zwift Hub smart trainer is its power meter, which accurately measures your pedal power output in watts. Knowing your power levels up your indoor training when paired with Zwift workouts and training plans.
POWER METER
Zwift Click controls your virtual gears and can be mounted on any type of handlebar, wherever you like.
ZWIFT CLICK
Zwift Cog works with almost any
8-12-speed bikes, unlocking maximum compatibility and keeping maintenance to a minimum.
ZWIFT COG
Zwift Hub’s automatic resistance realistically matches the gradient of the virtual road. You’ll glide down hills and feel every climb.
REALISTIC RIDE
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ell, there’s a little piece of technology that can help you relive that feeling, every ride. It’s called the HPR50 motor from German brand TQ and at 1.85kg it’s the smallest, lightest motor in its class, with the most natural ride feel.
"It’s a natural fit with the highest performance
e-bikes, with more and more road,
mountain, hybrid and gravel bikes designed around TQ’s technology "
HPR50 stands for Harmonic Pin-Ring. It’s TQ’s patented technology to step down the much higher rotation speed of all e-bike motors to match the pedalling speed of the rider.
Most e-bike motors rely on multiple gears to achieve this, but this standard technology increases the motor noise, the number of moving parts and the
risk of failure.
In contrast, the HPR technology reduces rotation speed in one step, making the TQ-HPR50 motor much quieter, so you don’t hear the motor whine typical of electric bikes – another aspect of the TQ-HPR50 motor’s natural ride.
The TQ-HPR50 motor is found in the lightest, most technologically advanced electric road bikes available, including the Trek Domane+ SLR, BMC Roadmachine 01 AMP and Pinarello Nytro-E, as well as the Scott Solace eRIDE, Stevens E-Getaway, Wilier Adlar Hybrid and Rotwild R.R275 X.
It’s a natural fit with the highest performance e-bikes, with more and more road, mountain, hybrid and gravel bikes designed around TQ’s technology. The lightest TQ-equipped electric bikes weigh as little as 11.8kg.
The compact TQ-HPR50 motor allows an e-bike design that’s almost indistinguishable from a non-assisted bike. It has the highest torque density
of any e-bike motor and a road bike-like 135mm Q-Factor , so you don’t compromise on performance.
The TQ-HPR50 motor delivers 50Nm of torque and a peak power output of up to 300 watts, so it provides powerful assistance when needed. In the US, this allows some TQ-powered electric bikes, such as the Trek Domane+ SLR, to power you up to 28mph.
In the EU and UK, regulations require assistance to cut out progressively at 25kph/15.5mph, but you still get just the right amount of assistance for your ride right up to that speed. You can ride just like a normal bike above this speed or with the motor turned off.
The lightest e-bike system doesn’t just need a low motor weight – it requires a battery to match and TQ’s batteries are state-of-the art, for a total e-bike system weight of as little as 3.9kg.
TQ has two battery options: 250Wh and 360Wh. Both will provide many riders with all the range that they need, but TQ also sells a range extender which adds an extra 160Wh. This sits in a bottle cage and plugs into the main battery charging port, helping you to keep riding even further.
Your best ride on an electric bike shouldn’t rely on the motor doing all the work for you. The TQ-HPR50 provides a natural ride feel, where the motor adds to your own input, rather than taking over.
You can choose between three levels of assistance, to dial down the motor input when it’s less needed but still provide the support you need to crest the toughest climbs and keep up with fitter ride buddies. TQ’s app lets you customise your assistance levels too.
Changing assistance level is made natural with TQ’s compact bar top controls. You can also link the TQ software up with any ANT+ enabled cycling computer to control it from there. Additionally, you can now programme the third button on Shimano Di2 shifters to change assistance level.
To experience the best ride of your life, every ride, and the most natural ride feel from a bike that looks almost the same as a pedal-only bike, take a look at the ever-increasing range of electric bikes
equipped with TQ-HPR50 technology.
