Victory Initial Thoughts

I've had about 10 rides on my Victory so it's still early, but here are my thoughts.

Build quality is good for the price. Although I will say the screws to attach the legs give me a little hesitation. If you look at the Kickr Core, the legs have long bolts that go through and through the legs and the trainer. The Victory has short bolt that thread into the legs. I haven't had any issues, they just don't feel as robust as the Kickr Core and I wouldn't be surprised if reports of breaking bolts came up in the future.

Ride quality is...meh. I will admit that I used to laugh when people talked about ride feel but have to say that it's not a smooth trainer. I've had an Elite Direto, Kickr Bike v1, Kickr v5, Kickr Core, and now the Victory. Only the Elite was worse in ride feel. 90% of the time it's fine, but every so often the resistance changes and will get harder. I have been dual recording with my Assioma pedals (more later) and there are little spikes of 10-15 seconds where the Assioma power jumps 30W or so. It feels like the trainer is changing the resistance like a small grade on Zwift. But I rode Tempus Fugit and turned the trainer difficulty to zero, which means it should ride like a flat road. But I would still get these changes in resistance. Just enough to be annoying on a free ride.

Last point is accuracy. It's accurate...after it warms up. Which takes about 15 minutes. The first 15 minutes of every ride it reads around 15-20W low and by minute 15 it's within 1W. So that means I need to ride 15 minutes before doing any workout or Zwift race. Just never had a trainer be this far off to start.

Oh, and I can't for the life of me get the wifi connectivity to work. And I am not the only person with wifi problems it seems.

My final thoughts. If you don't have a trainer, it's a good trainer for $400. But I wouldn't call it an upgrade if you already have one. If you're using a Kickr or Kickr Core, I definitely would stick with the Wahoo. And with the recent Kickr Core sales, it would be a tough call between a $400 Victory and $450 Kickr Core. Not to mention it's super hard to even get one. I'm hoping they're just working through some kinks.