Power Pedals: Cycling Pedals With Watts Output Come Of Age

Power pedals have been talked about for the better part of the last half decade but finally they are coming to fruition thanks to the folks at both Garmin and Polar.

Polar Keo Power Pedal                                              Garmin Vector

A little over a year ago Garmin purchased Silicon Valley firm MetriGear and has built a power pedal with a body parrallel to that of the Look Keo pedal system. The Garmin Vector power pedals with give you total watts output and display left/right power balance to help you work on equalizing power between your dominant and non-dominant legs.

Polar actually worked directly in conjunction with pedal manufacturer Look in creating their power pedals. Both Polar and Garmin are using strain guages in the pedal spindle to produce their power data. The Keo Power is designed to be compatible with chain sets with crank thickness less than 16mm and length of 170, 172.5, 175 or 177.5 mm (Shimano, SRAM, Campagnolo, FSA ranges, etc.)

The Polar system is called Keo Power and should be available in the Spring of 2012 while the new Garmin Vector power pedal is scheduled for a late March 2012 launch date.

DATA TRANSFER

Polar uses an infared data stick for data transfer from the pedals to software while Garmin uses an ANT+ ANT stick for data transfer to Garmin Connect.

HEAD UNIT COMPATIBILITY

The Polar Keo Power pedals will be compatible with the Polar CS500, Polar CS600 and Polar CS600X bike computer head units.

The Garmin Vector power pedal system will be compatible with the Edge 500, Edge 800 and with the older Garmin Edge 705 however it should be noted that the Edge 705 only receives total power and not left/right power like the Edge 500 and Edge 800 will.

PRICING

Polar is currently saying pricing for the Keo Power pedals will be between $1,900 and $2,300 USD for the system.

Garmin has already announced the pricing for their Garmin Vector power pedals at $1,500 USD, so for those on a tight budget Garmin seems to hold a price edge in the pedal power market.

TALK TO A REAL EXPERT

While we could go into oodles of details related to the specifications of the two different systems we would encourage buyers to call the real experts at the Heart Rate Watch Company at 866-586-7129. We sponsor a bike racing team and several of the members will using power pedals, plus we will also have a test pair in-house that our staff will be trying and comparing to other systems.