Once upon a time, training with power was only for the elite, but that’s changing, and now brands are constantly bringing out new options to help make watts more affordable.

You can measure power from different points on the bike:

Hubs

PowerTap are the leaders here. Hubs start at around £500, and can go to£1000+ once in a wheel

A hub based power meter is useful because you can swap the wheel between bikes if you want to. However, once the hub is built into a wheel (or bought already in a wheel) you are pretty much stuck with the wheel, so if you want to train hard and race on it, you’ll need to compromise strength or performance somewhere.

Cranks

Measuring from the cranks means it’s not that easy to swap between bikes – fine if you have one bike, but if you have a training mule and a race machine you are left with an awkward decision.

There are a few options in crank based power meters – Quarq are a popular brand if you want the standard, double crank measuring device, but most options are close to the £1k mark.

Stages power meters, used by Team Sky, measure power produced by one leg, and double the figure. This has been shown to be fairly effective, but it’s worth remembering if you have one leg stronger than the other your results might be skewed. This said, as long as you are comparing the same measurement between sessions, you’re fairly safe, and the cheapest options are around £600.

Finally, Power2Max are a popular brand, they are a bit cheaper, but they come from Germany so you’ll need to wait a while.

Pedals

The other option is to measure from the pedal, using the Garmin Vector pedals – these are easily transferrable, but you do need to be very careful when fitting them. A pair is close to £1,000, but you can buy one and use the Stages method of doubling the data for around £500.

What you choose will depend upon how transferable you need your power meter to be, how important wheel choice is to you, and how much you want to spend.