>>2024673I'll tell you my story. I got one of those trainers this year around January. I got it from Amazon for 80 bucks and it was OK at first. However, it broke within the first month of usage. I should have returned it but I used my DIY skills to fix it. This time it lasted around 3 months before breaking again. Fortunately by this time I was riding outside so I just left it to rot in my basement. The trainers are alright ( not taking into account that I broke mine twice). My biggest complain about them is that they don't emulate the feeling of riding outside that well. Bear in mind I was using one with magnetic resistance (supposedly fluid trainers are better at this) and I was hitting 40+ mph easily. i.e. unless I manually increased the resistance I didn't get an air resistance effect. This is sort of OK though. Riding for more than 30 minutes inside is pain so I mostly did HIIT while on it.
This year I started riding for about 1 hour+ every day. Since I wanted to keep that momentum going on I decided to get a direct drive trainer (kickr core). I initially didn't get it because I consider them to be rather expensive plus I didn't want to pay for Zwift. I figured that if I couldn't get into using the direct drive trainer I could just return it and that If actually liked it, I could just bite the bullet and pay Zwift for 3 months. Fortunately for me I quickly found out a very pleasant option: Mywhoosh
It is completely free ( no 20 free miles BS ), it is compatible with the kickr core and it has made my training fun. I can last more than an hour riding inside now vs the 30 minutes on the magnetic trainer . I'll give some more details about it in my response to the other anon.
