Prying the Minoura out of its box and getting it ready to go is a blissful Allen key-free affair. Mounting the bike is easy with the large crank handle and the unique self-setting gravity frame means there’s no fiddling with hard-to-reach knobs to get the roller pressure on the tyre correct.
Heck, we’re even fans of the go-faster bright red paintjob.Start to turn the pedals and the large 1.5kg flywheel combined with fluid resistance makes for a smooth and silent riding experience.
The gravity frame is a neat idea but, when you put the power down, it's not the most stable trainer on the market. This won’t be a problem for riders doing regular sessions, but if you like to do 100 percent big gear sprints, this isn’t the model for you.
Does the addition of a remote resistance lever justify the price? Well, like all the mechanically controlled magnetic models we've tested, the actual shift in resistance isn’t great across the seven levels and barely noticeable from level to level.
Although the Minoura has the least stickiness at the top of its range, we think it would be better to ditch the remote and drop the price to undercut the competition.