Tacx Antares Rollers

The Tacx Antares Rollers are ideal for someone looking for good value entry-level bicycle rollers with the option to add resistance at a later stage.

Out of the box these Tacx Rollers are easily assembled. You simply attach the three rollers in their mountings on the frame, then attach the band to the rollers and finally adjust the distance between the rollers to accommodate your bike.

Features

The rollers themselves are heavy conical rollers. The heavy bit is designed to optimize the mass inertia of the rollers. The conical part means that they are thinner in the middle than at the edges and therefore, in theory, you wont go flying off quite as easily. While in part this is effective, these rollers could however do with the same large lips found on the Elite Ghibli Parabolic Rollers. These lips are super effective at preventing you from sliding off when in motion.

However, don’t let this deter you. What it means is that you may take a little longer to get the hang of the Tacx Antares Rollers but that’s not the end of the world. The other thing worth mentioning is that these rollers don’t come with steps so make sure you have some kind of platform to help you climb on your bike. A wall or a doorway would be useful to steady yourself too until you’ve got the hang of it.

Usability

The riding experience as a whole isnt bad, these rollers arent the quietest around but they are certainly a lot quieter than any comparable turbo trainer. The noise they emit is of course influenced by the surface you are training on; wooden floors can get a bit noisy with any bicycle rollers so you might benefit from a training mat to dampen the vibrations (and catch the sweat).

Storing the Tacx Antares Rollers

The rollers are easily folded up and packed away, in fact they measure only 80cm when collapsed which is very compact.

These rollers are great as they will train your core strength and improve your balance at the same time. Training on these rollers is also useful for improving your pedal stroke. You will really notice the difference in your road riding after every session on your rollers.

There are no additional resistance settings on these rollers, however Tacx do sell an upgrade resistance unit which attaches to the Antares Rollers. However, you will still work up a sweat without the upgrade unit as you can change the resistance by changing gears on your bike.

The verdict?

Overall these are a good value training aid which can be upgraded with a resistance unit over time. However for the price of the combined rollers and resistance unit you could purchase higher end models from the start. The Tacx Antares Rollers will however be perfect for someone new to indoor bicycle training on rollers.