When we spotted this at Sea Otter, it was in final prototype form with a promise to be unveiled at the fall tradeshows. Thankfully, they kept their promise and the new SRM Powermeter Shimano 11-Speed is official.
It’ll come available with either the 53/39, 52/36 or 50/34 chainring combos in all available crank lengths from 165 up to 180. Weight for the crankset and powermeter system is 790g with a 147.5 Q-factor. Retail is $3,295 plus shipping.
In addition to an all new design to take full advantage of Shimano’s super stiff, asymmetric chainrings, it also gets an upgraded battery that’s good for up to 3,000 hours. Or, as they put it, 600 hours of riding per year for the next five years.
If that’s just not good enough for you, they’re still working on their rechargeable battery option…
Word from their reps is they’re still tinkering with a rechargeable battery in the power meters, but they’re coming. More details on that as they develop.
The more surprising part of the display was the new PowerControl 8 (PC8) head unit, which is leaps and bounds above the current PC7. It integrates Ant+, Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS to give it more data points and allowing it to communicate with more devices. Initial word is the Bluetooth will only be used to communicate to compatible devices (as in, an SRM app running on iOS or Android phones), not receive data from Bluetooth sensors. We had very limited time at their booth, so we’ll grab more details this week at Interbike.