I was really sad when wahoo ate up Speedplay pedals in 2019. I’ve been using Speedplay X1 pedals for years. They are super lightweight lollipops with just 160 grams of mass and lots of float.
But, it turns out wahoo has simplified them back in a new and improved (and expensive!) form. So you can now get Speedplay Nano pedals for a whopping $450 with the very low stack height and now they are carbon fiber body and titanium spindle at an incredible 168 grams.
And now, you don’t have to constantly grease them (what a pain!) because they have a custom seal. The great news is the new pedals work with the old cleats and vice versa, so you can upgrade the cleans and keep using old pedals or buy a new pedal for a new bike and a new cleat for new shoes and you are good to go.
Plus, they have a better system for walking than the old coffee shop covers, these covers are large and more integrated and it less like walking on a hockey puck. What they did was redesign it, so there is a plastic plug that goes into the middle of the cleat and a clear overlay that snaps around it. You can leave this cover on (it adds 100 grams to the system) and you can even get Aero pedals that are single sided for the ultimate in micro watt shaving.
If you don’t way pay that astronomical price, then the Speedplay Zero ($230) is stainless steel axle and is 222 grams and it comes in 53mm (but there are also longer 56, 59 and 65 mm that you can get in speciality stores).
So, this is quite a price increase from the old X1, X2 and X3 that you could find for quite a bit less. And they are all made in Vietnam now (before they were all made in San Diego which was pretty cool).
They are also going to make a power meter built into the pedals. These are going to be much smaller than the Garmin power pedals and easier to transport between different bikes. The Stages and Shimano meters are great built into the crank, but this makes it easy to more them around and it’s in my favorite pedals!
The new pedals call the Powerlnk that is based on the Speedplay Zero with a 276g total with power measurement in both pedals. Overall, like the Stages, the weight penalty is just 50 grams to get a power reading which is pretty cool. It is basically a pod that is added next to the spindle that has the strain gauges.
They will probably be a whopping $1K like the Garmin Vector 1 and 2. If it is rechargeable, they will last 50 hours or so (so you will be recharging every month or so with solid riding).
