Row pro vs exr vs zwift vs kinomap

[James.G]

As the subject suggests really. There's quite a bit on the forum but a lot of it is a year or 2 old now.

What are people using and why? I tried row pro a few years ago but not tried any of the rest yet. I don't mind a small monthly sub as long as it's worth it.

[JaapvanE]

I love EXR. Its functionality and graphics are great and get updated monthly. New features are announced for 2025, including a new location.

I absolutely love the community where every rower is welcome. Community rows are really fun and often include over 150 rowers of different pace. I've been using it for three years now and love every second of it. Really keeps me interested in doing my daily training

[Carl Watts]

I used RowPro for 12 years it was great but eventually I need something far more interactive so I moved to Zwift.

Been on Zwift for a few years now but its no good for the Erg really, the 3rd party interface like RowedBiker "Works" in terms of getting you connected however it doesn't work in terms of real world power translation and you have no Cadence sensor to sync your Avatar. The power correction is not a linear function like a simple percentage Boost so you get smoked on the sprints.

Someone should really put in the work of taking the same person who is equally trained on the bike and the Erg and put them through a sequence of constant power output and track the heartrates and come up with a proper power conversion curve.

The result was I quickly moved to an indoor bike trainer starting with the WattBike Trainer and have since moved to a WattBike Atom X.

EXR is probably the go to now for the Erg, however as most rowers do not appear to want to pay for an App, the free "real time loop" on ErgData has picked up quite a few users.

Unfortunately any rowing software will never hit the total number of users like Zwift so it will never get the same level of development or anything like the level of the online community.

[JaapvanE]

Been on Zwift for a few years now but its no good for the Erg really, the 3rd party interface like RowedBiker "Works" in terms of getting you connected however it doesn't work in terms of real world power translation and you have no Cadence sensor to sync your Avatar. The power correction is not a linear function like a simple percentage Boost so you get smoked on the sprints.

Someone should really put in the work of taking the same person who is equally trained on the bike and the Erg and put them through a sequence of constant power output and track the heartrates and come up with a proper power conversion curve.

As package maintainer for OpenRowingMonitor I dived into this a year back. The key issue is that bikes react much faster to power changes than a RowErg ever will. A RowErg PM5 really likes consistency and needs one to two strokes to really pick up a significant power change. Even with ORM we see this happening: it has to do with using simpler but more robust maths which ignores these changes initially. And software further down the line can't make things appear what isn't reported to it.

EXR is probably the go to now for the Erg, however as most rowers do not appear to want to pay for an App, the free "real time loop" on ErgData has picked up quite a few users.

Unfortunately any rowing software will never hit the total number of users like Zwift so it will never get the same level of development or anything like the level of the online community.

I don't know where you get the idea that you need hunderds of thousands of users to keep development going. But it is a completely faulty idea in the modern industrial software development world.

Unlike the antique decade old legacy mess Zwift currently is, requiring nearly 500 people to keep it alive, EXR is built using modern technology. They only need a small team of around 10 people that are much more effective. My daughter is a game designer and she builds entire photorealistic 3D games in a week or so with 3 friends in their spare time, using the same technology. IndieVelo has built a fully functional Zwift competitor using the very same engine. It took one guy one year, in his spare time. Next to his daytime job at Zwift. With weekly (!) updates. And it is free to use. And Zwift declined to buy it. Zwift's technology and business are running out of road quickly.

EXR is profitable and the community is growing quite well. Group rows frequently hit 200 users, and there are several each week. I row daily on EXR, and on each row I encounter other rowers. EXR has monthly updates, which bring new functionality each month. The devs might not make millions of Euro's a year, but they are making a lot of progress.

[Carl Watts]

You only need to try Zwift with the Erg and you very quickly discover the limitations. Its okay if you just want to look at decent graphics and do all the solo route completions and move up the levels but its just frustrating when you come up against other riders.

Basically you can put way more power into a bike then you are ever going to be able to put into the Erg. For me its a factor of 2 to 1.

If you are going to stay with the Erg, then stay with some dedicated rowing software. People that use the Erg on Zwift probably already have a bike so they don't want to use pay for additional software that they only use half the time at best. You can also use the Ski Erg with Zwift but I imagine that's even worse.

[James.G]

Looks like I'm going to try Exr free trial and go from there. The zwift looks great on a bike but not sure I'll get on with it rowing.

Was looking for real video footage to start with but after considering that you can't use that to row with others then I can see why that is not used much

[JaapvanE]

Looks like I'm going to try Exr free trial and go from there. The zwift looks great on a bike but not sure I'll get on with it rowing.

My tip: join the group events. It is fun and a good way to meet people with a similar pace. Several are planned for January, including HOCR (see https://exrgame.com/events ).