Favero Doubles Power Meter Pedal Life with Firmware Update

Favero decided to give all its Pro RS & Pro MX power meter users a little Valentine’s Day gift, more than doubling their battery life with a simple firmware update. The process takes just 3 minutes, and increases the claimed battery life from 60 hours to 160 hours. I could write a bunch of words, but frankly, it’s as simple as that.

You will update the Favero app first, if you haven’t already, then connect to your pedals. The process took about 3 minutes and 20 seconds for me to complete:

Finally, it will ask to do a simple calibration (just leave the crank arm stationary for a few seconds), and you’re done. New battery levels are unlocked.

Now, I was curious to know whether or not this had an effect on the transmission strength of the signals. So before I did that, I actually measured the signal strength of the Favero pedals in two places. First, on my handlebars on the mount, and second, directly over the right pedal (which is the forward pedal on your bike computer). In this case, the signal strength was measured via Bluetooth, as I didn’t have an ANT+ signal strength measuring unit.

Before the Handlebars: -65dBm
Behind the handles: -65dBm

Before pedaling: -36dBm
Behind the pedal: -35dBm

A value of -40 is basically considered very good, and a lower value (eg, -65) indicates distance. In any case, all these values ​​are positive, and effectively show that there is no significant change. And while I haven’t confirmed the ANT+ signal strength, in general those two are compatible with the same chipset.

The reason why the signal strength is important for battery training, it can and completely breaks other power meters. One only needs to remember 4iiii a few years back, trying to significantly increase their battery claims, only to have endless problems with power meter dropouts on people’s bike computers, because they push the limits too far. Signal strength is a big part of the battery puzzle in these types of units, but it’s also not carefully balanced.

Of course, it’s not the end of the episode – other features can be (and apparently are) code changes, designed to improve efficiency. This could include cleaning up legacy code, cleaning up inefficient ways of doing things, etc… As is always the case when we see these big jumps in batteries, we’ll have to wait to see if there are any unintended consequences not just for one or two people, but for society as a whole.

Favero said in a statement: “This improvement has been made possible through extensive research and development to implement an algorithm, ensuring extended battery life. without compromising the high accuracy and data consistency for which our products are known.”

Underlining is included in their quote. If they had thought carefully, on Valentine’s day they would have made that text red. 😂

Historically, Favero is *very* strict when it comes to making changes and releasing new hardware/software. I would be hard pressed to think of any company in the field that spends as much time as Favero on the testing side, save maybe SRAM. Both are known for late validation programs that stretch almost as long as some of their competitors’ development cycles.

In any case, go give it a whirl and let me know how it goes in the comments. While the Favero already won a lot of people’s money compared to Garmin’s Rally units (mostly based on price), the battery was one of the last things on the comparison sheet where the Favero was ‘losing’ from a technical point of view (the Rally x10 series is 90 hours). That piece of the puzzle solved, the only thing on the comparison sheet left for Favero is to come out with a Look pedal option for their Pro series.

In any case, I bought several units of the Favero Pro RS & MX series last year to use as power meter comparison pedals for both my and my wife’s bikes, given the price is good, and the performance factor is just high.

With that, thanks for reading!