Beginner-Friendliness

Winner: Trainer
With its broad footprint and fixed attachment to your bike frame, riding a stationary trainer is easier than actually riding a bike outside. The hardest thing about a trainer is installing your bike on it. Plus, as bikes today have broadened to include a number of rear axle widths and attachment styles, which means not all bikes will fit every trainer.

Rollers are more simple to use, though the spacing of the roller drums has to be set initially for your bike’s wheelbase (and possibly changed if you use more than one bike). Even so, they require more skill to ride. At first, you’ll have to concentrate on keeping the front wheel straight. Set them up in a doorway so you can get the hang of them and, if you’re riding them on carpet, lay down an old blanket or towel to prevent tyres from damaging your floors if you should happen to slip off one side (yes, cycling rug burn is a thing).

Affordability

Winner: Rollers
Rollers are more affordable than trainers on average. Generally, they’re about the price of a good, but pretty bare-bones, trainer. That’s partly because rollers’ basic technology hasn’t changed much in decades.

However, that also means there are fewer options. Resistance is supplied by the size of the drums themselves (larger drums=less resistance); some rollers have added, adjustable, magnetic- or fan-based resistance that can increase the cost. The priciest rollers we know of are Inside Ride’s E-Motion rollers. With the optional ANT+/Bluetooth resistance controller, they’re R16,200.

Trainers used to be cheaper, and there are still super affordable basic models, like Blackburn’s Tech Mag 5, for R2300. But the advent of online-based training and social platforms like Zwift has led to a new class of trainers with a much larger feature set that start at the price of a good set of rollers and go up from there. That said, you get more than just connectivity when you spend more; you also benefit from advances in resistance technology that helps create a better ride experience. Overall, the trainer universe is far broader than rollers; there’s a trainer for every conceivable budget, and a vast array of options and features.

Ride Feel

Winner: Rollers—For Now
To use a trainer, you have to securely afix your bike to it, which means your bike doesn’t move underneath you like it would outside. That’s an unnatural feeling that takes time to get used to. As well, the resistance itself feels subtly different than the way wind resistance works against us on the road. Good trainers are getting close to a better road feel recently, and some trainers like the Kinetic Rock and Roll can also pivot side to side for a more natural sensation in out-of-the-saddle efforts. Add in the distractions of virtual training apps like Zwift and, well, trainers are getting pretty close now to a realistic ride feel.

With rollers, on the other hand, the bike can move underneath you more naturally because it’s not fixed to anything. The downside is that it’s the rare talent who can stand up on conventional rollers without losing control. That’s right: conventional. On the E-Motion rollers, by contrast, the entire roller apparatus is set on a gliding frame that can move fore and aft. So you can stand up and even sprint and the bike will move underneath you naturally.

Storage and transport

Winner: Rollers
Rollers are typically lighter than trainers (13kg is roughly average), and foldable models like those from Elite and SportCrafters can pack up to slightly less than one metre long. Kinetic’s Z Rollers use an innovative tri-fold system and pack even tighter. You can easily slide them under a bed or sit them up to the side of a closet, which makes them great for apartments or any living arrangement where space is at a premium.

Durability

Winner: Draw
Rollers used to be the winner here far and away: Their simple design and construction lasts for years. Aside from occasional belt replacements, you could barely wear the things out in a lifetime.

All of that is largely still true, but what’s changed is the level of trainer durability. Their resistance units are now much more, um, resistant to heat-based failure, which was the most common problem with older units. The reliability issues that are replacing that now are largely electronic in origin. But we don’t hear a ton about hardware failures, and with the rise of wireless communication, the chances of damaging a connection cord or port by snagging a foot or pedal have lessened dramatically.

Performance Attributes

Winner: Person-Specific

If you’re still undecided, the choice comes down to what each indoor training tool is best at.

Rollers are great for working on your cycling form and developing a smooth, powerful and consistent pedal stroke. If you pedal squares, or jerky, inconsistent strokes, you’ll bounce on rollers like a rubber ball—creating a natural feedback mechanism that helps you subconsciously pedal more smoothly. You can also use them for workouts structured around cadence drills: high-power, low RPM intervals, or trying to raise your cadence with high-RPM “speedwork,” for example. But because a certain amount of effort goes into staying on the relatively narrow drums, rollers generally aren’t the best for very high-intensity efforts (the E-Motion rollers being an exception).

Trainers are best for the kind of highly structured workouts many riders do in winter. Riding inside is often about getting the most return on the minute: That means shorter workouts that are tightly tailored to specific interval structures. The adjustable, computer-controlled resistance of good “smart” trainers today is perfect for those efforts, and since you’re locked onto a stable, heavy base, you can focus exclusively on maintaining that interval rather than staying upright.

In an ideal world, you could have both. Check that: In an ideal world, you’d always have time to ride outside and the weather would always be beautiful. But many of us face restrictions we have to work around by riding inside, so you’re better off investing in the right tool for that job.