Magene is a quickly growing Chinese electronics company from Quingdoa in the East of China. They have been around since 2015 and make cycling products such as trainers, lights, power meters , batteries, wiring systems for e bikes and also sub brand Exar carbon wheels.
The Magene S3+ Cadence/Speed Sensor is $15.99 .The Wahoo equiv is $39.99. I generally trust established branded products like Wahoo or Garmin(as we all do) for an indication of quality, reliability and performance but I decided to take a risk and try the lower price option and see what happens. The sensor is designed to be used both in and outdoors , I mainly bought this sensor to use indoors in a training situation to sense speed.
What’s it good for?
This product is good for sensing speed and cadence to be used inside on a bolt on trainer or rollers. – that data can feed into indoor trainer programs like Zwift or TrainerRd . It’s also good to find cadence for an outdoor use. – Most modern cycling computers will calculate speed from GPS, but this product will allow you to measure cadence.
Less drivel more product review
A black plastic little bump, just like the rest of them, but the S3+ is pretty clever. it can be used as a Speed or a Cadence sensor. It has two modes. So if you buy two, you can set one for each.
Can be set up as a Speed or Cadence sensor
Battery included
Attachment Bands Included – two sizes
Small rubber mounting pad included
Bluetooth 4 protocol
IPX66 Weatherproofing
Design
Small, black and pretty unremarkable, that’s it. The sensor, uses a rubber / silicone band attachment and knowing these attachment bands, they tend to fatigue after a few years so its good to periodically check the bands integrity.
Because the sensor is designed to fit on hubs and on crank arms there is some compromise with the shape. Hubs can be many shapes from very flat across the width to sometimes more curved. The unit is designed for flat and doesn’t come with any kind of adapter just a slim rubber pad, so if you have very curvy hubs (the gold chris king hubs below are very curvy and probably an outlier) you are going to see a gap. That said, I have being using is on curvy hubs for a long time and no issues. Regarding attaching to a crank arm, It should work with most crank arms no problem though as they seem to be flatter in shape on the rear side.
Setup and out of the box details
The sensor comes with two attachment bands, a small one for cadence on the crank arm and a larger one for hub mounting for speed. Also included is a small rubber pad, which they advise to use when in cadence sensor mode. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t use it in Speed mode on the hub also, but nothing was specified.
Pic 5 – Remember to remove the almost invisible battery stopper – small transparent disc, it’s on the battery already, so you have to open it up.
When you insert the battery in a fiddly manner, the front will either flash Red or Green for a short time. indicating Cadence or Speed mode respectively. To toggle the mode, remove the battery for a few seconds and reinsert.
For the rest of this test I used the sensor as a speed sensor with a Wahoo headunit on a roller setup.:
Summary – Megane S3+
The S3+ is small and inexpensive. Easy to set up, just spin the wheel and it connects and works.
Works great, every-time so far. No problems pairing and is instantly there when I start up my wahoo head-unit or give the wheel a spin and it connects in a jiffy.
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