SRAM AXS Web – it works with Di2!

Yep, it says SRAM right there in the title. Don’t worry though, this post is about Di2, I haven’t suddenly turned this into a SRAM website. Read on to find out what SRAM did and how you can use their page.

Note: in order to record di2 statistics you will need to have a Wireless Unit installed on your bike.

AXS Web? What’s that?

AXS Web has actually been around for a while, but is has been in beta until earlier this week. Since it’s accessible to everyone now, let’s take a closer look at what it does.

Basically AXS Web is your new best friend. At least that’s what SRAM are saying. It takes your rides and analyses them like Strava does and other sites do, but it isn’t meant to replace Strava. Eventually the idea is that AXS Web will help you out, giving suggestions like “shift more often” or “use the big ring a less often and you’ll go up that hill easier”.

It says SRAM, but it works with Di2?

Yes it does! If you own a Wireless Unit that is. The way AXS Web works is that it reads your activities from Garmin Connect (and ‘soon’ Wahoo) and then processes them. For Di2 riders that means you get a nice overview of all your shifts, what time you spend in what gears and your favourite gear ratios.

Of course Wahoo users can already access these using the Wahoo ELEMNT App, but Garmin users had to use Di2Stats.com to view shifting statistics. By launching AXS Web SRAM just added another method of analysing your shifts.

To get started simply browse to axs.sram.com. Click the Sign Up button and enter your email address and a password.

After you have verified your email address you’ll be asked to add a bike and link your Garmin Connect account. Don’t worry Wahooligans – you will be able to connect your Wahoo ELEMNT devices to the platform at a later date.

Add your bike

Either click the big ‘BUILD MY BIKE‘ button, or use the menu at the top of the page. Click My Bikes and then Add New Bike. Fill in your bike details and upload a photo if you want to.

After you click save make sure you scroll down a bit until you see DRIVETRAIN COMPONENTS. This is where you’ll enter your chainrings and cassette. Don’t worry about the ‘SRAM Chainrings’ and ‘SRAM Cassette’ headers – to enter your Shimano components just select the ‘Custom‘ options down at the bottom.

In the image below I’ve filled in my 50 x 34 chainrings and 11-28 Shimano Ultegra cassette. Note that the cassette cogs have to be entered from big to small, not the other way around.

While the AXS website works perfectly fine if you do not set up your drivetrain, telling SRAM about the cassette and chainrings you’re using will allow the site to display gear ratios and number of cogs – ’24T’ instead of “3rd cassette sprocket’ for example.

Connect and view your data

Scroll down a bit more until you get to the ‘Connect your SRAM AXS Data‘ section. This is where you link Garmin Connect. Click the ‘LINK APPS‘ button and connect your Garmin Connect account. Once you’ve done this AXS Web will import all your activities from the last 30 days.

This can take up to 10 minutes, so grab yourself a cup of coffee and take a short break. In my case it took about 3 minutes to import my data.

Click the ‘AXS FEED‘ menu item to view the feed – your recent activities.

Click the activity to view its details. You’ll see the usual information like heart rate, map, time, speed, temperature, etc. Normally it’d also show power, but unfortunately my power meter broke a few days before this ride.

Now this is where it gets interesting – the Component Summary and especially Gear Usage and Gear Ratios. Remember when I added my bike to the site earlier? It didn’t select this bike or drivetrain components by default, so my statistics look a bit weird.. and the Gear Ratio information is not available at all.

Click that ‘Edit Drivetrain‘ link at the bottom and it will replace those ‘1’, ‘2’, with the correct chainrings and cassette sprockets. The cool bit about this screen is that it can display the time you spent in each gear, but also the distance.

In this ride I spent almost twice the time in 19T (2 hours 12 minutes vs 1h10), but considerably more distance in the 17T sprocket (28km vs 18km).

Want to know what gears you used in combination with the 50T ring? Or how much time you spent in the easier gears? Simply click the front ring you’re interested in and it will only display the cassette sprockets you used with that ring. Apparently I did not spend any time in 34 x 23, but I did use 32 x 25.

Also, it can also display a Gear Ratio map. I personally find this a bit less interesting than the previous screens, but perhaps SRAM will add more to this screen later.

About the App

Yes, there are apps available for both Android and iOS. The apps let users set up their SRAM systems and view sensor information. As a Di2 user I didn’t find the app that useful and only launched it a couple of times after the initial set up.

Future development

So that’s it, that is the SRAM AXS Web platform. It’s an interesting alternative to Di2Stats.com, although I think Di2Stats.com is the more useful site at this time.

It all depends on the features SRAM add to the AXS platform and the devices they can connect. For example, Di2Stats.com doesn’t handle Sigma ROX files well. This is something AXS could do, being owned by SRAM they’ll have the development capacity to build things like this.

While it’s a SRAM website it’s certainly also of interest to Shimano riders and I’ll keep an eye on the platform for future developments.