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This bike is for people that don't want to go to a gym and/or don't have lots of time to leave the house on a daily basis. You can also finance the bike so the

This bike is for people that don't want to go to a gym and/or don't have lots of time to leave the house on a daily basis. You can also finance the bike so the hit isn't so bad. Additionally, there's no extra charge for multiple accounts (up to 10), so if everyone in the house uses it, the cost makes more sense. I work out of home and this is the only way I get consistent exercise. My fitness has gone up tremendously as has my quality of life. It's all about what motivates you to take your health seriously... this bike does it for me and a lot of other people. It's really hard to put a price on that.

wlesieutre 7y ago
Semi-related, I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber yesterday (as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type). Much cheaper purchase and fun enough that I can enjoy playing it for hours a day. I have an (admittedly shitty) exercise bike, and will probably be using that a lot less now. If anyone's looking for a home fitness gadget, give that a look. I'm told BoxVR is a better workout than Beat Saber but I haven't bought that yet.
- mrguyorama 7y ago
  >I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber That's an absurd claim by your apple watch. An hour of expert level beat saber is closer to 360 calories.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    I have a hunch that it's overestimating because you wave your arms around a lot, but 360 seems like an underestimate. Average heart rate in 70% to 80% range, and I'll have higher than average calorie expenditure because I'm overweight. EDIT - did a comparison against Runner's World's calorie burn calculator, and the calories/hour burn rate lines up with a leisurely 11:30 minutes/mile pace based on my weight. It honestly seems about right.
  - corey_moncure 7y ago
    https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/ https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/ This source puts 6 Kcal/min on the low end of the range for an idealized 60 Kg individual, but your estimate is close. tl:dr; 6-8 Kcal/min (360-480 Kcal/hour) for a 60 Kg individual
- __comrade__ 7y ago
  You burn 1900 calories running 2/3 of a marathon. I hardly think you were able to achieve that in an hour playing a VR game.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    More than two hours. Looking at the Runner's World calculator for a comparison: Inputs are: 1 mile, 11:30 minutes/mile, 210 lbs weight Gives back 159 calories for a 1 mile run, 829 calories per hour. My Beat Saber workouts yesterday tally up at 830 calories per hour and the amount of sweating felt in the ballpark of running an 11 minute mile. I don't think the watch's estimates are that outlandish. https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-burned-running-calculator/ https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-bur... Again factoring in that I weigh 210 lbs, their calculator also says a marathon would be upwards of 4100 calories for me. 1900 calories clocks in at less than half of a marathon.
    - jmull 7y ago
      It’s certainly possible to burn 800+ calories per hour for a couple hours. Normal, actually, for someone doing athletic training. (E.g., anyone training semi-seriously for any kind road race is doing this at least once a week.) But I’d pretty surprised if you did it without training to build up to it. You could have developed the aerobic capacity through other activities, but I’d have thought various muscles would be unprepared and would be giving you rather strong pain signals. If you nevertheless pushed through that, I’d think you’d be SORE AF today and barely able to move. Or maybe your activity confused the calorie model your Apple Watch uses. Not that it isn’t great exercise.
      - wlesieutre 7y ago
        I exercise bike pretty much daily (typically 30-60 minutes), so my arms are flimsy but in terms of cardio capacity I'm not in awful shape. My arms are definitely sore today.
    - bogomipz 7y ago
- rchaud 7y ago
  1lb of fat is approx 3500 calories. How realistic is it that you dropped over half a pound of fat playing a VR game?
  - makomk 7y ago
    It's not realistic to expect the amount of fat lost from any kind of exercise to be anywhere near the total amount of calories expended, though. There are biological limits to fat metabolism that just can't be avoided.
  - mikeryan 7y ago
    That’s not how it works.
- ygjb 7y ago
  Everyone else is saying how absurd the 1900 calorie claim is, and comparing it to other types of exercise, but even if it is the much lower 360 calories, most sedentary gamers are more likely to do this multiple times per week than say, run a marathon, or even start doing a program like C25K. That's a huge win in my book...
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    I mentioned in other comments (and edited a bit with more accurate numbers), but I'll put it here too: the watch worked it out to 830 calories/hour and Runner's World says that's equivalent to me running at 11:30 minutes/mile based on my 210 lbs weight. I've only gone running once this spring so I don't have a huge dataset (lots of walking and exercise bike instead), but the one run I did was a 10:30 mile. So I'm not especially fast, but 11:30 is a slow pace for me and feels reasonable as a beat saber equivalent workout. Downside, the Quest's foam face-interface gets absolutely drenched in sweat. I need to get a sweatband and a wipeable pad replacement as soon as VRCover catches up on their backorders. Even as an exercise bike owner who can hop on that for a workout whenever I want to, I've never gotten home from work and said "You know what I want to do? Exercise bike for more than two hours." Compared to half an hour of exercise bike and two hours of Overwatch, I think this will be a huge deal for fitness.
- bogomipz 7y ago
  Genuinely curious - how long of a session is required to burn those 1900 calories?
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    That was split over three sessions totaling 2:17, and is for me being 5' 10" and around 210 lbs. If you're skinnier than me you'll probably burn less. It was a good chunk of my evening and my arms are pretty sore today, so I don't plan on doing that all the time. But I'll absolutely do it more often than I run/bike 1900 calories.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  I've been playing "Space Pirate Trainer" on my new Quest and was shocked at how worked-out my legs felt afterwards from dodging incoming shots by squatting/leaning.
  - jstarfish 7y ago
    I had similar results with "Police 911" in the arcade in the early 2000s. Fun times!
- gamblor956 7y ago
  That must have been a lot of Beat Saber...running a half marathon (13.1 miles) burns fewer calories than that.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    I broke this down in another comment, but trusting Runner's World for a calorie calculator, a half marathon would take me 2080 calories (at 210 lbs). So a little bit less than that. Average calorie burn was 830 calories/hour, which they say is equivalent to me running at an 11:30 minutes/mile pace. In terms of effort expended, important to note that this was three sessions over the course of the evening, adding up to 1900 calories and 2 hours 17 minutes. So it was something like running 4 miles 3 times with an hour and change break in between, which is probably an easier feat than doing it in one shot. My arms are still sore and I don't plan on doing that every day, but it was definitely a workout.
- rubicon33 7y ago
  Can confirm - BoxVR is a killer workout if you take it seriously. Of course, you can cheat and barely bunch to register a punch.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type I don't trust that at all. Apple Watch will give you several "active" calories a minute sitting still if you start an "Other" workout.
sojournerc 7y ago
I don't understand how you save time not leaving the house... Doesn't it take just as much time to go on a ride outside?
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  Not a fun way to exercise if you live somewhere like NYC. Or weather wise, anywhere in the northern US where it's cold and snowy for from November to February.
  - sojournerc 7y ago
    Fair enough, but I'm not sure that NYC would keep me in the house for exercise. I live in the mountains of Colorado, but will always prefer exercising outdoors, even in winter. I tend to modify my exercise for the time of year and weather. In winter it tends towards running and skiing. Summer is for biking (and more running). I like to have variety of activities (helps to build up a diverse set of strength) and the simplicity of walking out my front door. (Without a monthly fee)
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      Previous years I've done running in the summer, but I hate it in the winter. Motivation to work out has been a hard enough barrier, so once the air gets too cold to breathe comfortably I'd pretty much stop. Exercise bike was a game changer last winter in terms of getting me to stick with regular workouts.
  - bogomipz 7y ago
    New Yorkers just stop at the gym on their way home from work. The net time difference is close to zero. However you also have the opportunity to actually meet other people at a gym.
- bstar77 7y ago
  Closest gym with spin classes is 30 minutes away. I also tend to do my classes between 11pm and 12pm, something not possible at any gym. The sessions are tightly controlled so I'm getting the workout I need. I don't have to deal with cars, humidity or any other variables riding on the road. To be honest, I don't understand why people bring that point up so much.
bogomipz 7y ago
Not leaving the house regularly is a serious quality of life issue. That is most certainly not going to be addressed by the purchase of a stationary bike.
- bstar77 7y ago
  I was just referring to the fact that I work from home and put in about 10 hours per day behind a computer. Sedentary life is hard to avoid for programmers even though I'm into athletic activities. The bike allows me to get in a class during lunch, after work or late into the evening. The rest of my free time is spent with my family- driving to the gym 30 minutes away to take their classes would take away an hour of my free time just in driving.
rorykoehler 7y ago
Why not buy a real bike and a direct drive smart turbo trainer? At least you could ride the bike outside too.
- bstar77 7y ago
  Because they are not as good. The Peloton bike uses earth magnets for the resistance so changing levels is seamless. Your bike is directly communicating with the class HUD and you can see how you are performing against your own stats and against others in the class, real time or historically. It's a completely different experience than messing with a trainer.
  - rorykoehler 7y ago
    I've never used peloton but I would be very surprised if any of the mid-top end direct drive smart trainers weren't vastly better than an exercise bike. They also use magnetic resistance up to 2000w in some cases with seamless transitioning. There is nothing apart from greed that stops peloton from offering their classes to anyone with a smart trainer. You get all those stats on an ipad/laptop/phone with other smart trainers and according to reviews the power readings are not very accurate on a peloton bike. Really seems like a win for marketing over reality.

wlesieutre 7y ago

Semi-related, I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber yesterday (as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type). Much cheaper purchase and fun enough that I can enjoy playing it for hours a day. I have an (admittedly shitty) exercise bike, and will probably be using that a lot less now. If anyone's looking for a home fitness gadget, give that a look. I'm told BoxVR is a better workout than Beat Saber but I haven't bought that yet.

mrguyorama 7y ago
>I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber That's an absurd claim by your apple watch. An hour of expert level beat saber is closer to 360 calories.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  I have a hunch that it's overestimating because you wave your arms around a lot, but 360 seems like an underestimate. Average heart rate in 70% to 80% range, and I'll have higher than average calorie expenditure because I'm overweight. EDIT - did a comparison against Runner's World's calorie burn calculator, and the calories/hour burn rate lines up with a leisurely 11:30 minutes/mile pace based on my weight. It honestly seems about right.
- corey_moncure 7y ago
  https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/ https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/ This source puts 6 Kcal/min on the low end of the range for an idealized 60 Kg individual, but your estimate is close. tl:dr; 6-8 Kcal/min (360-480 Kcal/hour) for a 60 Kg individual
__comrade__ 7y ago
You burn 1900 calories running 2/3 of a marathon. I hardly think you were able to achieve that in an hour playing a VR game.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  More than two hours. Looking at the Runner's World calculator for a comparison: Inputs are: 1 mile, 11:30 minutes/mile, 210 lbs weight Gives back 159 calories for a 1 mile run, 829 calories per hour. My Beat Saber workouts yesterday tally up at 830 calories per hour and the amount of sweating felt in the ballpark of running an 11 minute mile. I don't think the watch's estimates are that outlandish. https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-burned-running-calculator/ https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-bur... Again factoring in that I weigh 210 lbs, their calculator also says a marathon would be upwards of 4100 calories for me. 1900 calories clocks in at less than half of a marathon.
  - jmull 7y ago
    It’s certainly possible to burn 800+ calories per hour for a couple hours. Normal, actually, for someone doing athletic training. (E.g., anyone training semi-seriously for any kind road race is doing this at least once a week.) But I’d pretty surprised if you did it without training to build up to it. You could have developed the aerobic capacity through other activities, but I’d have thought various muscles would be unprepared and would be giving you rather strong pain signals. If you nevertheless pushed through that, I’d think you’d be SORE AF today and barely able to move. Or maybe your activity confused the calorie model your Apple Watch uses. Not that it isn’t great exercise.
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      I exercise bike pretty much daily (typically 30-60 minutes), so my arms are flimsy but in terms of cardio capacity I'm not in awful shape. My arms are definitely sore today.
  - bogomipz 7y ago
rchaud 7y ago
1lb of fat is approx 3500 calories. How realistic is it that you dropped over half a pound of fat playing a VR game?
- makomk 7y ago
  It's not realistic to expect the amount of fat lost from any kind of exercise to be anywhere near the total amount of calories expended, though. There are biological limits to fat metabolism that just can't be avoided.
- mikeryan 7y ago
  That’s not how it works.
ygjb 7y ago
Everyone else is saying how absurd the 1900 calorie claim is, and comparing it to other types of exercise, but even if it is the much lower 360 calories, most sedentary gamers are more likely to do this multiple times per week than say, run a marathon, or even start doing a program like C25K. That's a huge win in my book...
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  I mentioned in other comments (and edited a bit with more accurate numbers), but I'll put it here too: the watch worked it out to 830 calories/hour and Runner's World says that's equivalent to me running at 11:30 minutes/mile based on my 210 lbs weight. I've only gone running once this spring so I don't have a huge dataset (lots of walking and exercise bike instead), but the one run I did was a 10:30 mile. So I'm not especially fast, but 11:30 is a slow pace for me and feels reasonable as a beat saber equivalent workout. Downside, the Quest's foam face-interface gets absolutely drenched in sweat. I need to get a sweatband and a wipeable pad replacement as soon as VRCover catches up on their backorders. Even as an exercise bike owner who can hop on that for a workout whenever I want to, I've never gotten home from work and said "You know what I want to do? Exercise bike for more than two hours." Compared to half an hour of exercise bike and two hours of Overwatch, I think this will be a huge deal for fitness.
bogomipz 7y ago
Genuinely curious - how long of a session is required to burn those 1900 calories?
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  That was split over three sessions totaling 2:17, and is for me being 5' 10" and around 210 lbs. If you're skinnier than me you'll probably burn less. It was a good chunk of my evening and my arms are pretty sore today, so I don't plan on doing that all the time. But I'll absolutely do it more often than I run/bike 1900 calories.
ceejayoz 7y ago
I've been playing "Space Pirate Trainer" on my new Quest and was shocked at how worked-out my legs felt afterwards from dodging incoming shots by squatting/leaning.
- jstarfish 7y ago
  I had similar results with "Police 911" in the arcade in the early 2000s. Fun times!
gamblor956 7y ago
That must have been a lot of Beat Saber...running a half marathon (13.1 miles) burns fewer calories than that.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  I broke this down in another comment, but trusting Runner's World for a calorie calculator, a half marathon would take me 2080 calories (at 210 lbs). So a little bit less than that. Average calorie burn was 830 calories/hour, which they say is equivalent to me running at an 11:30 minutes/mile pace. In terms of effort expended, important to note that this was three sessions over the course of the evening, adding up to 1900 calories and 2 hours 17 minutes. So it was something like running 4 miles 3 times with an hour and change break in between, which is probably an easier feat than doing it in one shot. My arms are still sore and I don't plan on doing that every day, but it was definitely a workout.
rubicon33 7y ago
Can confirm - BoxVR is a killer workout if you take it seriously. Of course, you can cheat and barely bunch to register a punch.
saagarjha 7y ago
> as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type I don't trust that at all. Apple Watch will give you several "active" calories a minute sitting still if you start an "Other" workout.

sojournerc 7y ago

I don't understand how you save time not leaving the house... Doesn't it take just as much time to go on a ride outside?

wlesieutre 7y ago
Not a fun way to exercise if you live somewhere like NYC. Or weather wise, anywhere in the northern US where it's cold and snowy for from November to February.
- sojournerc 7y ago
  Fair enough, but I'm not sure that NYC would keep me in the house for exercise. I live in the mountains of Colorado, but will always prefer exercising outdoors, even in winter. I tend to modify my exercise for the time of year and weather. In winter it tends towards running and skiing. Summer is for biking (and more running). I like to have variety of activities (helps to build up a diverse set of strength) and the simplicity of walking out my front door. (Without a monthly fee)
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    Previous years I've done running in the summer, but I hate it in the winter. Motivation to work out has been a hard enough barrier, so once the air gets too cold to breathe comfortably I'd pretty much stop. Exercise bike was a game changer last winter in terms of getting me to stick with regular workouts.
- bogomipz 7y ago
  New Yorkers just stop at the gym on their way home from work. The net time difference is close to zero. However you also have the opportunity to actually meet other people at a gym.
bstar77 7y ago
Closest gym with spin classes is 30 minutes away. I also tend to do my classes between 11pm and 12pm, something not possible at any gym. The sessions are tightly controlled so I'm getting the workout I need. I don't have to deal with cars, humidity or any other variables riding on the road. To be honest, I don't understand why people bring that point up so much.

bogomipz 7y ago

Not leaving the house regularly is a serious quality of life issue. That is most certainly not going to be addressed by the purchase of a stationary bike.

bstar77 7y ago
I was just referring to the fact that I work from home and put in about 10 hours per day behind a computer. Sedentary life is hard to avoid for programmers even though I'm into athletic activities. The bike allows me to get in a class during lunch, after work or late into the evening. The rest of my free time is spent with my family- driving to the gym 30 minutes away to take their classes would take away an hour of my free time just in driving.

rorykoehler 7y ago

Why not buy a real bike and a direct drive smart turbo trainer? At least you could ride the bike outside too.

bstar77 7y ago
Because they are not as good. The Peloton bike uses earth magnets for the resistance so changing levels is seamless. Your bike is directly communicating with the class HUD and you can see how you are performing against your own stats and against others in the class, real time or historically. It's a completely different experience than messing with a trainer.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  I've never used peloton but I would be very surprised if any of the mid-top end direct drive smart trainers weren't vastly better than an exercise bike. They also use magnetic resistance up to 2000w in some cases with seamless transitioning. There is nothing apart from greed that stops peloton from offering their classes to anyone with a smart trainer. You get all those stats on an ipad/laptop/phone with other smart trainers and according to reviews the power readings are not very accurate on a peloton bike. Really seems like a win for marketing over reality.