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For those who own Peloton products, what do you think of them? Are they genuinely worth the price and continued financial commitment?
by osrec 5y ago
For those who own Peloton products, what do you think of them? Are they genuinely worth the price and continued financial commitment?
- danjac 5y agoNot sure I'd spend a lot of money on a deathtrap whose entire purpose is to recreate a Victorian method of corporal punishment.
- osrec 5y agoLol, I wasn't expecting such a cynical view!
- afavour 5y agoI know your comment is intended to be tounge-in-cheek but just to clarify: this recall is of Peloton's treadmill. The vast majority of Peloton users use their spin bike.
- LightG 5y agoI see the downvotes, but I appreciated that description, lol!
- clpm4j 5y agoThe bike and the instructors are best-in-class. All of the accessories (shoes, weights, apparel, etc) that I've picked up have been cheap (but expensive) and underwhelming. Can't speak to the treadmill, but this recall article says a lot. The bike is one of my favorites possessions though and I'd be devastated if that ever went away.
- ghostbrainalpha 5y agoTotally agree with everything you said! Why are their Peloton brand Heart monitors so unbelievably shitty? And can you recommend a better shoe that works with the bike? I didn't come from the world of cycling so I didn't know anything about bikes before Peleton.
- clpm4j 5y agoI've been wearing the Giro Empire E70 Knit shoes for the past ~6mo, and I've got nothing but good things to say about them.
- jsperson 5y agoThis is spot on - and the pedals. OMG the f-ing pedals. I've never used the Peloton ones (went straight to SPDs as are on our MTBs), but the Facebook groups are full of pedal complaints. It's the butterfly keyboard of Peloton. Edit: Regarding shoe/pedal combinations. Sidi shoes if they will fit you otherwise I'd go with Specialized. The BOA fasteners are really good - crazy durable, easy, they stay, can be replaced etc. no downside except upfront cost maybe. I really like SPD pedals - Shimano XT in particular. The lower models have a plastic part that will wear and the bearings go sooner. XTR pedals cost a fortune for no durability gain and it's a spin bike so not going anywhere.
- matwood 5y agoWhenever I've used a Peloton in a hotel they have SPD pedals. It's almost like they use Deltas to push people to buy their shoes. But yeah, my wife and I already had SPD shoes from doing spin together for awhile, so I bought pedals and never used the ones that came with the Peloton.
- mjlee 5y agoThe standard pedals use Look Delta cleats. You can use any shoe that is compatible with those cleats. I can't recommend any ones in particular - it's a bit like running shoes in that you want to try them on if possible.
- _1100 5y agoCycling shoes run the gamut of price, features and preferences. Top three brands off the top of my head: 1. Bontrager: Owned by Trek, and is the most common type of spin shoe used in studios. Will have something for all price ranges, and have been around for a while. 2. Specialized: More ubiquitous in the cycling world, a slight amount of paying for the brand, but will also have everything you need. Most popular cycling brand, especially on the high end. 3. Fizik: Personal favorite because they are better for high arches out of the box. Unlike the other two, these guys don't make bikes, just shoes and seats. And they do both extremely well. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND going to a bike shop to buy the shoes and have the cleats fitted to your shoe in-person. This prevents injuries and improves results on the bike. Pay for in-store once, take a silver sharpie, outline where the cleat is placed on the bottom of the shoe. Now you can replace the cleats for $20, and have a good idea of where to place them if/when you need a new pair of shoes.
- xwdv 5y agoAfter trying various “spin bikes”, all others feel cheap compared to a Peloton. The production values and instructors are also the best, and IMO is one of the big selling points. Having tried the Tread+, it was easily one of the best treadmills I’ve ever used that feels most like natural running.
- ModernMech 5y agoYes by far. I've got the bike. It's well engineered, the software is good, the classes are good, and even though it's expensive, it's still cheaper than a gym membership for my wife and I. Would buy again.
- softwaredoug 5y agoPeloton is my most frequently used streaming service. I use it for meditation, short 10 min workouts at my desk, longer bike workouts & cardio. I probably do several a day. Very much worth the price, even without the bike. The instructors are all great, and I don't stress about the quality of any class -> I just jump into one. They all are great. I _do_ miss having feedback on my form from an in person instructor. But post pandemic I can do this sporadically and make peloton my everyday.
- jsperson 5y agoI've had the bike for four years. Cost both one time and recurring is pretty high, but the product is of high quality. I've taken thousands of spin classes IRL and several hundred on the Peloton. Peloton is superior both in the hardware/software and instruction. Classes are taught by extremely well compensated instructors (I've heard $300K) so they are the best available. The best part for me is the library. There are thousands of archived classes starting with classes that ended ten minutes ago back several years. And not just cycling or running. The full body warmup classes have transformed my lifting routine and the yoga classes are now integral to my fitness program. It's about $40 a month, which covers our family. My wife and I are fitness enthusiasts and this is more than offset by not having a gym membership or having to drive to exercise. We do have about $5K total in our home gym (rubber flooring, cable machine, dumbbells and benches etc.) For us being able to get quality classes and workout on our schedule offsets any added cost.
- osrec 5y agoNice, that home gym sounds like a great set up. I've built one at home, focused around a rowing machine (one of the best workouts in my opinion) + weights. I use YouTube row along videos for motivation. I don't know if the live classes would provide much value to me (I struggle to enjoy in person fitness classes too), but judging by the comments on here, I guess a lot of people do value them a great deal.
- jsperson 5y agoFor anyone looking for a weight machine recommendation...this one: https://www.costco.com/inspire-fitness-ftx-functional-trainer-with-bench-%2526-1-year-inspire-fitness-app-subscription-included.product.100486673.html https://www.costco.com/inspire-fitness-ftx-functional-traine... Gym quality delivered to your house. Weighs A LOT so only buy if you're pretty committed to your current domicile. It is solid and smooth. With Cosco, you get a bench included in the price that is less than other retailers for the exact same machine.
- osrec 5y ago
- Raidion 5y agoSo there are two routes you can take if you want some sort of gamified fitness bike at home. First one is the Peloton or one of the similar bikes that focus on the spin style classes. The other option, for those that are more into cycling, are some form of smart cycling trainer (like the Wahoo Kickr) or even Peloton like bike (WattBike) that actually gives you real power readings. This integrates with platforms like Zwift, TrainerRoad, or Sufferfest to provide more cycling focused fitness. Peloton is great if you want the "spinning" experience, but not as great if you're just a cardio junkie looking at getting a "riding your bike" experience, but indoors.
- dlp211 5y agoPeloton just announced that they are making significant investments in their just ride the bike offerings. I don't know if it will get to the level of zwift or those others, but they recognize that there is an opportunity there to improve their offerings.
- pwthornton 5y agoI have a Bike+, and it's incredible. It's well worth the money. It's the best marriage of software and hardware product design that I have ever seen in this space. I would never buy any treadmill. They aren't super safe in general, and Peloton's treadmills are less safe than your average one. I would definitely by a future weight machine or rower from them, but I have no interest in one of their treads.
- jaypeg25 5y agoI love the bike. I ride (or take one of the strength classes, or yoga, or even just stretching) nearly every day, and have for a few months now. Before getting it my workouts were spotty..I'd be strict about working out for a week or two at a time and then fall off for a few weeks, rinse and repeat. I've actually lost close to 20lbs since getting it, though part of that is because I've cut down on drinking a bit. I feel the social aspect is both the reason why I continue to ride but also really lacking. I have a group chat with friends who also have a Peloton and more often than not there's one or two that want to ride, so it's easy motivation to be like ok I'll jump on too. But also..it's difficult to actually follow friends and their progress as there's no real feed of any sort, just individual pages that you have to jump through a couple of menus to get to.
- sorenjan 5y agoI don't understand why anyone would pay that kind of money to get stuck in a proprietary ecosystem with a monthly fee. I guess it's aimed at the gym going spinning crowd and not the cycling crowd, but there are plenty of options if you look at what cyclists, both pros and regular enthusiasts, use. There are different hardware options like a regular bike on a trainer [0], or a smart bike like the Wattbike or Wahoo Kickr bike [1]. These use open standards and let you use different software, and if you use a regular bike on a trainer you can even use it outside when the weather permits. The most popular cycling training software is Zwift, it's basically the de facto standard just like Strava by this point. But you don't have to use it. [0] https://www.dcrainmaker.com/product-reviews/trainers https://www.dcrainmaker.com/product-reviews/trainers [1] https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/10/smart-shootout-wahookickrbike-wattbikeatom-tacxneobike.html https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/10/smart-shootout-wahookick...
- subpixel 5y ago> I don't understand why anyone would pay that kind of money to get stuck in a proprietary ecosystem with a monthly fee. Because they believe they are getting value through the some combination of equipment, exercise, leadership and community. It has worked for a long time, most recently with BeachBody, Peleton, and now Apple Fitness+. When you take a minute to understand why it works, you can quibble about the cost, but there's no denying that the customers are happy with what they are buying. Nobody is bamboozled into these business models.
- asdff 5y agoSome people like to pay extra so they don't have to spend free time to tinker. Look at the pages you listed and all the research you have to do to vet these options. When I was younger and had more free time, I would tinker, too, content with my saving $20 there or $200 here, ignoring that the savings were a wash considering the time involved to find these discounts. These days sometimes I just pay extra knowing I'm not getting the best deal, but I'm getting something that works out of the box without me fiddling or having to spend my precious free time outside of work reading about the exciting exercise bike industry of all things.
- dguaraglia 5y ago
- ppezaris 5y agoOne of the 70 reported incidents happened at my house three days ago. A 4-year-old child got sucked under the treadmill and he got rather severe facial abrasions. Before the accident, we were very happy with both the bike and the treadmill. Now it's scary to think how dangerous they are given what we witnessed first-hand. The fix seems so simple: a guard at the end of the tread that prevents things from being sucked under it. Kind of mind-numbing that this simple feature isn't included in such a high-end product.
- leafmeal 5y agoI'm sorry this happened and I'm glad your child isn't more severely injured.
- stevehawk 5y agoPeloton keeps referencing a 'key' that should be preventing this. Is this like a lanyard on a jetski or other devices that you attach to yourself in case you fall which activates a kill switch? If so, does this mean that people are leaving them in during these incidents? (I'm not going for a 'blame the victim' attempt, I'm just trying to figure out what it is that Peloton was first trying to use as their defense before caving)
- jmeister 5y agoI’m sorry, but what was a 4-year old child doing near a switched-on Peloton? I cannot visualize a chain of events that leads to this scenario happening.
- fuzzylightbulb 5y agoKids are unpredictable. Parents are human. Shit happens.
- ppezaris 5y agoIt was the child of a guest at a BBQ that I was hosting. The parents were socializing with other adults while some of the children were playing. They didn't see that the kids had gone into the gym.
- alistairSH 5y agoAs a spin bike, they are nice. Expensive, but nice. As an indoor cycling trainer, there are better options.
- throwawaysea 5y agoI personally don't find them to be worth it. The 'community' and 'social' aspects are vastly overblown. It's hard for me to even know when my friends are doing a workout so I can encourage them or compete with them, for example. So the network effects that I expected from such a product simply aren't there. The app also feels surprisingly low in features for how long they've been around. Their Android app is also far behind their iOS app. So if the network effects aren't there, what is the product? In my opinion it is a high quality, sturdy bike and recorded classes. But those aren't great differentiators anymore. Other brands like Nordictrack have high quality bikes as well, with cheaper subscriptions, some features Peloton doesn't have, and a better 'default' feature set if you turn off your subscription. Peloton may have a larger library of studio classes, but above a certain number having more classes does not really add any benefit. Peloton didn't seem to think the library size has much impact, when they casually removed many classes when they were sued for using music without rights (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/peloton-music-lawsuit-removing-unlicensed-songs/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/peloton-music-lawsuit-removing-...). In my opinion, you are just as well off doing a home-built Peloton (https://www.cnet.com/health/fitness/diy-peloton-bike-how-to-build-your-own-smart-cycle/ https://www.cnet.com/health/fitness/diy-peloton-bike-how-to-...) or considering alternatives from Nordictrack (https://www.nordictrack.com/exercise-bikes/s22i-studio-bike https://www.nordictrack.com/exercise-bikes/s22i-studio-bike) or Bowflex (https://www.bowflex.com/bikes/ https://www.bowflex.com/bikes/) or Echelon (https://echelonfit.com/products/connect-bike-ex-7s https://echelonfit.com/products/connect-bike-ex-7s) or whatever.