Ever since Peloton achieved massive success with their home-friendly exercise bikes, companies of all sorts have applied the exact same concept to every exercise equipment imaginable. Peloton did the same thing, expanding their offerings with treadmills and a strength training camera. This time around, the outfit is letting you bring watersports to your home with the Peloton Row.
That’s right, Peloton now makes a rowing machine that integrates the same on-demand programs, group workouts, and performance tracking as their previous products, allowing you to enjoy the total-body cardio and strength benefits of the versatile machine from the comfort of your home. Even better, it comes in a slender profile that should fit nicely into whatever space you’ve got available for new exercise equipment.
The Peloton Row looks like your standard rowing machine, albeit with a sleek and slender design that’s better suited to home use than traditional rowers that use air or water flywheels for resistance. It achieves the slimmer profile (just 8 x 2 feet) largely by the use of a belt drive to provide electronically-controlled dynamic resistance that, the outfit claims, delivers quiet and perfectly-smooth strokes. In case you’re wondering, the resistance should work similarly to Hydrow’s rowing machines. An ergonomic sliding seat allows you to move quietly across the length of the rowing beam, while adjustable hook-and-loop foot straps and textured rubber handles should make exercising on it perfectly comfortable.
Like other Peloton machines, it has a display for watching online classes and on-demand workouts, so you can get detailed instruction the same way you would when working with a personal trainer. Specifically, it’s equipped with a 23.8-inch panel out front that can swiveled, in case you want to use the same screen for yoga, aerobics, or strength workouts right next to the machine.
The Peloton Row overlays plenty of information onscreen, including stroke rate, pace, output, and distance, along with standard metrics like calories, heart rate, and more, so you know exactly how well you’re doing in every session. It also offers form-specific instructions and metrics in real-time, so you can train your form into a proper rowing posture during your workouts. Heck, they’ll even show a graphic mock-up of your form onscreen, so you can see what you’re doing wrong. According to the outfit, it uses sensors in the handlebars and seat to do a lot of the readings (especially for your form), so there’s no need to wear additional sensors anywhere on your body, making for a straightforward experience similar to rowing in a commercial-grade machine at the gym. It comes with four intensity levels, by the way, with users able to choose their personal pace targets before every workout, so you can row as hard as your ability will allow.
The biggest challenge for rowing machines when it comes to home setup is just how big they are. That’s why this machine comes with folding arms and a wall anchor, allowing you to store it upright next to a wall when not in use, freeing up erstwhile valuable floor space.
The Peloton Row is now available for preorder with a December ship date. Price is $3,195, plus a $44 monthly membership.