Peloton

Peloton started out as a consumer-savvy startup. Now it's a bloated behemoth that acts like any other beast in the marketplace: it's all about false narratives and the stock price. Quality control and customer service are gone.

The user interface for this bike is extremely poor. You can't even save your preferences -- we were doing that 20 years ago.

The most important practical feature on the bike -- the "metrics" -- are missing for most of the rides. These are what let you know the instructor's recommended pace, so without them, you don't now what to do.

When I complained about the UI and the metrics, Peloton gave me a wide variety of stories: "we're working on it" -- or "those metrics don't work before May 2019" -- but the actual problem is that when you search for a class, you generally get one without metrics. That problem could have been fixed with a simple filter option. But no...

The bike is expensive, folks, and the classes are always early in the a.m., especially if you live in the West. I haven't attended a live class in 8 months. The stored classes lack metrics. Oh well.

Find an alternative!

My order #: 652C-45DA

I recently joined the Peloton community and I'm loving it. The variety of workouts available on the platform, from cycling to strength training to yoga, ensures there's something for everyone. The instructors are motivating and engaging, and the leaderboard adds a fun competitive element to the workouts. Peloton has made exercising at home convenient and enjoyable.

I tried the Peloton for the first time at a friend's place and was skeptical at first. I'm not a big cyclist, so I had a hard time understanding why anybody would pay thousands for a bike + a monthly subscription fee. But I actually enjoyed the experience.

The bike is much more compact than I expected it to be. The screen is fairly immersive and the trainers in the videos are all very attractive and motivating. The workout my friend chose for me was very difficult, but went by quickly. I liked getting the immediate feedback on my heart rate, speed, and output. At the end of the workout, I was able to see how I performed relative to others, review all my summary stats, and could barely walk. I'll need to try it again when I'm in better shape!