Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After comparing reviews and prices on a number of home fitness bikes, I narrowed my choice down to the Sunny Health & Fitness Pro Indoor Cycling Bike. Before I purchase an item on Amazon, I tend to read the 5 star reviews and then begin at the bottom with the 1 star reviews and work my way back up. This approach tends to give me a view of what people liked about the bike and, starting with the least satisfied customers, allows me to get a feel for the complaints and compare them to a variety of reviews. First, be warned. The box is heavy. I mean, really heavy. The shipping weight is listed at 112 pounds and the box is large. Believe it or not, this is a very good thing. The bike is solid, mostly metal with an absolute minimum of plastic. If the box was light, I'd personally worry. Additionally, the bike is mostly assembled when it arrives. Hence the large and heavy box. A number of customers expressed difficulty in assembling the bike. I did not find this to be the case at all. The design has slightly changed since the official photo was taken (the bike is essentially identical except for the handlebars - more on that in a moment) and I wonder if the company improved the assembly process as well. It took me approximately ten minutes to assemble the bike, all of the necessary tools were included, and the assembly was incredibly intuitive and required minimal reference to the instructions. There are not a lot of parts that need to be assembled - it's just after reading some of the reviews I was especially careful, thorough, and spent a chunk of that time studying the instructions and looking for the difficult part. The bike is solid. (According to the description, the front flywheel weighs approximately 40 pounds on its own and that seemed about right to me.) To assemble the bike, you attach the pedals (they screw on), put the seat and handlebar stems into the frame, and attach the handlebars and seat to the appropriate stem. The adjustment knobs over the entire bike had been screwed in slightly too far at the factory so that the shaft of the bolt blocked the entry of the stems. Simply unscrewing each slightly solved the problem. The cross pieces of the base come with small metal blocks in place and they need to be removed and the actual wide cross pieces (the front piece has the small red wheels attached in the photo) need to be bolted into their positions. That's it. Assembly is complete. All of the parts (tools, nuts, and bolts) come shrink wrapped to a stiff piece of cardboard. Each part is clearly labeled on the board. Instead of looking for "Hexagon Flat Round Head Screw-Black M10X25mm" you simply find part "(66)". This is an exact example from the assembly process. (The "Flat Washer-Black" is part "(67)" and the numbers are clearly referenced in the instructions.)There's no searching for parts. You simply remove them from the board as needed. The only issue that I had was that the tension control knob for the flywheel was stuck. The knob literally wouldn't turn. Cranking on it really hard popped it free and it works fine. I'm not sure what happened - once it was unstuck, all was good. It works fine and just like new. It wasn't a defect, it was just initially stuck and now works fine. The handlebars are different than shown in the photo. Instead of two small bars that come out at 90 degree angles toward the inside of the handlebars, those bars are now connected with a large comfortable arc. In my opinion, this is a significant improvement over the original design and gives you a much wider range of options for hand placement. I spent several years attending the 5 AM spin class at my local gym. Being the first to use the classroom space, we early birds took the bikes from where they were parked along the wall and moved them to their positions. Having spent a lot of time with those bikes, I'm confident in stating that there is very little difference between this bike and the professional models used at the gym. I would rate it low-end professional, very high end amateur, and an absolute steal at the price. The ride is essentially indistinguishable from high-end gym spin bikes. Having ridden those bikes roughly 1,000 times, I can pick up on subtle (and I can't stress the word "subtle" enough) differences, but they do not detract from the ride in the slightest. For instance, the knob to adjust the tension has a little more play in it (a half turn adjusts the tension a little, then a tenth of a turn adjusts it a lot) but it's still very easy to get it set exactly where you want it, you just have to become familiar with it. The bike remains incredibly solid in both seated and standing riding positions and exceeds all of my expectations for a home spin bike. To address a couple of reviews that I saw while considering my purchase. The angle of the seat was mentioned by more than one person. I'm not sure what their issue was - it adjusts just like any other bike seat, including the angle. In other words, by loosening a bolt, manually adjusting the tilt, and tightening the same bolt once more, you can have the seat at any angle you wish. It's literally a non-issue. A couple of people mentioned the noise. It's not silent, but I'm not sure what folks were expecting. It doesn't make an unusual amount of noise and its mostly noticeable simply because there is no other unexpected sound in the room. I watch shows while riding and don't have any trouble becoming immersed in the program. My wife and I can actually have a conversation at a normal volume while one of us is riding. The noise is much lower than I anticipated given the reviews that I read and very acceptable for this piece of equipment, perhaps even on the low end of the noise range. At least one review mentioned an odd smell while riding. I did not experience that at all. Spin bikes don't typically come with odometers. With cardio, the duration of your ride is much more important than how far you ride. I realize that this may bother some people, but an odometer, in my experience, would have been out of place on this piece of equipment. A couple of reviews downgraded the bike because of the lack of an odometer, but I ride for a set period of time, not for distance. As one of my friends jokingly put it, "Why do you need an odometer on a stationary bike? Do you want to know how far you rode? You didn't! It doesn't move!" This one gets five stars from me. Simply put, this is an extremely good deal for the price. An absolute bargain. There are little things here and there that could be upgraded, but only at substantial cost. After reading a large number of the other reviews, I can honestly say that the Sunny Health & Fitness Pro Indoor Cycling Bike exceeded my expectations by a wide margin. I highly recommend it.