Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Edit: I'm putting this at the top of my review because newbies to spin bikes seem to be blaming the seat of this bike for hurting their butt. It's not the bike. When you are new to cycling the tissue in your tailbone is very sensitive. either only one type of bike saddle will work (the one your butt got used to) or none. Eventually your butt will develop a tolerance to pressure directly on the "sit bones". This is not an overnight process. If you have overly sensitive tissue that do not cover the nerves well the best practice is to spend only a few minutes on the bike each day and gradually increase the time. It's a conditioning process. I've been buying from Amazon for over 20 years. This is the best packaged large size product that has been delivered to me. Extremely well thought out and considered. Even the tips of the pedals were covered in small zip lock bags and rubber banded to protect the threads. I am a very experienced cyclist having traveled internationally for cycling camps. I was putting this purchase off for years because I already own 7 bicycles. Buying a spin bike seemed ridiculous with that many bikes. But at this time there is no low noise option that can be had for $300 or less to use your bicycle for indoor exercise. Tacx and Wahoo now have some low noise trainers but they are expensive and still make more noise than this PyHigh spin bike. I researched belt drive spin bikes instead of chain drive spin bikes and learned that belt drive are whisper quiet. I waited for Cyber Monday and started looking at the sales. That's when I came across this spin bike and decided to pair the bike with a very thick recycled rubber exercise matt for $50 called Rubber-Cal shark tooth heavy duty matt. It's 3/4" thick and the length and width is 2 x 3 feet. Its about a half inch too small but you'll get the spin bike on there enough. This matt will absorb the movement and vibration. The second thing is to buy some WD-40 white lithium grease. I sprayed this on any part of the bike where metal is making contact with metal... otherwise it will squeak with repeated use. When your child's bicycle is squeaking it's 99% because it needs bicycle grease in the pedals threads, in between the pedals, the ball bearings in between the wheels and the rear chain ring teeth and the chain itself. So I sprayed the white lithium grease on the threads of the big seat knob, in the screws underneath the seat, in the threads of the big handle bar knob in the tube where the grey handle bar neck (stem) slides into the black frame, a small amount on the threads of the pedals (before installing, otherwise they will be very hard to get off if you decide to upgrade to clipless pedals), and a tiny spot on the surface of the flywheel to eliminate the friction squeak from the felt brake. This bike is now so quite a baby can sleep next to it. Mission accomplished. Pros: 1- very Good finishing on the paint. I'm might try using a synthetic car wax on the black paint to keep sweat from rusting the paint. Body sweat is extremely salty and will cut right through paint and once the paint is worn down the moisture in the air will rust out the steel underneath. They also sell sweat guards for spin bikes. 2- the saddle has a cut out to reduce stress on the genitals and the saddle has two large shock absorbing springs. The padding is very well done. a little squeaky a first but this is a part of breaking in. 3-The pedals are not terrible. The toe clips are a semi soft plastic that won't hurt the top of your foot and are large enough for a full size sneaker. I thought about installing my real bicycle pedals for my clipless bike shoes but I think having to change shoes will encourage me to be lazy and not ride the bike. This way I can just jump on the bike as soon as I come home and start pedaling. 4-The flywheel has a quiet, smooth movement and feels like a gym quality spin bike. I think since this is belt drive the flywheel does not keep spinning when you stop pedaling. For a beginner that's probably better. There's evidence that this is also easier for your knees. 5-the resistance knob is basic felt friction brake but it is effective. at first I was not optimistic that I would like this since it seemed a little cheap feeling. But when I did my first interval workout (see the graph I posted in pictures) it proved to work well. Basically I used my Polar H7 heart monitor chest strap (for Android) and paired it with the Polar Beat application. As you can see I started the workout in the blue warm up zone. The app computes your maximum heart rate based on the "220 minus your age" formula. So if you're 30 your standard maximum heart rate is 190 beats per minute (bpm). Which means your fat burning heart rate 65% of 190 or 123 bpm. The "endurance" for extra intensity effort begins at 80% or 152 bpm for a fit 30 year old. In my case I gradually turned the knob one full turn to raise my heart rate into the green fat burning zone from the blue warm up zone. I continued the workout gradually over 20 minutes to turn the knob again in full term increments as my heart rate climbed into the yellow high intensity zone. Another turn of the red knob pushed my heart rate on the very edge of the yellow zone but not passing into the red zone of maximum heart rate. The app works by having you enter your age, weight and level or activity. Them it indicates what your heart rate percentage is currently. Anything below 65% is too low. Anything above 70% to 80% is where you are burning both fat and glycogen and should not be done without talking to your doctor if you have no experience with high intensity exercise or are over 45 and have not had a physical examination. The resistance knob will help you monitor if the intensity is too low or too high. The workout chart I posted was 10 intervals from blue zone to the limit of the yellow zone and back down again. In a one and half hour session For these 10 intervals (I did this slowly) I burned 1,000 calories. I then did a slow cool down phase of 20 minutes until my heart rate was close to my normal heart rate. about 1500 calories total in mostly the fat burn zone (65% - 80%). To figure out my normal heart rate I wore the chest strap for 2 hours with the app running as "indoor cycling" while I just sat on the couch and walked around the house and recorded this as a workout. To my surprise my resting heart rate was not where it used to be indicating that I'm out of shape (mostly because of a back injury that kept me off my real bike for a year). I should have purchased this bike earlier to get me back on track. So long way of saying that used correctly the resistance knob will do the job of getting you into each heart rate zone gradually. 6-the stability adjustment knobs on the corners of the base legs. you can turn the knob and make sure the bike is completely flat and level. I can't find my carpentry level at the moment but I will test this out at some point. 7- Tablet and phone holder. This is very convenient. I used this by placing the spin bike directly in front of my large living room TV. I used my tablet on the spin bike to pull up YouTube videos of GoPro bike rides on road and mountain bike courses and using my Google Chromecast to play these videos to the TV. Between monitoring my heart rate on my phone and watching the long GoPro videos you don't worry about time going too slowly. I purchased an additional Jubor tablet holder for spin bikes so that my tablet sits up high running YouTube like on the overpriced Peleton bike (without having to spend $2k on a Peleton). I'll use the PyHigh tablet holder that the bike comes with for my Samsung phone to run the Polar Beat app. Cons 1. not any really other than in the next design of the bike it should include a handlebar that extends behind the neck (stem) for people with shorter arms or to have more positions to rest your hands. Some spin bikes have two bars on the flat part of the handle bar so you can lay your wrist so that your arms are pointing down or so that your arms are in front of your chest. You should also raise the handlebar height enough so that there are no pressure points on your wrists when you are holding your weight there. If you feel the wrists aching the handlebar is likely too low. The top bullhorn positions on this PyHigh handlebar are also good. You can hold onto to those when you get out to pedal in a standing position. But the lower part of the handlebar. could be improved. 2-the current speed display monitor is not bad but it only displays the speed on kilometers. If you're not too good with tablets and phones then this is more for you. But honestly most spin bikes dont have a monitor that can compete with a tablet and Android tablets are al cheap now. Maybe a spin bike company can do a deal for a basic YouTube tablet. That might be enough for someone to pick one brand over another. Overall for the price I dont think you can get a better spin bike. It is well made, smooth and super quiet. I thought about getting a much more expensive bike but I'm glad I didn't. If you lubricate the metal points and bearings every 2 weeks with WD-40 white lithium grease it will stay quite. Aslo they give you a jump rope, stretching bands (important) before and after your workouts or you'll be sore the next day and a very useful charging cable for micro USB, USB type C and Apple lightning. I tested the cable with my AccuBattery app and it delivered fast charging to all my devices that had fast charging capability. I will update this review as I plan to use this spin bike every other day this winter.