Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Rowing is a great aerobic workout. You can exercise a bunch of muscle groups, elevate your heart rate, build stamina, and burn calories. After a good rowing workout, I just feel spent. Basically, there are three kinds of rowing machines. Some, like the Concept2, have flywheels that use air or water friction to provide resistance. Those are the closest to the experience of actual water rowing and their resistance increases the harder you pull, but they tend to be pricey and are somewhat loud. A second kind has pistons to create resistance. That kind is inexpensive, but are often somewhat fragile. This is the third kind, with magnetic resistance, and it's great. The good: - This machine is whisper quiet (technically, a slight whir quieter than normal conversation but a little louder than a loud whisper) and the seat glide is perfectly smooth. I have been using this for my early morning workouts and (1) I can watch tv on my wireless headphones and (2) my family can sleep upstairs without hearing a thing. If it wasn't for my sleeping family, I could easily watch tv or listen to the radio at normal volume. - The workout is great. In a few minutes, I can get up to 80% max heart rate and am able to keep my heart rate there as long as my arms and legs hold out. - The electronics are nice. The machine comes with a heart rate monitor chest strap, and the display is compatible with my existing Timex Heart Rate Monitor, so I've just been wearing that. You can program your own workouts, use the six pre-programmed workouts, or just set the resistance where you want it and go. You can also set a target time, distance, calories, or stroke count and work to that. If you set a target heart rate, it will automatically adjust resistance to keep you were you want to be. - The rower folds and rolls easily for storage. What could be better: - Really, nothing, for what this is. A flywheel rower like the Concept can produce more resistance, so you can use it for bicep curls or a stronger workout. (You could use this for bicep curls too, but it would be a very low resistance/high rep workout.) There are some rowers that double as recumbent bikes or other exercise machines. But for what this is - a quiet, programmable rower - it's just about perfect. - One minor suggestion: this rower doesn't have an on/off switch, but I'd like one. It's not a big deal - you can turn it off by pulling the power adapter, or by leaving it unattended for a while so that it turns off automatically, but a switch or button would be nice. Assembly: This comes with a few mini-wrenches and an allen wrench. It took me about 20 minutes to put together. I'll update if I run into problems, but if not, you can assume that I'm still happily rowing. Highly recommended! Update 11/17/11: I've rowed most days for the last four months, for a total of 98 miles at the maximum resistance. So far, the rower is holding up great! Update 02/06/15: Still rowing, and the machine is holding up fine! After a few years, my only additional observation is that I would like an option for more resistance. The highest level on this machine is what I would call medium on an air rower - I can do 20-30 strokes per minute at the highest resistance, although 30 takes just about everything I have.