There’s a lot to like about the Peloton Bike. First, the bike itself is easy to adjust to fit nearly any size rider—the bike is built to accommodate riders between 4-foot-11 and 6-foot-4 who weigh up to 297 pounds. The tightening handles have a secondary adjustment so they can rotate out of the way once the bolts are secure. The pedals and flywheel turn extremely smoothly and near silently, with electromagnetic resistance that is so sensitive, you can adjust it by one percentage point at a time. The saddle is comfortable, as far as indoor cycles go, and it adjusts both in height and depth. The handlebars are grippy even when doused in sweat, and they feel secure, with none of the wobbling that those of lesser bikes produce. The pedal clips hold Peloton’s cycling shoes—you need to buy those separately, for $125—or Look Delta cleats securely (to use SPD shoes, you’ll need a conversion kit). Over the years, we’ve experienced easy clip-ins and clip-outs and have also had to muscle our decoupling. During our most recent testing of the Bike, in the summer of 2022, we ran into an issue with the shoes not clipping into the pedals; a technician was able to quickly fix the problem with a set of new pedals (the company’s troubleshooting advice didn’t work in our case).
The Peloton Bike has an attached 21.5-inch touchscreen tablet. You can listen to workouts through the tablet’s built-in speakers or through wired or Bluetooth headphones, though we recommend Bluetooth, as a cord could bounce and tangle during a workout. The bike takes up 4 by 2 feet of floor space and plugs into a wall outlet.
The sweatproof, touch-sensitive tablet, which streams Peloton’s branded classes, is crisp and responsive (after an initial few seconds of buffering). During a ride, it displays all sorts of stats: ride time (elapsed and remaining), current speed, distance covered, cadence (how fast you’re pedaling, in revolutions per minute), resistance intensity (the percentage of tension from the magnet controlling the flywheel), and calories burned, which is informed by your body size, effort level, and heart rate (if you’re wearing a heart-rate monitor). We used a $70 Garmin HR strap, which connected seamlessly; a Peloton-branded one (about $35) is available for purchase. You’ll also see “output,” or the wattage of energy you’re expending in the moment, on average, and in total, the last of which determines your place on the leaderboard. This element is what unleashes riders’ competitiveness and is the reason Peloton is so popular, particularly among Type A personalities.
While choosing a live class, you can see how many other people are “counted in.” At the start of the session, you see the leaderboard populate as riders log in, listing their chosen screen names, gender, age bracket by the decade, and location. In a prerecorded on-demand class, you instead see the names of everyone who has ever taken it. As you pedal, you can watch your rank change, which can be by turns exciting and frustrating. You can also filter your leaderboard view to see only yourself (against your personal record for that length ride, if you choose) or your age and gender bracket to find out how you rank among your demographic. You can hide metrics from view individually, and if you want to see nothing but the instructor and the class in the atmospheric Peloton studio, a double tap on the screen clears everything else away. All this customization may seem like overkill, but we enjoyed being able to decide when we cared about the numbers and when we didn’t.
The instructors of the live classes are a huge selling point, which makes sense, as the classes are Peloton’s bread and butter. Many are famous in their own right, with die-hard fans in the Peloton community and massive Instagram followings outside of it. One of the most popular—Robin Arzón, who is also Peloton’s VP of fitness programming and head instructor—led a record-setting class of more than 23,000 live riders in April 2020 and has a million Instagram followers. Arzón and the other dozen or so instructors we sampled (or watched while others rode) are indeed really good: poised, clear-spoken, and engaging, with big, unique personalities that truly make the classes feel different from one another. Of course, we didn’t personally love all of them, but we can see how each one is deserving of their own devoted fan base. That’s no small feat, considering the somewhat limited workout programming that can be done when the participants have their feet clipped to pedals.
Some workouts include upper-body exercises, using light dumbbells that you can purchase separately and nestle in a rack behind the saddle; this practice is controversial, but if you fall into the no-weights-on-a-bike camp, you have plenty of options that are pedaling only. The class descriptions tell you what you’re in for, and you can use a filter to choose dumbbells or no dumbbells.
Peloton broadcasts its live cycling classes (the daily number varies but usually peaks at around 10) from its studios in New York City and London. “Encore” classes are re-aired live classes, with new live leaderboards, that fill out the schedule when actual live classes are not available.
Many Peloton rides aren’t live. The Peloton library includes thousands of on-demand cycling classes, in any of 13 class types from low impact to intervals to climbs (a lot of standing up on the pedals). Rides range from five minutes (warm-up, cooldown, and intro rides) to 90 minutes in length; many are 30 or 45 minutes. You can also choose your class based on instructor, music genre, or “sort” (new, trending, popular, top-rated, easiest, hardest). A former Wirecutter colleague who owns the Bike appreciated the introductory basics program she took, which helped her get familiar with the bike and the classes.
Finally, similar to what you get with some stationary bicycles in gyms, the Peloton library includes about 200 timed scenic rides—immersive videos that let you virtually pedal along coastlines, through countrysides, and on city streets at your own pace. Peloton’s repertoire also includes thousands of off-the-bike workouts in outdoor running (via audio only), yoga, strength training, cardio high-intensity interval training, boot camp, meditation, walking, and stretching. They are a major selling point—and a way for Peloton members to keep their full fitness strategy within the Peloton fold. (Members can also create workout playlists called “stacked classes” to go from one workout to the next without a pause.)
All classes, cycling and otherwise, are viewable on the Bike’s built-in tablet; on a television via Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Android TV, Chromecast, and AirPlay; or on an iPhone or iPad or an Android phone or tablet through the Peloton app.
Peloton also pushes its social media component. You can follow friends who also own Peloton Bikes or take studio classes and link and post rides to your own Facebook, Strava, or Fitbit profile, as well as share them to Instagram stories. As Strava users, we were happy that our rides seamlessly uploaded within seconds of our completing the sessions. When you’re not riding, a few quick taps let you explore your historical stats and your friends’ stats, bookmark classes to take later, and save classes to your favorites list. The tablet is equipped with a camera and a microphone designed for video chats among Peloton riders. (You can enable or turn off the function in the settings.)
Peloton app: No Bike required
As part of the $44-per-month Peloton membership, you gain access to the Peloton app (iOS, Android), which you can use separately through one of three membership tiers if you don’t own the Bike or Bike+. The app allows you to stream both the non-cycling classes and the cycling classes on iOS or Android phones or tablets. A free app membership allows access to limited pre-recorded classes. The Peloton App One ($13/month) includes access to live classes as well as offerings like high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and boxing classes not available through the free version. And the Peloton App+ ($24/month) provides unlimited access to live and pre-recorded workouts, including indoor cardio workouts that can be done on non-Peloton equipment.
In addition, the app is Apple Watch and Wear OS compatible. We used the app on an iPad and found its organization and navigation exceptionally clear and easy; classes streamed smoothly, with few issues. The off-the-bike workouts are solid and well done, and they provide additional value beyond the bike. They also make it easy to mix and match workouts to fulfill a goal or round out a workout calendar; for instance, you might choose a post-cycling stretching class or a full-body strength-training session on a non-cycling day. In mid-2022, Peloton added a “just work out” option that allows you to track an outdoor run, walk, or cycling workout within the app on your device.
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