It’s not news that stationary bikes have been a hero fitness product during the coronavirus pandemic. Peloton saw 172% total revenue growth in its fourth quarter, as SELF previously reported, and studio cycling giants like SoulCycle have been rushing to claim their stake in the market too. SoulCycle actually first announced their at-home bike in August 2019—well before the start of the pandemic. As of March 2021, Equinox Media, SoulCycle’s parent company, had released several upgrades to the bike’s technology, in addition to an impressive promise of a one to three week delivery time—a stark improvement over Peloton’s waiting list, which at one time, reportedly left customers waiting on bike deliveries for months.
As someone who sticks to low- and medium-impact workouts due to a chronic knee injury, cycling has always been a surefire way for me to get cardio in. Over the last 10 years, depending on whether I belonged to a gym at the time, I would cycle on a stationary bike for 20 or 30 minutes, or regularly take classes at studios like SoulCycle and Flywheel two or three times a week. However, due to the high cost of these classes, and then the pandemic, I hadn’t been cycling in almost two years when I received the SoulCycle at-home bike to test. So I was eager to take the SoulCycle at-home bike for a spin—no pun intended. Here’s my comprehensive review.
How I Tested
I used the SoulCycle at-home bike for two months, riding anywhere from one to four times per week. I took 20-, 30-, and 45-minute classes with a variety of instructors, and experimented with the Free Ride function (where you can cycle without playing a class—more on this below). My partner regularly used the bike as well, which was a good way to gage what investing in a bike for multiple household members might look like. I used the SELF stationary bike buying guide to evaluate the bike.
Comfort
Whenever I cycle after taking a significant amount of time off, I tend to get that classic sore crotch (or seat pain), which lingers throughout the ride and for a short while after. Since I hadn’t cycled at all in a while, this seat took a full ride to feel truly comfortable. (I will admit I was fairly relieved when the instructor told me to come out of the saddle.) I didn’t experience any soreness after class, and when I got on the bike for my second ride a couple of days later, I experienced no discomfort then or anytime thereafter.
Whether a saddle feels comfortable completely depends on your body, and can be different for everyone. If you’re worried about comfort, or get the bike only to find that the seat doesn’t feel quite right, an easy fix would be a seat cushion or padded bike shorts, which you can order online easily.
Adjustable Seat and Handlebars
I am always that person who needs a staff member to help me clip in and adjust my bike in an indoor group cycling class. However, I was able to adjust this bike easily, thanks to the bike’s Getting Ready to Ride tutorials that you can opt in on while setting up the bike. These videos appear on the large screen attached to the bike, and walk you through how to adjust the seat and handlebars one at a time. There’s also an option for you to store your handlebar and seat adjustment measurements on the tablet, which is useful if there are multiple riders with different preferences in your household. (That way you won’t have to remeasure yourself every time.)
Doing the actual adjusting was simple too. The knobs on the bike are all easy to turn and the notches on each part lock into place nicely—it doesn’t require a lot of tinkering or effort. The seat adjusts both vertically and horizontally, as do the handlebars.
Handlebar Style
As our experts say in the SELF stationary bike buying guide, the handlebars best suited for you will depend on your goals with the bike. This nice-size U-shaped handlebar—standard for the studio experience—fits our requirements of being sturdy, with plenty of space for resting (and moving) your hands as you please. There’s a raised bump in the center of the handlebars that also serves as a good spot to hold during seated pushes, or if you find yourself transferring too much weight to your arms.
The handlebars have a neoprene feel to them, with a subtle grainy traction to make for a better grip. They aren’t significantly padded, but they aren’t too hard, either. I prefer to use a towel over the handlebars on any stationary bike because I have relatively sweaty palms. However, the grip is just fine—the towel served more for comfort than necessity.
Adjustable Resistance
When it comes to the SoulCycle at-home bike, you’re totally in control. The resistance knob is conveniently located where it often is on a stationary bike—directly beneath the handlebars—and spins in both directions with little effort from the rider. It’s easy to spin for greater resistance (to the right) or less resistance (to the left) and tweak until you’ve found your ideal.
Stability
There are three ways I’d recommend ensuring stability on this bike: First, be sure to park it on a mat. SoulCycle sells one (not included in your purchase) for $75 that fits under the bike perfectly. Though the under-the-bike mat takes up slightly more space than you may have allotted for the bike itself, it protects your floors and evens out the space beneath the bike.
Second, use the adjustable stabilizer feet that are attached to the bike. And finally, make sure that all other adjustable areas are safely secured, like your seat and handlebars. The bike definitely feels weighty, and I never felt any lateral instability or like it was going to tip in any direction, no matter how hard I pushed or leaned.
Ease of Use
The SoulCycle at-home bike was extremely simple to use from beginning to end. The delivery process was smooth, as the company ships it already together in one piece and has team members hand-deliver it inside your house or apartment, which all comes at no added cost with your purchase of the bike.
Getting the bike turned on and going was easy, thanks to a user-friendly printed booklet that came with it. However, once you plug your bike into an outlet, you can also use the intuitive setup guide that pops on the bike’s touchscreen.
If you’re unfamiliar with SoulCycle choreography, or new to stationary cycling altogether, the bike comes with helpful riding tutorial videos. You’ll need to connect your bike to Wi-Fi in order to use all of its features, including taking classes as well as free-riding. This is because all riding functions sync with your Equinox+ account (more on this below).
It took some trial and error to find classes and instructors that I liked best, which I suppose occurs with any in-person fitness class too. There are options to filter classes by category, length, instructors, level, music, and, with the most recent update to the bike’s software (which it does automatically!), theme rides. Recently added theme rides include Women’s History Month rides and a Lady Gaga Live Birthday ride.
Though using the filters helped narrow down the class options, I still found it difficult to understand what each class would actually entail. The classes are predominantly named thematically, like Do It with Passion, which was confusing. For example, I found a class with a playlist consisting solely of Glee covers of Fleetwood Mac songs (which, amazing), but that element wasn’t noted in the name of the class.
Other Features:
Ability to Attach a Heart Rate Monitor and Headphones
The SoulCycle at-home bike is compatible with both Bluetooth headphones and heart rate monitors. I don’t use a heart rate monitor, but you would connect one the same way you would a Bluetooth device. You can also connect your Apple Health account to your Equinox+ account in order to sync more detailed metrics after each ride. (Unfortunately, trackers like FitBit can’t directly sync with the bike.)
I had trouble connecting my Apple AirPods for the first several rides, even though the bike listed them as a “remembered device.” The issue? The bike cannot connect to more than one Bluetooth device at once, and it wouldn’t connect to my AirPods until I selected Forget Device next to my partner’s Bluetooth headphones, which he used when he rode. (He later told me he had the same issue connecting his headphones when he would ride after I did.) Eventually, I realized I needed to do this every time, so connecting my AirPods became easier. However, it wasn’t quite as intuitive or straightforward as it could have been. Once connected, the Bluetooth worked just fine.
Digital Display and Speaker System
The 21-inch touchscreen display is fabulous, with a crystal clear picture (the resolution is 1920 x 1030 FHD). You can move the screen closer or farther from you using the handlebar adjuster, but you can’t rotate it side to side or tilt it up or down. Most of the time, that was totally fine, but I was somewhat bummed that I couldn’t experiment with tilting or raising it when riding out of the saddle, or simply so that I could look straight ahead while riding, like I would during an in-person class.
You can choose whether you want to see your stats while riding, which I liked. To see your stats, you’ll bring them onscreen with a simple swipe down from the top. The three metrics available are cadence, power, and miles, which is nice because it’s minimal and not too distracting.
By swiping in from the right side of the monitor, you can adjust the volume or edit your Bluetooth or heart rate monitor settings. Alternatively, you can adjust your volume settings on the side of the monitor using buttons placed near the power button. There’s an option to see a Form Rider View in the lower left corner of your screen by swiping in from the left; this shows one of the riders from a side view as a form example. (Each class has an instructor and three participants taking the class in the studio with them.) This feature is ideal for a beginner who wants to check on their choreography and form, which is harder to do when you’re not surrounded by mirrors or other riders. To see all of these navigation options at once, along with a progress bar at the bottom of the screen—or to pause or quit the class—you just tap the center of the screen. All in all, the display was very intuitive.
The speakers are incredible, and truly mimic a surround sound experience. I prefer to use them (versus my headphones) whenever I can.
Water Holder and Weights Holder
There are two water holders that conveniently sit beneath the handlebars and on either side of the resistance knob. They fit medium-to-large water bottles, and were also a nice place to store my iPhone.
There is a small rack for hand weights located just behind the saddle, where you can easily grab weights for arms portions of the classes. The weights don’t come with the bike, but you should be able to fit any standard two- to five-pound hand weight in the rack. SoulCycle also sells hand weights by the pair—for $18–$76, depending on the weight—if you’d like to buy ones that match the bike.
Streaming
In order to access any of the content on the bike’s tablet, you’ll need to have an Equinox+ account, which you can purchase for $40 a month when you buy the bike.
If you’re already a member of an Equinox gym, you’ll have automatic access to Equinox+ without added cost, as long as you create an account on the platform and log in when you set up your bike.
SoulCycle gave me access to Equinox+ free of cost for testing purposes. In addition to testing the bike, I also tried several other classes on the app, including cardio sculpt from Equinox, yoga from Pure Yoga, and stretch and recovery from TB12. My SoulCycle at-home bike rides sync with my Equinox+ account, so even if I ride the bike one day and take a yoga class using the app on my iPad the next day, my class history is still all in one place.
Here’s a fun feature that transports me back to the gym: You can also stream Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video during your ride. This is particularly fun if you’re not in the mood for a class environment and either want to take it easy and do your own thing during a Free Ride. “Free Ride and chill” is how I think of it.
But if you are looking for that in-studio experience, streaming live classes are the next best thing. There are usually somewhere between 7 and 10 live class options every day. I tried a few of them out, and I quickly realized I prefer the prerecorded classes for the same reason I prefer working out from home: I can really take the entire class on my own time, knowing that I have that flexibility from the start. Yes, you can technically drop into a live class late—and exit early, too—but I learned that I really value not feeling like I need to rush to finish what I’m doing in order to make a workout happen.
The last thing to note when it comes to streaming: The bike has a built-in camera on the touchscreen, but currently that camera doesn’t have any functionality. I imagine SoulCycle is cooking up something to compete with the video-streaming function Peloton bikes have, where a built-in camera allows you to show your own picture during live classes, though Equinox would not comment on the camera at the time of publication. For now, it’s just… there.
Clip-Ins
A great perk of the SoulCycle bike is that it’s compatible with the two most popular cycling cleat styles, the Delta and SPD, thanks to its dual-sided pedals. That means if you already own cycling shoes, you’ll likely be able to use them for the bike. If you don’t own cycling shoes and cleats, that’s another added cost to consider—these shoes often start at around $100.
Cost
The SoulCycle at-home bike is expensive: You can purchase it in one payment of $2,500, or in monthly installments of $64 for 39 months. On top of that, remember you also need to include the cost of the Equinox+ membership at $40 a month. And if you’re really starting from scratch, you may also want to factor in $100 for shoes, $18 for weights, and $75 for the mat. All in, that’s just over $3,100 for your first year. So, yes, this is an investment.
For many people—particularly cycling enthusiasts who see themselves enjoying the convenience of an at-home stationary bike long after fitness classes and gyms fully reopen—this is worth it. As I mentioned earlier, Equinox+ also gives you access to several other boutique fitness virtual experiences, including Rumble boxing, Headstrong (guided meditation classes), Precision Run treadmill classes, and Pure Yoga.
My favorite thing about the bike was its sheer convenience—that’s what you’re paying for. You can take a cycling class led by an excellent instructor, with beautiful visuals and sound, without leaving your apartment. For me, the cost of that convenience is worth the upfront investment.
The Bottom Line
The SoulCycle at-home bike is what got me through my pandemic winter. It came at the right time—I was in a workout rut, struggling to find indoor low-impact cardio that worked for me. Well, the SoulCycle bike made me sweat like I never have before in any at-home workout. It also added a lot of joy to my short, dark days. The classes are famously inspiring and motivational, encouraging you to compete with yourself and listen to your body in a way that really resonated with my own personal movement philosophy.
Another item to note that didn’t bother me but may be a deal breaker for others: the inability to “ride with others” virtually using your camera, like you can with Peloton. I have absolutely no desire to FaceTime with friends or strangers while I work out. My workout is my me-time, and I loved that I could have all the benefits of a SoulCycle class but be alone in my apartment without feeling any pressure based on those around me.
All in all, I loved the SoulCycle at-home bike, and for several weeks would not shut up about it to friends. I was able to take out my anxieties on the bike and felt more in-shape than I had in a while. Though there are parts of the software that could be fine-tuned, and the price is high, it was an all-around luxury product that largely delivered on the hype.