Is A Peloton Bike Worth The Money?

If you haven’t heard of a Peloton Bike, where’ve you been? Revolutionising the home fitness market with their stationery bike and fitness classes, Peloton seem to be advertising their bike and membership everywhere I turn. But with a hefty price tag behind it, is a Peloton Bike worth the money? We share our experiences with Peloton, as a non-member, app member and now Peloton Bike owner.

Who Are One Peloton?

One Peloton or just ‘Peloton’ are a relatively new fitness provider who offer home workouts for users via an online platform. Classes range from their flagship spin classes through to outdoor walks, strength classes, yoga and HIIT training, you can even follow their meditations! All classes are led by their trainers, with trainers building up huge followings of fans and a dedicated following. With instructors based primarily in the US and the UK, members can choose to join live classes working out with thousands of others, or access classes in their own time thanks to all classes being recorded and available on demand. Peloton is available to use on your phone, laptop or streaming devices, including through Sky+ boxes allowing you to access classes wherever you need to. The most appealing part of Peloton classes for me are the soundtracks that they use; most notably with tie ups with megastars such as Beyonce, Coldplay, The Beatles and leading broadway musicals or films!

What Does Peloton Cost?

Peloton offer two main models of membership, Digital and All-Access. Digital membership starts at £12.99 per month and offers users access to the full range of Peloton classes. You don’t need any Peloton equipment to use a Peloton Digital membership, which means it’s a low cost way of accessing their huge database of classes and you can still see other members taking your class, motivate each other and see some metrics to keep up motivation.

All-Access membership starts at £39 per month and is required in order to use a Peloton Bike, Bike+ or Tread. You’ll get access to the same suite of classes but you’ll be able to experience full metrics including cadence, resistance, distance, output and more as well as performance tracking. Whilst it may seem a large cost, All-Access membership can be shared between an entire family allowing you to create multiple different user accounts under the same main membership.

For a Peloton Bike, you’ll need to purchase the bike itself and an All-Access membership. Currently, a Peloton Bike starts at £1,750 for the basic bike package with more expensive packages available that include shoes, mats, weights and more. You’ll be able to have a number of individual bike users set up, all with personalised access to the app as well.

What Do I Need To Use A Peloton Bike?

As mentioned above, you’ll need to purchase a Peloton Bike and an All-Access membership. You’ll also need cycling shoes with appropriate cleats allowing you to clip your shoes into the pedals. You can either use the Peloton ones or purchase shoes from another provider such as Amazon (links are affiliate links) – we recommend these shoes and these cleats.

If you wanted to go a little further, we recommend a mat to help increase stability, water bottle for hydration, weights for the classes that use spinning and weights together (we recommend 2kg up) and a heart rate monitor to give you additional metrics.

Our Experience of One Peloton

We’ve been aware of One Peloton for the last few years after a family member purchased a Peloton Bike. At first we couldn’t understand the appeal of spending so much on a piece of equipment and then having to pay the monthly subscription fee on top. Both of us used the bike and loved the experience but were concerned that we wouldn’t use it and it would end up an expensive piece of furniture! Fast forward a year or so and despite a couple of uses, we were still unconvinced about it. At this point we decided to utilise our app membership more, borne about by the accounts we’d had to set up on our parent’s All-Access subscription. This gave us the same level of access as we would get for a Digital membership. During this period, we purchased a stationery bike to use at home with it and would work out wherever possible. I loved the ability to access HIIT floor classes and yoga as well as do the spinning classes, leading to us looking in to purchasing a proper spin bike.

Once we’d made that decision we quickly realised that as much as a spin bike would improve the set up, it wouldn’t give us all the benefits that make Peloton so unique. The metrics, the ability to see your performance and progress live, to join in leaderboards and compete against yourself, your communities and all other users. Separately we decided that it was time to take the plunge and a few weeks later, our Peloton Bike arrived! We’ve now been using it for just shy of a month and… we love it. Between the two of us we use the Bike every day, usually alternating days between us. We use our heart rate monitor to help us see performance and have both now undertaken an ‘FTP test’ which allows you to then set personalised zones for working out on the bike, meaning you can tailor your workout more specifically to your fitness level.

Is A Peloton Bike Worth The Money?

So far, our experience tells us that it is worth the investment particularly when you do a breakdown of the costs. The Bike is a big upfront investment and Peloton do offer some finance packages to support this. Peloton bikes have a strong resale value meaning if you did decide to cancel your membership, you could recoup some of the cost. We looked at it as we would be spending a fair amount on a regular spin bike anyway, even though there’s still a significant price difference between most spin bikes and Peloton.

The Digital membership is good value although there is an argument that you can access similar types of work outs on YouTube and other providers, albeit at a lower production level. All-Access membership works well given that it can be shared between multiple users, meaning if there’s a number of you in the group you can bring that monthly cost down quite significantly. Membership is easy to cancel and you’re not tied in, allowing you to cancel it if you change your mind.

Utilising the Peloton membership and all of the feedback you can quickly become focussed on beating your own past performance and those of others in your communities – making it as addictive as the gym but from the ease of your spare room or garage. Long term, members of our family have owned a Peloton for a number of years and still use it 3-4 times a week, loving the ability to work out alongside friends and even utilise live video chats between one another. Would we say that a Peloton is worth the investment? We think so!

Don’t forget these recommended accessories…

Cycling Shoes

Peloton Cleats

Floor Mat

Loose Weights

Heart Rate Monitor

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