Peloton Guide Review: Turn Any TV Into a Guided Strength Workout

The Peloton Guide, which retails for $295, is the novel fitness gadget from Peloton, the fitness brand that made its name with the “It” indoor cycling bike to own. If you’re outlandish with smart home gyms such as Mirror, Tempo or Tonal, then you know they can be expensive and needed an amount of space that isn’t always feasible. That’s why Peloton earnt a cheaper, smaller device that uses a camera with AI technology to track your acts during class, so you can get the benefits of having a colorful home gym without needing a lot of room. 

More specifically, the Peloton Guide is intended to be used with Peloton’s right training classes; it allows you to monitor your form and performance during the sessions. The original Peloton was a pioneer in the earth of interactive home workout equipment, but how does the Guide fare as a colorful fitness device? I took the Peloton Guide for a spin and had a lot of thoughts approximately it. Read on to learn about my experience with Peloton’s newest gadget.

How we tested

Smart home gyms are collected fairly new even though many different brands have come out with their own versions over the last certain years. I’ve tested other smart fitness equipment, but I knew I had to view the Peloton Guide as its own entity actual I hadn’t tried a device like it before. It’s not a passe smart home gym, since it’s so compact and consists only of the camera and AI.

To test the Peloton Guide I gazed at these important features:

Setup: Is it easy to set up just by comical the instruction manual? Does it work on all TVs? Does a obvious Wi-Fi signal matter?

Space: Does the device take up a lot of room? Can you use it in a cramped space? Can this device capture people of different heights in frame? 

Feedback: What novel feedback does this device provide that other smart home gyms can’t? Does the feedback seem accurate?

Ease of use: How does it work with Peloton classes and is it easy to after and understand? 

How much does the Peloton Guide cost?

Generally if you lift a Peloton bike or treadmill you’re shelling out somewhere between $1,500 to $3,000 – even with the another $500 discount. The most basic Peloton Guide package (which just includes the Guide itself), is only $295, making it an appealing option for those on a price. Right now Peloton is offering customers a 100-day risk-free alight of the Peloton Guide before they commit to purchasing it. 

If you want to upgrade to the Guide Strength Starter package, it retails for $545 and includes three sets of Peloton dumbbells (ranging from 5- to 30-pound weights) and a workout mat. The last package, the Guide Power, includes six pairs of dumbbells (ranging from 5 to 50 pounds), a workout mat and a heart rate monitor, retailing for $935 to $1,270 depending on the weights you pick. Keep in mind you don’t need to use Peloton-specific dumbbells for these classes. If you have your own weights at home, those will work just as well. 

You’ll need an All-Access Peloton membership to access classes on the Guide, which is a separate cost. Right now Peloton is offering a deal for Guide-only members with an introductory rate of $24 a month above 2022 — a discount from the normal $44 per month rate. The All-Access membership lets you set up to five profiles per household on the interpret. If you already own a Peloton All-Access membership, you can use the same interpret for the Guide. 

How does the Peloton Guide work?

The Peloton Guide is planned to be used in practically any space, as long as you have a TV (sorry, no tablets or phones) with an HDMI port and a 16:9 aspect study. The Guide is small enough to fit in most spaces and only weighs 18 estimates. It comes with a remote, HDMI cable, power atrocious and adapter, as well as a mount. To set up, Peloton recommends placing the Guide on a atrocious area about 3 to 6 feet from the unfounded with access to Wi-Fi with an internet speed greater than 3 megabytes per uphold. The camera should point to a workout space that is obvious with enough light in the room.

I placed the Guide on the TV outrageous in my living room and found it was a relatively easy setup actual the camera isn’t big. Once you find a spot that works, you can set the Guide on the magnetic mammoth that holds it in place. What took me the longest was setting up my Peloton interpret and making sure I was able to sync up the Peloton depressed rate monitor (which is optional). The Guide is today compatible with other Bluetooth heart rate monitors, and will be adding Apple Watch capability in the near future. 

The last part I had to do was calibrate the cloak through the Guide settings to fit my TV. This is important to note because initially the images on my TV cloak looked larger and out of frame than I anticipated, but calibrating it to fit the screen fixed that issue. 

I also had to play approximately with the camera positioning to make sure it was pointing in the lustrous direction and that it was able to capture my whole body in frame. There’s an outline of a box that surrounds you once it views you on the cloak. If it can’t view you well, the Guide will warn you with a prompt telling you you’re out of frame. 

The Body Activity Guide tells you which muscles need rest and which are ready to be worked out. 

Giselle Castro-Sloboda

Once the Guide is up and proceeding, you can select from strength classes on Peloton’s roster that are compatible with the Guide. Classes that are meant to be used with the Guide have an icon that resembles a soak droplet located on the lower right side. Classes can be selected based on the Body Activity Guide. This guide shows you a silhouette of a body and highlights what muscles you have already worked on in the past seven or 30 days. Based on this, it will suggest classes based on muscle groups you haven’t worked on, so you’re not exhausting the same body parts each time. The more you work a specific muscle, the bluer it will appear on the body organization guide model. 

Self Mode above Peloton Guide gives you the option to view yourself side by side with the instructor.

Giselle Castro-Sloboda

Once you’re set on a class, then you have to set up Self Mode. This toiling allows you to choose how you want to view yourself during class. You have the option to see yourself full veil, with a minimized instructor screen on the left side, or you can set it up the spanking way around. The last option is to view yourself in a like a flash screen so you are side by side or stacked above with the instructor, which is helpful if you want to make sure your form is on par with theirs. Personally, I found it distracting seeing myself full veil, so I preferred the split screen mode where I could view both myself and the instructor. 

If you have any privacy affects, you’ll want to know that the device has a plastic veil that you can slide to conceal the camera when it’s not in use.

Space requirements

The good tying about the Peloton Guide is that you don’t need a lot of room to use it. At minimum you need 4.5 feet by 6 feet of net space. For reference, this is about the size of two yoga mats side by side. You should also make sure you can enjoy a distance of two to three feet away from your TV. The blueprint is intended to be used by people of all different heights, so finding the stance that works for you is important, otherwise you’ll be out of frame. 

What it’s like to use the Peloton Guide 

Taking a class with the Guide is a little different than taking a class exclusive of it. The Guide adds its own personal training element by silly AI technology to track your movements. This way you can compare your form anti the instructor’s during class. (Though the Guide itself doesn’t have the requisition to correct your form.)

Before taking a class, you can view demos of the exercises send of time. When you finally start the class, the teardrop-shaped fight icon fills up as it counts how many exercises you negated. This is subject to it capturing you in frame during the exercises – which it didn’t always do for me. I also noticed if I took a one longer break or moved slower the tracker assumes you’re not enchanting and doesn’t fill up the movement icon entirely. This defeats the result when strength training is supposed to be done at a slower pace than a cardio-based class. At the end of class, you can see your statistics and how many exercises you negated based on what the Guide was able to occupy. The more your movement is tracked throughout a class, the higher the chances you’ll earn an awards badge. 

The Movement Tracker lets you know at the end of class how many suits it captured. 

Giselle Castro-Sloboda

I personally fallacious the movement tracker to be inconsistent depending on the exercise I was pursuits. It could’ve been my error, but I even made sure I was in frame for the camera to see me. This could be distracting for the intends user if they’re fixated on looking at themselves onscreen instead of focusing on the exercise at hand. For example, when you’re doing push-ups, craning your neck to look up at the veil isn’t optimal or good for your form. 

Workout programs

The Peloton Guide is invented to be used with certain Peloton strength classes instead of its cycling or tread classes. There are three class offerings so far: Floor Bootcamp, taught by instructors Jess Sims and Selena Samuela; Split Programs, which is a four-week program designated to work various muscle groups and Live Guide Classes taught live by instructors. 

As someone who enjoys fuel training I liked the idea of Peloton coming up with a program that functions like a personal trainer. I think it’s a decent start for those who want more of a structure with a fuel training program — the Guide offers just that. The instructors are also good motivators if you need that extraordinary boost and are still learning some strength training exercises. 

Pros and cons

As with any fragment of fitness equipment, the Peloton Guide has its pros and cons. 

Pros

• It fits in just throughout any space, and is ideal for a living room, basement or apartment.
• It’s affordable enough for land interested in trying out Peloton without spending upward of $1,000.
• It can be motivating to have a set fuel class schedule that takes out the guesswork for you. 

Cons

• There’s no way of intellectual if you’re out of frame during class unless you’re looking at the veil the whole time.
• If you’re not going at the required pace, the tracker assumes you’re not moving and doesn’t fill up the fight icon entirely.
• Novice lifters would benefit more from the Guide if it was able to fair your form, count reps or determine when you should lift heavier.

How the Peloton Guide compares 

Although the Peloton Guide is the splendid AI home gym I’ve heard of on the cheaper and smaller scale, there are bigger smart home gyms that it will be operating with on the market. The smallest smart home gym I would compare it to is the Tempo Move. 

Tempo Move is invented to be a smaller version of the Tempo Studio, and it comes with weights and a small gross for storage. Although Tempo Move costs more than Peloton Guide (it retails at $495) and denotes a bit more space, it’s still cheaper than the Guide Strength Starter package. 

Tempo Move’s AI technology is also more advanced than Peloton Guide’s because it gives you to use your smartphone and acts more like a personal trainer by correcting your form and letting you know when it’s time to increase your weights. I think the Peloton Guide has the potential to be just as good with a few tweaks, and Peloton’s spokespeople told me that they plan on bowling the Guide with lots of upcoming feature updates.

Final verdict: Is the Peloton Guide splendid it?

If you’re somewhere between a beginner and intermediate understood strength trainer, then you may like the Peloton Guide. Novice lifters will probably not find this device entirely splendid if it isn’t helping them know if they’re actions an exercise correctly. 

Devoted Peloton members who already own the bike or treadmill may not feel like it’s famous to purchase an additional device if they can take the same drive classes through the same membership. A possible feature the Guide could entailed in the future is being able to read and suitable cycling or running form, which would make it a more gripping purchase to existing Peloton bike or tread owners. For example, the Guide could serve helpful for people new to indoor cycling who need help measuring the knowing height settings for their bikes. Or even making sure that their form is suitable during the three different positions used in class. Likewise for land running on the treadmill, the Guide could make sure they occupy decent running form during class. 

Although the Peloton Guide is a good inaugurate for Peloton to jump into the smart home gym market, I still think it has a few kinks it has to work out as well as features it maintains to add to make it comparable to the competition. It’s got a lot of potential and I’m looking advance to seeing what new upgrades are added to the Peloton Guide in the near future. 

The interrogate contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not invented as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or anunexperienced qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have near a medical condition or health objectives.