Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

  Those of you who know me, know that I'm a bigger guy. I was a big kid, tall and chunky, then I lost a lot of weight and was a tall string bean, and that brings me to the current shape. I'm tall but I'm definitely not a slender guy. I've lost weight here and there to the point where I needed knee surgery thanks in part to my treadmill, which I'll give it's fair credit for having caused my meniscus tear. I went to a fitness club with a friend here and there for a period of a close to half a year before conflicting schedules caused that to deteriorate, and being one to not keep up with things unless held accountable did not pick up the slack.

That brings me to the recent Christmas gift' that I gave to my wife and I. It was a bit pricey (in and around $500) but the Schwinn 230 exercise bike has been a great gift, to me, and I am using it everyday for 60 minutes a pop. In 60 minutes I've been burning off 630 calories and getting a really good burn in my legs. Unfortunately, this has brought attention to the fact that my knee surgery has definitely not fixed my problem. I say it was a great gift to me because when I told my wife I was giving her the present earlier she was excited, up until the point where she helped me carry it off the back of the truck inside, and then her enthusiasm dimmed quicker than a light in a power outage. That coupled with the fact that when asked by family about the bike and the sudden appearance was shortly answered by her "he thinks i'm fat" I had to give her another gift. A Nintendo DS with the Brain Age game. Its hard to win with women, she probably thinks I'm eluding to her being dumb now.

Anyway, the bike has been great. The seat is comfortable even after an hour of using one of the three handy bike programs on level 10. It goes to level 16, which for most people is more than enough unless you're training for the Olympics or biking across America or something. The console on the bike is relatively easy to use, offers a menu to see how many calories have been burned, calculate your BMI, and to keep up on progress being made while biking. It has a built in heart rate monitor so you can know with a reasonable assurance whether you're in the target heart rate for your body to burn calories the best.

There are of course your standard pros and cons associated with any product. I'll try to list them off as best as i can below.

Pros

1. Built with stability in mind with adjustable screws for platform legs to stabilize the bike.
2. Many programmed programs to choose from to exercise with from 'riding in the park' to 'endurance' resistance settings.
3. Built-in heart rate monitor
4. Displays speed, distance, timing, and calories burned during workout.
5. Manually adjustable resistance settings to make any workout more difficult.
6. Sliding seat to target different areas of the leg.

Cons

1. The turn screw on the sliding seat isn't easily adjusted while actually using the bike.
2. Seat squeaks a bit when really getting into the riding.
3. On the console is a small metal hooked front to hold things in. I hit my knee on it and left a good cut on my knee. I mean really what is this for? You can't rest a book on it, that'd be a nice addition, and it's just kind of there so if your knee comes way up it can hit it.
4. The bike has a water bottle holder that is completely horizontal and under the front left side of the seat. Utterly and completely useless for all purposes.
5. When assembling the bike connecting the circuitry in the neck of the machine is a pain. The display panel circuitry/power cord is long and taunt so it makes it overly difficult to shove back into the tube. Also the assembly instructions neglect to mention that some parts of the bike are already assembled and must be disassembled to assemble the bike.

Overall I'd give the bike a B+. It's worth the purchase, a little pricey, but the ride is comfortable without being too excessively bogged down with programs/components that aren't necessary. A fan would be nice on this model, and a real cup holder would be nice. They may have added that on newer machines, but if you're looking for a good workout on something that will burn calories without tearing cartilage this is a good investment.