Smart Home Gym System, Gym Monster Multifunctional Smith Machine Home Gym Power Cage, All-in-one Cable Machine for Home Workout, Full Body Strength Training Fitness Exercise Machine

DISCLAIMER: I'm not affiliated with Speediance in any way, nor am I being paid for this review. After two months of owning the machine and working out every single day, I wanted to give an in-depth overview of my experience as this has honestly been the best purchase for my health I've ever made and so far has exceeded all expectations. IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE, BUY THIS MACHINE IF YOU ARE ON THE FENCE!FITNESS HISTORY: I'll be 40 this year, and have been in and out of every gym imaginable over the past 15 years. I've primarily worked out with free weights the entire time, with a few months of Orange Theory, Crossfit, F45 thrown in. Although I'm fairly fit and active, consistency has always been an issue for me. I'll go 12-18 months getting in amazing shape, take a 2 week vacation or get sick, then go 6 months sliding backwards until I repeat the cycle all over again.ALTERNATIVES: Before purchasing the Speediance, I was dead set on getting a Tonal after trying one out in a local mall. Unfortunately since I live in a Condo, I couldn't risk the noise that travels through the walls which IS a major issue if you research the Facebook / Reddit groups that talk about this. With that in mind, I was debating between Speediance, Vitruvian, and Oxefit as free standing solution. I chose Speediance since it was extremely compact compared to the Oxefit (which shouldn't be a part of any home gym unless you have a huge house), and the Vitruvian only allowed for exercises from the floor (the stand accessory was canceled last year due to lack of demand).POSITIVES: The Speediance honestly blew me away when I first received it and the build quality is much better than I was expecting after reading some complaints on the FB groups & Reddit.• Size: The Speediance is extremely compact and looks amazing next to my Peleton. It literally takes up around the same amount of floor space as my Powerblock Dumbbell stand. If you live in an apartment or condo, you can put this thing nearly anywhere and barely notice it once the platform is up.• Price / Subscription: I'm lucky enough in my career where price wasn't a determining factor in deciding between which smart gym to purchase. With that said, Speediance can't be beat if you purchase now with the free lifetime subscription, and there's no world where I could ever recommend purchasing a tonal at 2x the upfront cost + $750/yr in subscription fees. It honestly feels like a steal.• Cables vs Free Weights: I've done a lot of barbell/dumbell work in my day, but honestly rarely use cable machines outside of facepulls / lat pulldowns / tricep work. I was expecting this to feel like a Bowflex which is my only real experience with cable resistance, but it's nothing like that. The best way to explain it as it's like free weights on steroids and you can feel all the stabilizer muscles working. Bench presses, squats, deadlifts etc all feel much better to me than traditional free weights.• 220lb Resistance: I'm not a powerlifter or a large guy, but am strong for my size (5'7). My 1RM for barbell work is 180lb Bench, 220lb Squat, 240lb Deadlift. Originally I was worried that I would max out this machine fairly quickly for certain movements, but the cable resistance has humbled me. When I did my first strength assessment each lift was easily 25%+ less than what I can do with free weights, aka unless you are a huge power lifter you aren't going to max out this machine.• Variety of Movements: With free weights I will normally stick to the standard compound lifts and the accessory exercises I've always known. The huge array of different movements built into the software + instructions on how to perform them has really opened my eyes on how much I was limiting myself. Workouts are never boring now, and I think this is one of the biggest things motivating me to use this every day.• Screen Tilt: This is absolutely huge and allows you to look at the screen for almost every movement. IE when I do a bench press, I can tilt the screen 90 degrees and see every rep, power, etc. This is a small thing, but makes a big difference when working out which no other machine does to my knowledge.CONS: There's truly very few cons I've found with the Speediance.• Accessories: This is honestly the only area where Speediance feels "cheap", and I'm a little baffled at what they try to sell some of the accessories for (IE Handles). I'm including a section on all my top recommended third-party accessories I recommend, and a few accessories I think you should buy through Speediance.• Cable Burn: Without the cable extenders, some exercises will give you major cable burn causing you to never do them. Again, this is solvable with the Cable Extender accessory… INCLUDE IT WITH EVERY PURCHASE.TLDR; I had much more to say but I’ve hit the character limit for a review. Buy the machine!

I waited for 3 months of use before writing this review. I do 4 one-hour strength training workouts each week so it's a decent sample size. Overall I would absolutely buy it again! The weight feels heavier than traditional machines or free weights. I use the eccentric mode on pretty much everything I do which increases the weight on the eccentric part of the exercise for additional muscle stimulation. I have programmed each days workout. I customize the exercise, sets, reps, weight, and rest time between sets. It makes my workouts super efficient. I pack the maximum amount of work into one hour. If you decide to change the weight for any given set it will save it for your next session. At the end of a session it will show how you compare over the last 7 days to all users (top 2% user - no big deal).I've had no glitches in the software or function of the machine. This is my main worry going forward because I expect this to last for years given the price tag. So far, so good.Delivery was a breeze. They even brought it inside my house. It comes fully assembled so you just need to wiggle it out of the box (standing up) and you can wheel the machine to it's final destination. Going up or down stairs will be a chore and another person as it weighs 250 or so pounds and is an awkward shape. It folds up really nicely against a wall for storage.A couple minor complaints. It should come with the bar holder. I can fairly easily get underneath the bar (i.e. doing a bench press) so I refuse to pay extra for the bar holder. Another shortcoming is that the cables will majorly bruise your triceps during such exercises as lying bench flys. Again, they sell an extender for like $80 to fix this issue but it should come standard. I resolved it by purchasing $15 arm sleeves (like a compression sleeve) on Amazon. It gives enough padding to avoid the bruising. A heavy sweatshirt may also do the trick. The final complaint is that 220lbs isn't enough for some people. I've already maxed out the deadlift. I don't see it ever being an issue on any other exercises. You can always do extra reps or sets to get the proper work in. It would be nice if it was closer to 300lbs though.Overall I would highly recommend this machine.