Reebok One GB50 Exercise Bike Review

Reebok Fitness are one of the best-known brands in the home fitness equipment market and have a strong reputation for building machines that offer excellent value for money at the entry and mid-point levels. While they’ve also started to aim at the upper-mid point as well with some of their models, the Reebok One GB50 upright bike is positioned  squarely at entry-level where they’ve got a good reputation. So what’s it like?

While there have been some complaints out there about the assembly instructions not being clear, we found them to be very much par for the course for an upright bike. The diagrams are simple enough and the whole process is complete in 7 steps. There are a couple of bits we can see could be confusing such as the instruction to screw the left pedal in clockwise where in fact it has to be counter-clockwise but for the most part, it’s straightforward and took us around 40 min to get it ready for use.

Looks-wise this is a good looking bike. The black finish with red trim works well and the chunky transport wheels add to the impression that it’s sturdy. It’s got modern lines and should sit in most rooms without sticking out like a sore thumb.

As has become the norm for upright bikes at this sort of price point, there are a number of adjustments you can make to get the right position on the bike before starting. The seat has adjustments for height from pedals and distance from handlebars. The handlebars also adjust so it’s easy enough to get a good riding position. Though, soft as the saddle is, if you’re not used to exercising it might take a week or so to get over any initial saddle soreness!

The 9kg flywheel delivers a nice smooth and even action all the way through the cycle and gives this bike a nice, quality feel and the 5″ blue backlit LCD display does its job, delivering realtime workout information on  speed, distance, time, RPM, calories, pulse, and watts. There are 32 levels of resistance and it does a good job of cycling through all the levels smoothly at a good speed and relatively quietly too. The upper end of the resistance isn’t bad either and should provide a challenge to most users likely to be using this bike.

Getting started is really very simple. Press start! That’ll pretty much do it for manual mode, though it’s also possible to quickly set targets for time, distance, calories or pulse so when you start it counts down to zero rather than counting up ad-infinitum. Selecting programmes is a simple process and before you start the workout it’s possible to alter the difficulty level of the programme. Having scalable programmes like this is definitely an advantage as it means you can select your favourite format for a workout and then keep increasing the difficulty level as your fitness levels improve. The more you like a programme, the more likely you are to keep using the bike so this certainly helps in making sure you keep your training sessions regular.

In addition to the manual and preset workouts, there’s a heart rate control programme which is quick and simple. Just enter your age and then select the percentage of maximum heart rate you’d like to work out at. While simple, this method is also a little crude as it doesn’t let you set an actual target heart rate, but rather it calculates your max heart rate based on the age you’ve entered and then lets you choose from 55%, 75%, 90% of that, nor does it actually display the max heart rate that’s been calculated but instead relies on you to work it out using the formula given in the instruction manual. When it comes to heart rate workouts we’d definitely prefer to see something less crude with more control and certainly something that doesn’t rely on the user having to do calculations (however simple) before being able to use it safely, for obvious reasons! This method of heart rate control is something we really don’t like very much at all and definitely falls into the ‘better luck next time’ category.

On a more positive note, it’s nice to see the addition of a user defined programme which is simple enough to set up and a recovery test that will rate your fitness on 6 levels ranging from poor to excellent. Again it would be nice if there were more than one profile, but one profile is better than no profile so we’re not going to complain too much here.

The console itself is well organised and logical without too many buttons which makes controlling this bike simple. The addition of a tablet holder and a USB charging port is a really nice touch, though don’t fall into the same trap we initially did and think you can connect your device to the bike – you can’t. The USB is purely for charging purposes but this does mean that you can take nice long workouts while watching your favourite shows or reading a book without worrying if you’re going to run out of power. Oh and there’s a water bottle holder.

The warranty on the Reebok One GB50bike is the standard 2 years parts and labour warranty offered across all the products in their ranges and with Reeboks reliable service should anything go wrong you can rest easy that it’ll get sorted out.