This bike is for people that don't want to go to a gym and/or don't have lots of time to leave the house on a daily basis. You can also finance the bike so the hit isn't so bad. Additionally, there's no extra charge for multiple accounts (up to 10), so if everyone in the house uses it, the cost makes more sense.
I work out of home and this is the only way I get consistent exercise. My fitness has gone up tremendously as has my quality of life. It's all about what motivates you to take your health seriously... this bike does it for me and a lot of other people. It's really hard to put a price on that.
Semi-related, I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber yesterday (as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type).
Much cheaper purchase and fun enough that I can enjoy playing it for hours a day. I have an (admittedly shitty) exercise bike, and will probably be using that a lot less now.
If anyone's looking for a home fitness gadget, give that a look. I'm told BoxVR is a better workout than Beat Saber but I haven't bought that yet.
Everyone else is saying how absurd the 1900 calorie claim is, and comparing it to other types of exercise, but even if it is the much lower 360 calories, most sedentary gamers are more likely to do this multiple times per week than say, run a marathon, or even start doing a program like C25K. That's a huge win in my book...
I mentioned in other comments (and edited a bit with more accurate numbers), but I'll put it here too: the watch worked it out to 830 calories/hour and Runner's World says that's equivalent to me running at 11:30 minutes/mile based on my 210 lbs weight.
I've only gone running once this spring so I don't have a huge dataset (lots of walking and exercise bike instead), but the one run I did was a 10:30 mile. So I'm not especially fast, but 11:30 is a slow pace for me and feels reasonable as a beat saber equivalent workout.
Downside, the Quest's foam face-interface gets absolutely drenched in sweat. I need to get a sweatband and a wipeable pad replacement as soon as VRCover catches up on their backorders.
Even as an exercise bike owner who can hop on that for a workout whenever I want to, I've never gotten home from work and said "You know what I want to do? Exercise bike for more than two hours."
Compared to half an hour of exercise bike and two hours of Overwatch, I think this will be a huge deal for fitness.
I have a hunch that it's overestimating because you wave your arms around a lot, but 360 seems like an underestimate. Average heart rate in 70% to 80% range, and I'll have higher than average calorie expenditure because I'm overweight.
EDIT - did a comparison against Runner's World's calorie burn calculator, and the calories/hour burn rate lines up with a leisurely 11:30 minutes/mile pace based on my weight.
Gives back 159 calories for a 1 mile run, 829 calories per hour.
My Beat Saber workouts yesterday tally up at 830 calories per hour and the amount of sweating felt in the ballpark of running an 11 minute mile. I don't think the watch's estimates are that outlandish.
Again factoring in that I weigh 210 lbs, their calculator also says a marathon would be upwards of 4100 calories for me. 1900 calories clocks in at less than half of a marathon.
It’s certainly possible to burn 800+ calories per hour for a couple hours. Normal, actually, for someone doing athletic training. (E.g., anyone training semi-seriously for any kind road race is doing this at least once a week.)
But I’d pretty surprised if you did it without training to build up to it. You could have developed the aerobic capacity through other activities, but I’d have thought various muscles would be unprepared and would be giving you rather strong pain signals. If you nevertheless pushed through that, I’d think you’d be SORE AF today and barely able to move.
Or maybe your activity confused the calorie model your Apple Watch uses.
I exercise bike pretty much daily (typically 30-60 minutes), so my arms are flimsy but in terms of cardio capacity I'm not in awful shape. My arms are definitely sore today.
That's apples to oranges. A regular runner who runs a few times a week could do 11:30 minute miles just fine. Someone who just started running would have much difficulty doing an 11:30 mile period let alone sustaining that pace for two hours.
Found another reference that estimates 3600 at 210 lbs, so maybe somewhere in the middle:
>According to the Cleveland Clinic Center for Consumer Health, a runner who weighs 130 lb. will burn 2,224 calories during a marathon, a 165 lb. runner will burn 2,822 calories and a 210 lb. runner will burn 3,593 calories.
I've been playing "Space Pirate Trainer" on my new Quest and was shocked at how worked-out my legs felt afterwards from dodging incoming shots by squatting/leaning.
I broke this down in another comment, but trusting Runner's World for a calorie calculator, a half marathon would take me 2080 calories (at 210 lbs). So a little bit less than that.
Average calorie burn was 830 calories/hour, which they say is equivalent to me running at an 11:30 minutes/mile pace.
In terms of effort expended, important to note that this was three sessions over the course of the evening, adding up to 1900 calories and 2 hours 17 minutes.
So it was something like running 4 miles 3 times with an hour and change break in between, which is probably an easier feat than doing it in one shot.
My arms are still sore and I don't plan on doing that every day, but it was definitely a workout.
That was split over three sessions totaling 2:17, and is for me being 5' 10" and around 210 lbs. If you're skinnier than me you'll probably burn less.
It was a good chunk of my evening and my arms are pretty sore today, so I don't plan on doing that all the time. But I'll absolutely do it more often than I run/bike 1900 calories.
It's not realistic to expect the amount of fat lost from any kind of exercise to be anywhere near the total amount of calories expended, though. There are biological limits to fat metabolism that just can't be avoided.
Closest gym with spin classes is 30 minutes away. I also tend to do my classes between 11pm and 12pm, something not possible at any gym. The sessions are tightly controlled so I'm getting the workout I need. I don't have to deal with cars, humidity or any other variables riding on the road. To be honest, I don't understand why people bring that point up so much.
Fair enough, but I'm not sure that NYC would keep me in the house for exercise.
I live in the mountains of Colorado, but will always prefer exercising outdoors, even in winter. I tend to modify my exercise for the time of year and weather. In winter it tends towards running and skiing. Summer is for biking (and more running). I like to have variety of activities (helps to build up a diverse set of strength) and the simplicity of walking out my front door. (Without a monthly fee)
Previous years I've done running in the summer, but I hate it in the winter. Motivation to work out has been a hard enough barrier, so once the air gets too cold to breathe comfortably I'd pretty much stop.
Exercise bike was a game changer last winter in terms of getting me to stick with regular workouts.
New Yorkers just stop at the gym on their way home from work. The net time difference is close to zero. However you also have the opportunity to actually meet other people at a gym.
In the winter, putting on (and then taking off) the winter clothes plus rinsing the salt off the bike when I get home adds 10 - 15 minutes to the ride.
And while I don't really don't enjoy riding stationary bikes, there is some appeal to getting in a fake ride on a stationary bike in my living room when it's 35 degrees and raining outside. Or 90 degrees and high humidity.
Not leaving the house regularly is a serious quality of life issue. That is most certainly not going to be addressed by the purchase of a stationary bike.
I was just referring to the fact that I work from home and put in about 10 hours per day behind a computer. Sedentary life is hard to avoid for programmers even though I'm into athletic activities. The bike allows me to get in a class during lunch, after work or late into the evening. The rest of my free time is spent with my family- driving to the gym 30 minutes away to take their classes would take away an hour of my free time just in driving.
Because they are not as good. The Peloton bike uses earth magnets for the resistance so changing levels is seamless. Your bike is directly communicating with the class HUD and you can see how you are performing against your own stats and against others in the class, real time or historically. It's a completely different experience than messing with a trainer.
I've never used peloton but I would be very surprised if any of the mid-top end direct drive smart trainers weren't vastly better than an exercise bike. They also use magnetic resistance up to 2000w in some cases with seamless transitioning. There is nothing apart from greed that stops peloton from offering their classes to anyone with a smart trainer. You get all those stats on an ipad/laptop/phone with other smart trainers and according to reviews the power readings are not very accurate on a peloton bike. Really seems like a win for marketing over reality.
I work out of home and this is the only way I get consistent exercise. My fitness has gone up tremendously as has my quality of life. It's all about what motivates you to take your health seriously... this bike does it for me and a lot of other people. It's really hard to put a price on that.