I did not buy a bike, but for a while I used the app on a spin bike at the gym. I can attest to the experience being pretty great.
I wound up recording a dozen or so of the workouts so I can watch them on my phone without a subscription. The bells and whistles of heart rate and pace are meaningless to me.
I don’t think it’s a split so much as Peleton appealing to different users with the same product. There are quite a few ways to get hooked: a teacher you really like (I only found one I could stand but he is great), a class you really like (I’m sure the country music classes have their devotees), live interaction with the instructor, and performance tracking (aiming for calories or watts or whatever).
I wound up recording a dozen or so of the workouts so I can watch them on my phone without a subscription. The bells and whistles of heart rate and pace are meaningless to me.