Schwinn 230 recumbent exercise bike Review

Over the Christmas holidays, we bought a Schwinn 230 recumbent exercise bike from Dick's sporting goods because it was on sale. A recumbent exercise bike is preferred over an upright bike because it better supports the back while cycling. A bike exercises the thigh and leg muscles, which are the largest muscles in the body, and is mainly used for aerobic/caloric exercise (exercises the heart and helps you lose weight). Bikes are the most popular options for home exercise, because they have a small footprint.

The Schwinn 230 recumbent exercise bike is well built and engineered. While it came in many small pieces which barely fit into a regular sedan without the packaging and looked quite intimidating to assemble, installation turned out to be a snap. The Schwinn 230 bike has 8 resistance levels, comfortable wide pedals, and an integrated heart rate monitor on the grips. The bike can be programmed with any combination of resistance levels, and comes with several in-built programs, and can track your speed/calorie expenditure/heart rate over the entire exercise. There is a convenient quick start feature where you can just jump on the bike, set the resistance level, and go. It is truly a quality machine, and is a joy to use. A small complaint is that the provided power supply came with a rather short cord, necessitating an extension cord to position the bike where we wanted it.

I initially objected to purchasing the bike because we have a small gym just 5 minutes from our apartment, with several treadmill machines, several bikes, and a weight machine. However, it turned out to have been a good decision. I was amazed at the difference having a bike in the privacy of your own apartment makes. Since the bike is always available, whenever I have 5-10 minutes to spare, or when I am tempted to watch TV, I just jump on the bike and cycle. I can cycle whenever I want to, and watch whichever channel I want on the TV. This makes bike exercise enormously more attractive, and I end up doing more exercise than I ever did before.

Most of the time, Schwinn 230 recumbent exercise bike is priced arround $449 at Amazon.com. It was seldom on sale. But once I saw it in Amazon Gold box and priced less than $300. Unfortunately deals in Amazon Gold box are only good for a day, so I missed that chance.