Review: Bowflex Max Trainer M5 — wired.com

Looks like a piece of modern art. Surprisingly fun to use. Tall, not long, so it's apartment-friendly. Dual heart-rate monitors. Syncs with your smartphone. Short power cord limits placement options. Some user-hostile design choices. Gets pretty noisy. Allows only two user profiles. The Bowflex Max Trainer M5 is about 70 percent stair-stepper, 25 percent elliptical, and five percent torture—but mostly in a good way. It’s definitely one of the most attractive home-exercise machines you’ll ever see, and there’s no question it can give you a solid workout. Plus, it’s smartphone-savvy, syncing your workouts to a tracking app or Apple’s Health Kit. But certain aspects of the design will leave you wondering if anyone at Bowflex actually tested the machine before sending the CAD files to the factory.

Read More