Lifecore R900 Rowing Machine
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List Price: Category: Sports See more product details |
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Description of Lifecore R900 Rowing Machine
The Lifecore R900 is the perfect rower for the serious home fitness user. It offers 12 preset programs; chest strap for heart rate control; 20 levels of magnetic resistance; and a silent drive system while providing a low profile design, a comfortable, oversized seat, and a fold-up feature for easy storage. User capacity of 350 lbs.Get a complete non-impact, full-body workout with Lifecore's R900 Rowing Machine, which conveniently folds up for easy storage when not in use. Featuring 12 preset programs, 8 levels of magnetic resistance, and a target heart rate control program, the R900 is perfect for users at any fitness level and has a multitude of programs to challenge you along the way. Constructed with a heavy-duty aluminum frame, this rower features angled heel supports to reduce joint stress and an oversized seat for a comfortable feel while exercising. The rower has a maximum user weight of 350 pounds and measures 70 inches long by 20 inches wide by 25 inches tall when assembled.
 The R900 features 12 preset programs, 8 levels of magnic resistance, and a target heart rate control program to keep your workout challenging every time. |
 The rower folds easily for storage. |
Key Features:
- 12 preset programs
- 8 levels of magnetic resistance (350 watts)
- Polar-compatible target heart rate control program
- Ultra-quiet belt drive
- Easy-to-read display
- Smooth motion track seating
- Angled heel supports to reduce joint stress
- Heavy-duty aluminum frame
- Scratch-resistant coating on casing
- Folds for easy storage
- Transportation wheels for added mobility
- Comfortable oversized seat
Specifications:
- Assembled Dimensions: 70 inches long by 20 inches wide by 25 inches tall
- Folded Dimensions: 35 inches long by 20 inches wide by 55 inches tall
- Product Weight: 75 pounds
- User Weight Capacity: 350 pounds
Manufacturer's Warranty:
Frame - lifetime, parts - three years, labor - one year
Sports reviews of Lifecore R900 Rowing Machine
Customer Review: display is fine when seat is back...
Sport shop rating: 4 Stars
It's very quiet and a nice machine. Mine was also dropped(probably UPS) but only had a small dent in one of the metal end pieces so with a little tweaking, went together ok.
The display does look like all 8's when your knees are bent, and you are looking down at the display, but you can see the numbers just fine when you are in the extended, seat back position. Don't know what the bid deal is, you can't really expect to look straight down and see clearly with that type of display, so don't let it discourage you from this item.
Customer Review: Great machine, the rest leaves a little to be disired.
Sport shop rating: 4 Stars
Being an industrial mechanic by trade I can say this maching is designed, made and works well. So does its electronic controller. I am bigger and stronger than the average Joe, and still get a great work-out. The only downside is the screen. I agree with all the other reviewers. You just can't read it without stopping your work-out!Customer Review: Very Good Rower
Sport shop rating: 4 Stars
Overall this is a very good rowing machine - quiet, takes up a small amount of space, and easy to use. My only complaint would be the LCD - the first order sent to me had a damaged computer, but Amazon was quick to send out a replacement rower which took care of the problem. Now every thing is great.Customer Review: Not good for intense aerobic exercise, OK for less intense exercise?
Sport shop rating: 3 Stars
The R900 has 8 levels of resistance and one heart rate control program. Not 20 or 16 levels of resistance and 3 heart rate control programs, as Lifecore Fitness's website used to say.
Magnetic resistance, which is what the R900 has, feels different from air or water resistance. Magnetic resistance doesn't change with the velocity at which you're pulling the bar, but air/water resistance increases with the velocity. That means that with air/water resistance you can kick off hard with your legs, getting a lot of resistance, and take it easy on your arms. So you can put out a lot of power, using the most powerful muscles in your body - getting your heart rate as high as you want - and burning a lot of calories. On the Concept 2 at the gym, which has air resistance, I can easily get my heart rate up to 170+. When I was snowed in the other day I tried working out on the R900 but I could only get my heart rate up to 141. Almost everybody I see rowing at the gym is not kicking off hard, though, and they could get the same workout on a magnetic rower.
The magnetic resistance is very gentle on your joints for this reason, so maybe it's actually better for people with joint problems.
Rowing machines aren't like other exercise machines, where you can just hop on and do it. Rowing technique is illustrated in the "Flip Luisi" video online. It's like a complicated dance step. Kicking off hard doesn't mean you have to go at a high strokes/minute, because with the right technique, the return stroke is controlled so you slow down somewhat.
Lifecore doesn't package things carefully enough for shipping. The first one I got wasn't working right in several ways. It had probably been damaged in shipping. So Lifecore sent replacement parts. When I got them I found one of the parts had also been damaged in shipping! It had been dropped and a metal piece was bent.
Large packages are all shipped Gorilla Freight apparently. (picture of gorillas throwing 100-pound boxes around). But I've gotten large appliances undamaged from other companies. They double-crate them and use huge amounts of bubblewrap, which Lifecore doesn't. And small things, when they're sent in a sea of packing pnuts, also arrive OK. Lifecore recently sent me a new monitor inadequately packaged which also got here trashed.
That the R900's monitor broke after 4 months of using it makes me wonder how well built the whole machine is.
The magnetic resistance isn't silent, as some advertising claims. It maxed at 56 dBA when I measured it. Mostly the strap makes noise going in and out.
Don't rely on the info at Mercantila's rowingmachines dot com website, anyway. That's what I did without realizing it and I really regretted it. Mercantila is just a marketing company. Try machines at the gym, talking to others who use them.
I got this one because I thought the bells and whistles, like the many programs with different patterns of resistance over the workout, might make it easier to forget about rowing and pay attention to something else, like music. That seemed like the best way to avoid getting bored using it.
So far, however, I've controlled the resistance manually, because I can't predict ahead of time what resistance I'll want. But I think some people would enjoy the resistance programs. The pre-set programs have the nice feature that if you press the up-arrow while the program is running, it ups the resistance for the whole program. Also the user can define their own resistance program, something you can't do with most rowing machines.
The heart rate feature, where it adjusts the resistance level to keep you at a certain heart rate, sounds neat but isn't useful. First, before I could use the heart rate feedback program, I had to get heart rate monitor electrode cream to get the heart rate monitor to work reliably.
But even with the heart rate program working as designed, it doesn't work well. It starts out at the lowest resistance, I'm hardly pulling at all, then it quickly steps up the load, much more quickly than my heart rate goes up. So if I don't manually correct the load, the machine loads me up with more resistance than I can keep up long term. So then I have to "sprint" with high resistance until my heart rate goes up to the target, then my heart rate goes higher than the target because I'm sprinting, and then it slowly lets up on the resistance. You get the picture ... The time scale of how fast the machine adjusts the load is out of whack with the time scale of how fast my heart rate goes up during exercise.
The heart rate feedback feature would be more useful if it just beeped when you got out of the range you want. So you could adjust your pace, or the resistance, as you like.
It IS useful to have a heart rate display. But I bought a wrist heart rate monitor and it's worked OK, mounted on rowing machine pullbars.
If you want to do other exercises besides rowing, the R900 may not be the best. The strap loops around the pull-bar, so it would rub a lot if you are doing anything that rotates the strap around the pull-bar. The Kettler Coach which is made for doing exercises besides rowing has a rope with a knot at the end attached to the pull-bar. If your upper body isn't used to it you might need to switch off rowing with something else like biceps curls.
The calorie display is completely wacko as other people have observed.
It's so hard to buy the right things. What's actually helped me relax and forget about rowing has not been resistance programs in the rowing machine, but books on CD. You might want a fairly quiet rowing machine so you can listen to a book or enjoy music. It's quiet enough for that. But I've heard the new Concept 2's are also quiet enough to listen to CD's.
It's the first Internet purchase I've made that was substantially misrepresented. Notwithstanding their friendliness, I don't trust a company that's so casual about wrong info on their web page, and I would not buy anything else from them.
It has not worked for me. I used to run and I wanted a low-impact workout as intense as trail-running, which I can do on the Concept 2, not on the R900. But I can see how other people might think the R900 is wonderful. The magnetic resistance is very smooth and quiet, and other people seem to enjoy preset resistance programs.
Customer Review: Average Cost/Value Ratio
Sport shop rating: 3 Stars
The rowing machine was easy to assemble, stores nicely, works smoothly and I can get an excellent workout WHEN I can set the exercise paramaters correctly in the programable box.