FitDesk 3.0 Desk Exercise Bike With Massage Bar Review

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If you’re looking for a healthier alternative to the classic desk chair, the FitDesk v3.0 Desk Exercise Bike can be a great option. It is an amazing way to improve your cardiovascular health and improve muscle tone while you’re working.

This FitDesk 3.0 review takes a closer look at the design features that are included with this unique piece of fitness equipment, as well as provides a quick summary of the customer reviews and thinking about the health benefits that you can enjoy as a result of exercise while working.

Design Features

If you take a look at many of the modern treadmill and exercise bike designs, you might notice that companies are starting to integrate reading racks into the display consoles.

This is usually in the form of a thin shelf that extends beyond the speakers or is positioned closer to the base of the console so as not to obstruct the LCD screen.

There are also some companies that have developed apps so that if you do choose to use your tablet, it can be used as an extension of the LCD display.

This works extremely well for creating a more realistic visual experience of running a particular route and makes workout information much more visually interesting and easier to read.

The only downside is that this type of fitness equipment can cost more than $1000 to buy new, which is one of the reasons why the FitDesk v3.0 stationary bike has proven to be so popular.

You have a fully adjustable backrest and extender for both upright and semi-recumbent use and an easily adjusted beach cruiser-style seat that allows for a quick and correct fit for users from 4’10” to over 6’.

The Fitdesk v 3.0 bike desk comes with a massage bar that sits in front of the built-in tablet holder and laptop support. This is great for The whisper-quiet, twin belt, high-velocity flywheel also helps to create a smooth cycling motion, despite its lightweight frame.

This combines with the balanced flywheel and precision sealed bearings to create a smooth operation that won’t distract from work or cause unwanted vibrations on the desk surface.

FitDesk vs. TrekDesk

You might have also seen various designs for treadmill desks, where you will often sacrifice the traditional upright supports and safety rails for a larger, flatter working surface above the console. Certain models of treadmill desk have proven to be incredibly popular, with walking and even simply standing while working being of great benefit to your physical health.

In terms of its function, the FitDesk Exercise Bike really isn’t too different from the treadmill desk, and could even be considered the exercise bike alternative. There are many reasons why someone would prefer a bike to work from rather than a treadmill.

The padded seat does an excellent job of providing some much-needed lumbar support to reduce lower back strain, you don’t have to focus on maintaining a certain distance from your work area, and the exercise itself also reduces the impact on your knee joints.

Workout Programs and Exercise Variation

Compared to 5 years ago, there is now a much more of a focus on the importance of physical activity for prolonging your life.

Even something as simple as engaging your legs in resistance pedaling when you are using a laptop, reading a magazine, or playing a video game has significant health benefits over sitting and being inactive for long periods.

Although the FitDesk gives you the option to select from any one of 8 magnetic resistance levels, you shouldn’t expect to find any preset workout programs or think about using this type of bike for HIIT.

If you would like some extra variation added to your exercise, you can even change the configuration of the bike from being an upright design to being recumbent. But whichever position you choose, you will always have the set of resistance bands within easy reach, as the handles attach directly beneath the seat.

These resistance bands are certainly a useful addition if you want to include some upper-body resistance work with your cardio, helping you burn more calories and improve upper-body muscle tone.

Everything You Need to Work and Keep Fit

Even with all of this support for a range of effective cycling workouts, the FitDesk 3.0 Desk Bike still has a number of ergonomically designed features to assist you in your work.

Firstly, the 16″ x 19″ non-slip desk surface is large enough to fit the majority of laptops and tablets, as well as magazines, documents, and books. YouTube video showing the FitDesk v3.0 in action:

The desk surface also features a strap that can help prevent any unwanted movement in any of the items listed above, as well as a hidden drawer for convenient storage of anything you might need to complete your work.

The FitDesk also includes a set of massage rollers attached to a single bar that runs parallel to the desk. This creates comfortable wrist support for when you’re typing or writing, which alleviates the risk of RSI or any other wrist related strain that can develop as a result of extended periods of typing.

Transport and Storage

Another great benefit of the FitDesk 3.0 is just how compact the frame is. Although the bike certainly takes up less space when it’s folded away, whether it’s in the upright or semi-recumbent position, it still only takes up about as much space as a standard desk chair.

The big difference here is that you can fold the FitDesk down to a footprint of just 16″ x 28″ as soon as you finish your work. Weighing in at 45 lbs, this certainly isn’t what we would classify as a heavy piece of equipment, but at the same time, it’s not exactly light.

This is why it’s useful that transport wheels have also been added to the rear base stabilizer, to make it easier to move the bike around when not in use.

Display Console Design

Despite not being as complex as some of the Schwinn or ProForm consoles, the FitDesk v3.0 also includes a performance monitor for updating you with basic workout feedback.

Although the console does list calories burned as one of the pieces of feedback, this probably isn’t something you want to take too seriously. This is because the number of calories burned is a notoriously unreliable piece of information for any machine that doesn’t at least prompt you to enter your body weight.

In fact, if you were to take a look at many of the online calorie calculators that are available, almost all of them will require you to enter your bodyweight as a piece of information that needs to be used in the calculation.

That being said, the LCD display still keeps you updated with your distance and time, which can still be used as a basic way to monitor your progress.

Unfortunately, there aren’t currently any training apps available that let you monitor the feedback remotely via your laptop, which would have been useful considering the laptop screen will hide the console when in use.

However, we don’t necessarily see this as a problem, as if you’re using the desk as a form of exercise while you work, you really only need to check the stats intermittently, or perhaps only once at the end of your workout.

Ease of Assembly

If you’re more used to putting together fitness equipment that has dozens of exploded drawings with every part carefully scaled and documented in the user manual, setting up the FitDesk stationary bike will be a bit of a different experience.

Although the instructions cover everything you need to know, some steps can be quite difficult to understand, which can have an impact on the assembly time. That being said, you should still have no trouble getting this bike set up in less than 30 minutes.

Customer Reviews

For a bike that offers such a unique design and combination of features, we were slightly surprised to find it ranked so highly in Amazon’s list of bestselling exercise bikes.

But by combining features from a standard exercise bike with features designed to improve your work rate, the team behind FitDesk appears to have created something that really works well for busy people who also want to keep fit.

As with every product we review, regardless of how many videos and images you’ve seen, we always recommend having a read through the reviews on e-commerce websites like Amazon.

However, due to the FitDesk v3.0 having well over 2,200 reviews and more than 500 answered questions, this would probably take you most of the day just to read through them all.

That’s why we’ve done most of the time-consuming part for you, having read through a large number of reviews from each rating to build up a balanced overall picture of people’s experiences.

The results of our research into these reviews have been collated into the following lists of pros and cons, which can hopefully act as a quick reference guide.

Pros:

Cons: