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The Schwinn 270 is the flagship recumbent bike produced by one of the world’s leading fitness equipment companies, and one of the bestselling recumbents on Amazon.
But what does this mean for your fitness routine, and how does it compare to other home exercise bikes?
This review takes a look at the bike in more detail, with in-depth guides to the workout programs, design features, and both the pros and cons from the Amazon customer reviews.
Design features
Although your range of motion is more limited than using standard upright bikes, it’s still important to be able to make adjustments to various settings to make sure you are in a comfortable and efficient position for your workout.
To ensure you are seated the correct distance from the pedals, the ventilated seat can slide along a glide rail and fix into one of the pre defined positions, making this an excellent choice of bike for both taller and shorter users.
Both the back support and padded section of the seat have been ergonomically contoured to better support and cushion you during your workouts, making your training much more comfortable and enjoyable.
On either side of this seat are handles to help provide a rest for your hands, but also double up as a way of measuring your heart rate due to the built in heart rate hand sensors.
Stability and transport
The Schwinn 270 recumbent bike also features levellers attached to the rear stabilizer bar and the main frame rail to help keep the bike stable on any uneven ground.
If you think you will need to move the bike around once it’s setup, a large handle has been attached to the rear stabilizer, with transport wheels attached to the front to make it easier to transport.
- Dual track two LCD window system allows you to monitor up to 13 different display feedbacks
- Schwinn Connect goal tracking and data export keep you up to date on reaching your fitness goals
- 29 programs, 4 user settings and goal tracking are all there to keep you motivated and challenged
- 25 levels of resistance aligned with a high speed high inertia perimeter weighted flywheel make every workout smooth and quiet
- Charging USB port and data exchange
Ease of assembly
Although the Schwinn 270 Recumbent Bike weighs nearly 100 lb when fully assembled, setting the bike up after taking all the parts out of the box can still comfortably be a one person job.
The main base unit and flywheel housing arrives already pre-assembled, and remains upright and stable after attaching the front and rear stabilizers, which is a simple case of screwing in 4 bolts.
Each of the steps in the user manual clearly details which parts need to go where, with a large diagram and textual explanation provided on each page.
The only slightly complex part is when it comes to building the seat, but once this is done you only have to assemble the main handlebar frame and attach the display console.
Display console design
While certain fitness companies will put a lot of focus into the actual bike design then provide a very average looking display console, Schwinn always seem to go out of their way to provide you with a console that looks and feels like the quality design you would hope for.
The display console for the Schwinn 270 Recumbent Bike has been divided into three main sections; the screens, the buttons, and the fan / speakers.
Although most exercise bikes will display all of the workout information in the one screen, the lower display is actually used to display your workout information, while the upper screen is reserved for displaying your progress towards goals, current workout program, intensity, and heart rate zone.
Despite its smaller size, the lower display screen still manages to clearly display your speed, time, distance, resistance level, and pedal revolutions per minute.
Workout programs
If you are serious about keeping track of your heart rate and calories burned, it’s essential that you have the option to provide information such as your age, weight, and gender before you start your workout.
Unless the machine has this information, any calories burned shown on the display will only be an estimate.
The Schwinn 270 Recumbent Bike allows you to create up to 4 of these user profiles, providing a small amount of personal information that improves the accuracy of your workout information and allows your individual workouts to be reviewed after each session if required.
After creating your user profile there are a range of preset workout programs to choose from.
These range from lower intensity (fun rides), to high intensity (mountains), and even a range of ‘Challenges’ which provided more targeted training styles, such as interval or cross-training.
As well as the predefined workout programs for improving your overall fitness, you also have the choice of 2 styles of fitness test, which are an excellent way of measuring how much you are improving.
Fitness test – This uses the values you entered in your user profile for age and weight and combines them with the fitness level you enter for yourself (Beginner or Advanced) to determine your overall fitness score.
The score itself is calculated after 3 minutes of continuous cycling at approximately 75 percent of your maximum heart rate.
Recovery test – A very simple form of test that measures how quickly your heart rate returns to normal after you finish your workout (must be holding the heart rate hand sensors).
Goal track statistics
Based on your user profile, the ‘Goal Track’ statistics can be viewed during your workout to view information such as how many calories were burnt over the past 30 days, as well as viewing overall personal bests for that user profile, such as your longest workout time.
This is useful for helping to set new goals for longer workouts or burning more calories, with an audible sound and achievement indicator light becoming active whenever you break one of these personal records.
Customer reviews
Before you commit to buying any piece of exercise equipment, particularly larger items such as treadmills and exercise bikes, it’s important to find out as much information about the product as possible.
While this product article aims to provide all the information you need from a technical point of view, it can also be useful to read the reviews from other people who have bought the Schwinn 270 and are currently using it in their home.
While the full range of customer reviews is available on Amazon, the following list summarises the main positives and negatives we found when reading through.
- Ultra smooth cycling motion
- Easy to assemble with great instructions
- Quiet to use
- Excellent alternative for people that can’t use treadmills due to knee problems
- Useful being able to mount an iPad or Kindle without any additional accessories
- Comfortable seat
- No user manual included for the console
- A few experienced difficulty getting the heart rate readout to work
Although there are some lower rated reviews on Amazon, the vast majority of these appear to be answered directly by Nautilus Consumer Relations (Schwinn are now owned by Nautilus), so the customer service still seems to be the high level you would expect, wanting to resolve any issues as soon as possible.
Review Overview
Looking at the overall features of the Schwinn 270, it does an excellent job of providing everything you could really need from a recumbent bike.
The walk through frame and low impact nature of the exercise is well suited to anyone recovering from an injury and looking to build back their fitness. At the same time, this bike provides a range of both low and high intensity workouts, making it a good choice for a variety of fitness levels.
If you want to monitor how much you are improving over your future workouts, workout metrics can be uploaded via a USB thumb drive to the SchwinnConnect™ website for weekly, monthly, and yearly tracking of progress.
An iconic American brand with a long history of innovation, the 270 is testament to Schwinn's continuing development of high quality products for healthy, active lifestyles.
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