I’ve always found cycling on an exercise bike to be extremely boring, so right from the start I’m slightly biased against them. However there is no denying that they can be a good form of exercise, so I still use them in the gym every now and again.

The StairMaster Momentum 3400 CE model has quite a good range of options. There are several types of routine you can do, such as fat burn, cardiac, speed intervals (my personal favourite), zone trainer, and fitness test. Mostly the different work outs aim to keep you within certain heart rate ranges – cardiac obviously being the highest. You can adjust them but as a default the bike sets it to the optimum rate according to your age. Speed intervals gives you a high-low-high-low resistance set into equal time periods, allowing you to really work your muscles and then ease off a bit without actually stopping. Personally I find this the most effective way of using the bike. For some reason I just don’t like using bikes, maybe my muscles aren’t used to it so I find it more difficult, but it’s not conductive to me keeping going on the machine for a long time. The fact that the saddle is extremely uncomfortable doesn’t help, and cycling while standing isn’t really a good option unless the bike is very firmly connected to the ground. You can set the time (in minutes) and the base resistance level (from 1 to 20). There is actually a built-in entertainment system, but in the gym I go to this is disabled so I can’t comment on it. (The soundtrack at our gym isn’t normally too bad, but every so often gets very annoying and for some inexplicable reason the volume also increases when what sounds like a couple of demented chipmunks singing “Last night a DJ saved my life”, which can provoke a migraine from even a perfectly happy head.)

For determined cyclers there are all the functions you could possibly want, but the fact that I’m not a fan of exercise bikes in general and the uncomfortable seats prevents me from having any enthusiasm for it. Also the casing by the pedals tends to be a bit prone to cracking open, sometimes completely and sometimes just enough to catch your heel slightly on every revolution. The saddle is height adjustable and this is a plus point as operation of the variable height is easy to use, and the range of heights you can use will be suitable for basically everyone.

As it’s an upright model this bike would be quite a good choice if you don’t have tons of space. The display tells you speed, calories burned, cals / hour, and incline level as you go on. It can also display Watts, RPM, METS, distance travelled, elapsed time, and heart rate. (The bike has a heart-rate monitor built into the handlebars.)

The StairMaster Momentum 3400 CE is quite a good bit of kit overall but with a few drawbacks. Retail price seems to be $2,999 which seems very steep, though I’ve seen it second-hand for under a grand. (Not that I’m thinking of buying one – not that it would be an option for me anyway – but I wanted to find out so that the review could be relatively complete.) It’s not the machine’s fault that I’m not a great fan of exercise bikes to begin with!


See Also:

StairMaster Momentum 3800 RC exercise bike (recumbent)

Reebok Body Trec Elliptical Trainer

Reebok Body Peak Elliptical Trainer

Life Fitness 9500 HR Cross Trainer

Top Ten Reasons to Join a Gym


Recommended: Yes