Which Fitness Technology Product Is Right for Your Exercise Goal?
Home GymsWhich Fitness Technology Product Is Right for Your Exercise Goal?
Sam Greenspan
Home fitness can evoke images of a bulky treadmill in a backyard shed, sweating without the dignity of a gym’s air conditioning and amenities. Those days are changing — fast.
The latest workout technology doesn’t necessarily come in a big, bulky package. It’s not an eyesore or a piece of equipment that seems like it’s barely evolved since it was first featured in an ‘80s infomercial. It’s also not such a lonely experience anymore — today’s fitness tech is designed with features that mimic the camaraderie of a gym, too, like personal trainers and group workouts. Connected tools not only log your reps and track progress week over week, but are also social, enabling you to compete in real time with friends.
During the pandemic, many former group fitness fans purchased Peloton bikes to keep up their workout habit at home. Even with gyms and fitness classes available again, I’ve gotten hooked on home workouts. They are flexible, meaning I can make changes to suit my needs or mood, and accessible at any time of day or night.
Of course, working out at home requires little more than running shoes and hand weights, but few people are energized by such a stripped down fitness routine. To make fitness a habit and reach your goals, it helps to have support in the form of tools, content, and progress tracking.
Some workout tech falls into the category of tools, like the aforementioned Peloton bike. Others fall into the content category, such as on-demand or live fitness classes, a library so big it means you never do the same class twice. Lastly, both apps and wearables fall into the category of progress tracking, which can be the biggest motivator, when you see the weight going down or muscle mass improving.
No matter what your workout goal is, there are gadgets and apps to support you. We’ve reviewed the options and picked out the best tech for your most pressing workout goals.
The 10 best fitness products for at-home workouts
Oculus Quest 2 - best for boosting energy
What it is: Virtual reality headset
Price: $299
Where to buy: Oculus.com, B&H Video, Best Buy, Gamestop
Exercise releases endorphins, which are brain chemicals that make you feel good. Regular exercise boosts the quality of your relationships, your work, your sleep, and your overall health.
For those who are working from home, a VR workout gives you a physical and visual escape from sitting at your desk. It requires little to no equipment, and fits seamlessly into a break from work. Get your heart rate up in a HIIT (high-impact interval training) workout for 20 minutes and you’ll be more productive both mentally and emotionally for the rest of the day.
A compilation of all studies done on VR workouts to date found that two thirds showed positive results in body composition, fitness level, and muscular strength [1]. While VR headsets had early issues with dizziness and steep price tags, the Oculus Quest 2 costs less than a smartphone, has a built-in calorie tracker, and a growing field of developers, such as Supernatural and FitXR, are making exercise-focused games for the headset.
Oura Ring - best for enhancing immunity
What it is: Activity tracker worn on finger
Price: $299
Where to buy: Ouraring.com, goop
Our body’s immune system is constantly fighting off illness and we can boost its ability with fitness, diet, and sleep. But, we can also self-sabotage by pushing ourselves too hard in a workout when we should be having a rest day.
Oura Ring is a fitness tracker worn on the finger, a benefit that means people wear it more consistently, especially overnight, producing a better data set. It tracks steps, calories burned, heart rate, and sleep metrics just like wrist-worn activity trackers, but uniquely, it also measures body temperature. Spikes in temperature often indicate an illness is coming on.
The Oura Ring uses temperature along with heart rate variability (HRV), what researchers call the “well-being metric,” to provide a readiness score, indicating when you are at your peak physical and mental capacity [2]. This can tell you when it’s a good day to do your long run and when you should skip a workout for a nap. Long term, you’ll become a better athlete by listening to your body.
Noom - best for weight loss
What it is: App that creates a personalized fitness and nutrition plan
Price: $59/month
Where to buy: Noom
A personal trainer or a YouTube video can give you a set of exercises that will help you lose weight, but despite hard work and follow through, weight often yo-yos back up once the program is complete.
Noom turns your weight loss goals, body type, and timeline into an actionable nutrition and fitness plan. It is based on Cognitive Behavior Therapy, so it digs into the reasons why we make choices rather than just telling us what to do differently [3]. This deeper level helps people make changes to their habits that are permanent, and enables long-term results.
In Noom, you are also able to log your meals and workouts, which boosts accountability in sticking to your plan.
Tempo - best for toning appearance
What it is: Smart home gym set
Price: $2,495 to $3,995 plus monthly membership ($39/mo.)
Whether you’re toning your abs for the beach or the ‘gram, there is no time like today to look your absolute best. With a smart home gym, you can lift weights via workouts customized to you, with artificial intelligence checking your form to make sure you’re getting the most out of your effort.
The Tempo home gym comes with all the equipment you need, turning a corner of your home into a boutique gym just for you. On the lowest price package, you’ll get dumbbells with weight plates to adjust the load, and you can upgrade to also get kettlebells, a barbell, a bench, a heart rate monitor, and more. The monthly membership provides a range of workouts from strength to HIIT to recovery, and in live classes, an instructor gives you form feedback based on a sensor that shows them a skeleton of your body (keeping the state of your living room in privacy).
Tonal - best for bodybuilding
What it is: Smart home gym set
Price: $2,995 to $3,490 plus monthly membership ($49/mo.)
Where to buy: Tonal
Bodybuilders may be looking for a bit more than just the best features of the gym brought home. Like the Tempo home gym, the Tonal provides form check through sensors and automatically tracks your progress. The core distinction between the two systems is Tonal uses resistance cables rather than physical weights, allowing for up to 200 lbs of resistance (or 100 lbs per arm).
The home gym kicks off with a strength assessment so the exercises and resistance given to each user is customized. The benefit of resistance cables for serious weightlifters is that Tonal can update the resistance in real-time if it senses fatigue to prevent injury in a feature called Spotter. Another advanced feature, Eccentric, can add resistance to the negative portion of movement. Throughout this dynamic workout, you don’t have to keep track of anything, because Tonal’s app does that automatically. Tonal offers on-demand classes through its membership.
Tonal is securely installed on your wall when it is delivered so it takes up zero floor space.
Mirror - best for getting stronger
What it is: Home workout system
Price: $1,495 plus monthly membership ($39/mo.)
Where to buy: Mirror
Kettlebell classes to improve your golf game, yoga to prevent running injuries, and all-around cardio to keep you in top shape for that occasional hike — all of this can be found on Mirror, the sleek furniture-meets-home gym.
Unlike Tempo and Tonal, Mirror does not count reps or provide hand weights, though you can use your own equipment in its classes. While those home gyms provide a mirror image of your appearance while you work out, Mirror is the only one that is actually a mirror, and looks like a piece of furniture when turned off.
It has the largest library of both on-demand and live classes (1,000+) and with a heart rate monitor synced, you can compete with classmates on the leaderboard to provide a sense of community and competitive motivation. It is also the only home gym to offer one-on-one personal training.
As a runner-up, if you love the concept of live social gym classes with top trainers but don’t want to invest in the equipment, the Fiit app (for iPhone and Android) offers a large library of classes and can sync your heart rate monitor to its social leaderboard.
SoulCycle bike - best for building endurance
What it is: A connected exercise bike
Price: $2,500 plus monthly membership ($40/mo.)
Where to buy: Equinox+
For athletes, a lack of endurance training means they put their body at risk for injury when their body becomes fatigued. For everyone, endurance training improves metabolism and reduces the risk of heart disease [4].
Conditioning can look like swimming laps, extending the distance or time of runs, or biking. Our expert pick for the best at-home option for cardio conditioning is the SoulCycle bike. The bike fits in small spaces and comes with a screen that can play on-demand classes, live classes from SoulCycle’s West Village studio, or any movie or TV show from streaming services if you’d prefer to bike while watching a Netflix show instead of participating in a class. True to SoulCycle’s style, the classes are music-heavy and inspirational, rather than focusing on metrics. The classes also integrate choreography and weight-lifting just like SoulCycle’s studio classes so you also get an upper-body workout.
SoulCycle’s bike is more sturdy and commercial-grade than its closest competitor, Peloton, though for someone who prefers a workout focused on metrics over mood, Peloton would be the best choice. Both brands offer their classes through a monthly membership that also offers additional classes, such as boxing or yoga, and both bikes require clip-in shoes, sold separately.
Flexbeam - best for recovery from injury
What it is: Wearable red light therapy device
Price: $599
Where to buy: Recharge Health
Red light therapy maximizes workouts with faster recovery. Studies show that red light triggers your cells to produce molecules that help your body heal. Whether you are dealing with pain from a car accident that is disrupting your workouts or chronic pain related to sports like tennis elbow, using a red light device can get you back to your workouts faster and in better health.
Flexbeam is the first red light therapy device that molds to your body instead of blasting red light from across the room. And unlike pharmaceuticals, there are no side effects.
Fitbit Sense - best for lowering stress and improving sleep
Our bodies are interconnected and a steady workout plan can stimulate digestion, improve sleep, boost posture, and lower chronic pain. When we look to fitness to help us with lowering stress and improving sleep, it matters less which activity we choose, and more that we do it consistently. A wearable fitness tracker not only logs workouts and steps, but helps you correlate your activity with feeling good.
The Fitbit Sense is the best activity tracker on the market right now. In addition to steps, floors climbed, calories burned, and distance, it records sleep quality, heart rate and HRV (the golden “well-being metric”), skin temperature, breathing, and electrodermal activity (EDA). All together, these metrics help paint a picture of your stress levels and how to improve your quality of life. Fitbit’s recommendations also include some of its 200+ video and audio workouts or mindfulness practices through its partner app, Calm, which you’ll get a six-month subscription to with the purchase of your Fitbit.
Withings Body Cardio - best for improving body composition
What it is: A smart scale
Price: $150
Where to buy: Withings, Bed Bath & Beyond, Apple
Not all body fat is created equal. While most of us are familiar with the fat you can pinch with your fingers, called subcutaneous fat, there is another kind of fat deeper in the abdominal area called visceral fat that pads between our organs, and is linked with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes [6].
Even if your body isn’t shaped the way our culture considers to be “overweight,” it’s worth knowing your body composition so you can adapt your workouts and eating habits to prevent long-term health problems.
Withings' most advanced smart scale measures body fat percentage, muscle mass, fat mass, water weight, and bone mass, and can track these metrics over time for multiple members of your family to show trends. The Body Cardio scale is the only product from Withings that also measures heart rate.
These metrics will support your weight loss goals, as they can separate out loss of fat from gain in muscle mass that often obscures the progress made in a weight-loss plan. If you are working on increasing your athleticism or getting stronger, the scale can help you assign a metric like muscle mass or body fat percentage that shows progress more clearly than the reflection in the mirror.
Like many products on this list, the Withings Body Cardio scale can help you meet multiple goals, and can sync with other connected devices such as the Fitbit, so go ahead and invest in multiple products to take your fitness to a whole new level.
A few other fitness tech gadgets for all goals
Hidrate Spark 3
Some of the issues surrounding dehydration include thinking you’re hungry when you are actually thirsty, headaches, sleeplessness, and low energy. A smart water bottle from Hidrate Spark can sync with your activity tracker to personalize its water intake recommendations, custom to your activity level and vitals.
Apple Watch 7
Activity trackers have expanded above simply counting steps to being an umbrella for health metrics that show your progress and support your fitness goals. Both the Apple and Fitbit products offer similar features. Fitbit Sense has better sleep analysis, but if you use other Apple products you may prefer the more intuitive integration with the Apple Watch.
Hyperice Vyper 3
Vibrating foam rollers are increasingly popular with pro athletes in how they mimic the myofascial release typically found in massage [7]. Benefits include better circulation, reduced pain, and faster recovery through loosening muscles and improving range of motion. The Vyper 3 is an upgrade from the previous release in the product line and has three speeds.
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