As a yoga teacher, I love the practice because it gets my body—and my mind—feeling right. I haven’t experienced anything like it until I started using the SoulCycle At-Home Bike ($2,500 plus a $39.99 monthly membership). This premium addition to your smart home gym features a sleek and sturdy steel frame with a 21.5-inch touch screen on which you can stream immersive virtual classes that bring the heart-pumping, inspirational studio experience for which SoulCycle is known to the comfort and safety of your home. Its classes will have you sweating as you work to master choreography moves while simultaneously spinning the pedals beneath your feet to the beat of music. Whereas the Peloton Bike+ motivates you through metrics and competition, SoulCycle offers a more meditative, dance-focused experience. Both are excellent options, and equally worthy of our Editors’ Choice award for high-end smart indoor cycles.
A Premium Price and Design
The SoulCycle At-Home bike costs about the same as Peloton’s top-of-the-line model, the Bike+. It will set you back $2,500, plus $39.99 per month for a Variis class membership, making it one of the most expensive smart stationary bikes on the market. In addition to the bike and the membership, you’ll need a pair of clip-in cycling shoes, and you’ll also want a set of light hand weights. SoulCycle offers compatible Pearl Izumi clip-in cycling shoes starting at $175, and a set of two-pound hand weights for $18. That brings the total cost of the bike and accessories to $2,693.
Without accessories, the Peloton Bike+ costs $2,495, or you can get the original Peloton Bike for $1,895. Peloton’s Essentials package, which includes the Bike+ or the original model, a pair of clip-in shoes, a set of hand weights, and a bike mat, costs $2,695 or $2,045, respectively. Peloton charges $39 per month for an All-Access class membership.
If $2,500 is more than you can afford upfront, SoulCycle offers financing options starting at $64.10 per month for 39 months. That doesn’t include the Variis membership fee, so if you finance the bike, it will cost around $100 per month in total while you’re paying off the machine.
SoulCycle offers a 30-day trial, so if you’re not happy with the bike, you can get a refund, minus a $250 shipping and handling fee. The bike comes with a one-year touch screen warranty, a one-year parts warranty, and a five-year frame warranty.
The SoulCycle At-Home Bike is one of the sturdiest and most comfortable smart indoor cycles I’ve used. It’s best to put workout equipment like this on hard flooring, but I’m working with limited space so I have it in a room with wall-to-wall carpeting with no mat underneath the bike, and it feels completely sturdy and doesn’t rock side to side at all when I ride.
In terms of build quality, it’s on par with the Bike+, offering a compact design and a premium look and feel. The Bike+ does offer a few advantages, including a slightly larger touch screen (23.8 inches vs. 21.5 inches) and a 360-degree swiveling display mount, so you can rotate the screen 180 degrees left and right, which comes in handy when you’re doing workouts off the bike. The SoulCycle’s screen tilts up and down, but it doesn’t rotate from side to side.
The Bike+ also offers an Auto Follow feature, which automatically adjusts your resistance to match the instructor’s cues, so you don’t have to fiddle with the knob if you don’t want to. The NordicTrack Commercial S22i Studio Cycle one-ups this with the ability to automatically adjust not just your resistance, but also your incline and decline, as you ride. Most other smart stationary bikes, including the Bike+ and SoulCycle, can’t incline or decline, let alone do so automatically.
On SoulCycle’s bike, you have to manually control the resistance with a knob. It features a magnetic Eddy current and micro-adjust knob for smooth, silent, frictionless resistance. Rotating the knob adjusts the Eddy current brake, made up of two large magnets that add and remove resistance based on their distance from the flywheel. Rotating the dial to the right increases the resistance, while rotating it to the left decreases it. The knob also serves as an emergency break you can push down on to stop the pedals.
As for hardware specs, the bike features a bright 1,920-by-1,080-pixel, 21.5-inch sweat-resistant touch screen with an anti-glare coating and dual 8-watt speakers with a 15-watt woofer. Specifically engineered for the bike, the speakers are oriented toward you as you ride, offering a “surround sound environment” that’s loud and engaging. The bike supports ANT+ and Bluetooth 5.0, so you can easily connect wireless headphones and heart rate monitors. I had no problem using my Apple AirPods with it.
With the touch screen, the bike weighs 142 pounds and measures 62 by 22 by 54 inches (LWH), making it slightly wider and shorter than the Bike+ (59 by 22 by 59 inches). Two small wheels on the front base make it fairly easy to move around—I know this well because I had to move it from my workout room, which is lower than the rest of my house and susceptible to flooding, to my dining room during tropical storm Eta.
The bike is intended for riders 4 feet, 10 inches to 6 feet, 10 inches tall and up to 350 pounds. Aside from two water bottle holders and a dumbbell rack behind the seat, the bike doesn’t offer any other storage areas. It requires clip-in shoes, but features dual-sided pedals that support either Delta or SPD cleats. The stock pedals on the Peloton Bike and Bike+ only work with Delta cleats.
Like Peloton’s shoes, the Pearl Izumis SoulCycle offers feature Delta clips on the bottom. Having used both, I prefer the Pearl Izumis to Peloton’s shoes because I find they’re easier to get in and out of. The former features three Velcro straps while the latter has a buckle and two Velcro straps. The buckle might hold up better than Velcro in the long term, but it can be cumbersome to adjust, and the last thing you want to do after a tough cycling session is struggle to remove your shoes.
The Variis Membership
On the software side, the Variis membership gives you unlimited access to a growing library of on-demand SoulCycle classes, plus around five to 10 live classes per day. At this point, there are “hundreds” of on-demand SoulCycle workouts on the platform, according to a spokesperson. Peloton’s workout library is much larger, with thousands to choose from, and around 10 to 12 live classes throughout the day. Even so, there’s plenty of SoulCycle content to get you started, with more being added regularly.
To supplement your cycling classes, the company recently launched a feature called Soul Arms, offering 5- to 15-minute arm workouts taught by SoulCycle instructors. These workouts are meant to be taken alone or layered on top of bike classes to give you extra upper body burn.
On the bike’s display, you can also take advantage of a Free Ride feature that lets you do your own thing while listening to music or watching Disney+ or Netflix. Peloton doesn’t support Disney+ or Netflix, so SoulCycle has a major edge in terms of entertainment options. The Bowflex VeloCore beats both on this front, with support for Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix.
With the Variis membership, you also get access to an eponymous mobile app (available for Android and iOS) that features boxing, HIIT, meditation, running, sculpt, strength, stretching/recovery, walking, and yoga classes from brands like Equinox, PURE Yoga, Precision Run, HeadStrong, Myodetox, Rumble, [solidcore], and TB12. I wish these classes were available on the bike’s built-in display, but they’re only accessible via the Variis mobile app.
All SoulCycle classes are also available in the Variis app, so if you hop on a different stationary bike when traveling or at the gym, you can still follow along with your favorite instructors. If you’d rather watch it on a big screen, you can beam Variis content from your mobile device to your TV via Apple AirPlay or Google Chromecast.
Peloton’s All Access class membership also offers a variety of floor-based workouts to supplement your cycling sessions, including Barre, bootcamp, HIIT cardio, meditation, outdoor running, running, strength training, stretching, and yoga. You can access all of this content on the Peloton bike’s display and via the company’s mobile app.
Setting Up the SoulCycle At-Home Bike
Shipping and assembly are included in the SoulCycle At-Home Bike’s price. On the day my review unit arrived, the masked delivery team carried the almost-fully-assembled bike into my home, placed it in my desired location, installed the screen, then plugged it in to make sure it was working correctly. The whole process only took about 15 minutes.
To turn on the bike, just press and hold the power button on the right side of the touch screen for up to three seconds. You can wake the screen with a quick press and release of the power button. To restart or turn off the bike, press the power button for three seconds. The first time you turn it on, on-screen instructions walk you through the setup process, which includes connecting the bike to your Wi-Fi network, setting up your hardware (connecting the power meter and accessories), and logging into or creating a Variis account.
The bike features a Stages power meter (the same one used by professional cycling teams) to keep track of your power (how much force you’re using to pedal, measured in Watts) and cadence (how fast you’re pedaling, measured in rotations per minute, or RPMs). To set it up, the bike instructs you to carefully advance the pedals until you receive an on-screen confirmation that your power meter is activated. The first time I did this, I spun the pedals around for a while, and nothing happened. I then noticed a white rubber band near the pedal labeled Remove. I removed it, advanced the pedals again, and the power meter successfully connected.
During the account setup process, you need to enter your birthday, gender identity (there are options for non-binary, man, and woman), height, and weight so the system can accurately calculate your calories burned and other stats. It then asks you to select what type of music “gets you moving” with options for alternative, country, dance, hip-hop, rock, Latin, pop, pop rock, reggae, and R&B. Next, it asks whether you’re new to SoulCycle or an experienced rider.
If you’re a newbie, it walks you through the bike setup process, which includes adjusting the seat height, handlebar height, seat depth, and handlebar depth. On some other smart stationary bikes, it can be difficult to adjust the handlebar height due to the weight of the screen. Fortunately, SoulCycle’s model features a spring lift assist system that makes it easy to adjust the handlebar height on your own.
Variis Interface
The Variis interface is well organized and easy to navigate, with three main tabs on the bottom: For You, Explore, and More. On-screen buttons along the bottom also let you access the Free Ride feature, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth settings, and your profile. If you’re browsing the interface when a live class is about to begin, you’ll get a pop-up asking if you want to join.
The For You section offers recommended classes with your favorite instructors and playlists you might like. Here, you can also view upcoming live classes, workouts you’ve saved, and featured rides of the week.
In Explore, you can browse and filter the entire on-demand workout library, and view the full schedule of upcoming live classes. You can filter workouts by category (cycling or sculpt), length (five to 90 minutes), instructor, level (introductory, beginner, intermediate, and advanced), and music. SoulCycle classes are led by over 30 instructors, so you’re sure to find one you like. Some lead with humor, for instance, while others are more militant.
The More section offers tutorial videos and safety instructions. Here, you can also contact the company for hardware, software, or account support, or to report a bug.
In your profile, SoulCycle keeps a record of all the classes you’ve taken, your stats for each session, and any milestones you’ve reached.
When you’re browsing classes and tap on one that looks good, a preview screen pops up with a written description, a workout breakdown chart (showing fast paces, climbs/pushes, choreography, and weights), and the playlist, to help you decide if you want to go for it. From the preview screen, you can connect Bluetooth headphones and/or a heart rate monitor. When you’re clipped in and ready to go, press Play, and the class will begin.
Working Out With the SoulCycle At-Home Bike
During SoulCycle classes, there are just three metrics atop the screen: your cadence, power, and distance in miles. At the bottom of the screen, there’s a progress bar showing how much time has elapsed and remains in the workout. At any point, you can swipe away the metrics and/or progress bar if you’d rather view the class in full-screen mode.
In comparison, the Peloton Bike screen is filled with additional metrics to look at during cycling classes, including your resistance level, speed, calories burned, and total output (how much work you’ve done over the whole ride so far, measured in kilojoules, or KJs). Also notably absent during SoulCycle classes is a leaderboard.
That said, it’s a bit difficult to compare the SoulCycle experience with Peloton’s, because the focus is very different. On the Peloton Bike, instructors often tell you to try to stay within a specific cadence and resistance range. They might, for instance, say to tune your resistance to between 35 and 45 while maintaining a cadence of 90 to 100RPM. SoulCycle instructors tell you when to add or take off resistance, and when to speed up and slow down, but they never talk about specific cadence or resistance numbers.
Your goal on SoulCycle isn’t to work your way up a leaderboard, it’s to match your cadence with the beat of the music. This focus brings a meditative aspect to the workouts.
When you finish a SoulCycle workout, a summary screen shows your Beat Match score from zero to 100 percent, which indicates how much of the time your cadence matched the rhythm of the music. The workout summary screen also shows your average and max cadence and power.
“SoulCycle is about the music and riding to the beat of the pack—it’s not about metrics,” a spokesperson said. “Riders are presented with their Beat Match after they complete a class so they can focus on the instructor and the beat of the music.”
Almost all SoulCycle workouts also incorporate choreography moves like handlebar push-ups (bending your elbows to the sides), crunches (bending your elbows straight back), and tap-backs (shifting your hips back while standing). It can be very challenging to cycle on beat while simultaneously doing the choreography moves. It’s almost like that brainteaser where you pat your head while rubbing your stomach in a circular motion—it’s challenging because you’re doing one thing on the bottom half of your body (following the beat) and something else on your top half (dance-inspired moves). This is especially true during intermediate and advanced classes, which typically involve fast and varied choreography moves.
Swiping in from the bottom left side of the screen with your finger brings up a picture-in-picture Form Rider View. If you’re having trouble following the beat or choreography, the Form Rider View can help.
SoulCycle classes often alternate slow and fast songs to challenge you with quick paces that get your heart rate up and heavy pushes to build strength. The music is excellent; you’ll hear everyone from Britney Spears and TLC to Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails. When a new song comes on, you’ll see a pop-up on the screen with the artist and title. During slow songs, the instructor will tell you to increase your resistance to make it harder to pedal. During fast-paced songs, they’ll tell you to lower your resistance so you can cycle faster.
Most SoulCycle classes, especially the 30- and 45-minute sessions, incorporate hand weights. The instructor will tell you to grab the dumbbells from the rack behind the seat, then guide you through an arm workout. During the arm segment, you turn your resistance up very high so you’re pedaling either slowly or not at all. The arm segment helps to break up the class and fight boredom while giving you a more full-body workout.
If you need to pause the workout, you can do so at any time by tapping the screen (Peloton, by comparison, doesn’t let you pause workouts, which is an intentional decision). Swiping in from the right side of the screen brings up volume, audio output, and connected heart rate monitor controls.
Becoming a SoulCyclist
Before testing the At-Home Bike, I had never taken a SoulCycle class. I first heard of the brand about a decade ago while living in New York City, where SoulCycle is based. Several friends were devotees of SoulCycle studio classes, but I was deeply entrenched in the yoga scene, and indoor cycling didn’t seem like my thing. The cost also held me back, as SoulCycle studio classes are expensive: the going rate is around $26 to $36 for a single session, depending on the location.
I went into this review thinking the SoulCycle At-Home Bike would offer a similar experience to Peloton, but that’s not the case. SoulCycle is unlike any other workout I’ve tried, offering a blend of cardio, strength training, dance, and meditation.
I’m not a particularly competitive or metrics-driven person, so I find SoulCycle’s focus on choreography and cycling to a beat more inspiring than Peloton’s emphasis on your output and leaderboard rank.
I often find myself riding on the SoulCycle At-Home Bike with my eyes closed, fully engrossed in the music. This helps me silence my mind and focus on the present moment, similar to the mental benefits I experience from practicing yoga.
In the nearly three months I’ve been testing the bike, I’ve taken 21 classes, cycled the equivalent of over 100 miles, and earned an average Beat Match score of 83.5%.
My favorite instructor, Ross, talks a lot about bravery, resilience, and making a commitment to yourself to push on and work hard, even when times get tough. More than just a workout, his classes have lifted my spirit amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and I’m so grateful for them.
My only problem is that I want more Ross content! At the time of this writing, he currently has 11 classes on the platform, and I’ve already taken 10 of them (his latest class just dropped today, and I plan on taking it as soon as possible).
At first, it took a bit of time to learn the choreography moves (and I’m admittedly still working on my tap-backs), but that’s part of the fun of the experience for me. Between ballet and tap dancing as a kid, cheerleading as a pre-teen, being on the color guard team throughout high school, and practicing and teaching yoga as an adult, choreography has always been a part of my life in some way. SoulCycle’s choreography helps to pass the time, and makes the workouts a lot of fun. The instructors usually repeat the same sequence a few times, so you have a chance to learn it, then refine your moves.
It’s hard, but moves that I initially struggled with are now getting easier. My ability to stay on beat is improving. For me, these small victories offer a greater sense of accomplishment than climbing a leaderboard. That said, if you’re motivated by competition, you’ll probably be happier with a Peloton Bike.
SoulCycle or Peloton?
SoulCycle says the At-Home Bike is designed to make you feel like you’re in the front row of an actual studio class. With its well-thought-out and produced workouts, excellent instructors and playlists, and uncluttered, intuitive interface, SoulCycle truly achieves this goal. Its sturdy and streamlined hardware and inspirational classes make it the most compelling Peloton Bike+ competitor I’ve tested.
At $2,500 plus $39.99 per month for a class membership, SoulCycle costs about the same as Peloton. The good news is that choosing between the two isn’t that hard, because they’re very different. SoulCycle’s music- and choreography-focused classes challenge you to cycle on beat while performing dance-like moves, whereas Peloton focuses on monitoring your metrics and working your way up the leaderboard.
Both bikes give you access to a range of floor-based workouts to supplement your cycling sessions, adding value to their monthly membership fee. And both will leave you dripping in sweat and excited to come back day after day. Ultimately, the SoulCycle At-Home Bike stands alongside the Peloton Bike+ as one of the best smart stationary bikes you can buy, and is equally worthy of our Editors’ Choice award.
