Home Gym Comparison

These home gyms may be purchased here.

Resistance - Selectorized weights are the easy pin-select type. On gyms requiring freeweights, you'll need to slide your freeweights (not included) on and off the machines, but you can potentially load them much heavier than selectorized systems.

Exercises - We stop counting at 50. These are very general numbers. You can often add higher than the indicated number by doing exercises that the manual doesn't include or that are variations on existing exercises.

Leg Press - Everyone wants a leg press, so we've listed it. Some machines come with it standard, and on others you have to pay for the option.

Ok, so that's a lot of choices. To help you out, here's a general rank of the brand quality:

1. Entry Level: Best Fitness (Basic Training Gym, Sportsmans Gym): 3 year warranty. Good enough quality that Body Solid, a trusted company, will make them for price-conscious consumers, but these gyms are not as awesome as nicer equipment.
2. Mid Level: PowerLine: Another Body Solid brand. 10 year warranty on everything, so they're designed to last.
3. Light-Commercial: Body Solid: Anything with the Body Solid brand logo on it is good stuff. They take their brand name seriously, and most gyms have a lifetime warranty.
4. Light-Commercial to Full Commercial: BodyCraft: Their stuff is even more heavy-duty than Body Solid. You can't knock their quality.

Functional trainer machines have gotten to be all the rage lately because of the huge variety of potential exercises, including sports-specific movements, by virtue of their versatile design.

Prices and availability subject to change.