The new year is here and for most of us that means new years resolutions. I have always considered the ‘weight loss’ resolution to be cliche so this year I decided to make sure that my resolution was to find affordable alternatives to things I want or to D.I.Y. most of my purchases (if possible). I do however have to lose some weight and with my fears of covid still raging, my girlfriend and I decided to get a Peloton bike to do some cardio here at home instead of a gym. The issue though was that they are far more expensive than anything I would like to spend on right now (about $1800 for the basic) so it was time to put my resolution to work.

We looked online for a much more affordable alternative bike that we could use along with our ipads, to give us a similar overall Peloton experience. After some time, and reading many reviews, we decided on the Sunny Health Bike SF-B1002/C for about $335 (currently on sale). It comes in parts but the build is very simple with easily understandable instructions. The parts are from strong metal so once built, the bike is solid and doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap whatsoever. Below are some images of the build process.

Once we decided on the bike, we needed some extra accessories since the bike itself was only JUST the bike. After some more research I found a bluetooth sensor to put on the bike that measures the ‘cadence’ of your spinning. It is important to be able to measure your cadence while doing spinning classes as the instructors will normally tell you to pedal at a certain cadence at particular parts of the workout. The sensor we purchased is the Wahoo Cadence Sensor for about $40. The sensor attaches easily onto one of the bike pedals and then requires an app on your device to set up. Once it is set up, the Peloton app will connect to the sensor and show your cadence on the screen as your pedal.

We also purchased a tablet holder mount to attach to the arms of our bike. This enables us to mount our iPad to the bike right in front, similar to how the expensive bikes come equipped. Peloton has a stand alone app that you can use without having their bikes which is about $12 a month. We decided to create accounts and now we are all set with Bike, Screen, Cadence, and Classes.

Optional purchases that we made but aren’t required to get going on the fitness bike journey were: 1 – A seat cushion for the bike to give it some extra padding and 2 – A Sunny bike mat to put on the floor underneath the bike.

The only CON from this setup is that the bike does not measure RESISTANCE, which is another thing the Peloton app instructors will ask you to change throughout the classes. It hasn’t really bothered us much though, as we just change the resistance on the bike as much or as little as we want to strengthen the workouts.

Overall, this setup is wonderfully simple. After about a month of classes, it feels great that we are able to take advantage of the superior classes that Peloton has to offer without having to spend well over a thousand dollars to do so. Our final spending total was about $430 and so far has been worth it. We will also be trying out other classes, like Apple’s new Fitness+, and will update as we go.