Why You Can Trust CNET New Beachbody MYX II aims to be a full home gym in bike form
It's a bike but it's also a full body workout system, which is a solid upgrade over the competition.
- Author of Taking your Android Tablets to the Max
All indoor bikes are not created equal, especially now that so many of them are starting to mount huge displays on them to offer more interaction. While some indoor bikes are limited to cycling experiences like tours through a virtual countryside or intense real-time classes with other cyclists, Beachbody wants its latest indoor bikes to be something you use more comprehensively. The goal is a personal fitness path for each person, one that offers a full body workout instead of being limited to what you can accomplish on the bike alone. They're called the MYX II and MYX II Plus, and here's what we know so far.
Where the original MYX bike caught our attention as a less expensive alternative to the popular Peloton bike, these upgraded models are something completely new. Both the MYX II and MYX II Plus offer a slimmer body than their predecessors with a 21.5-inch touchscreen display on a swivel mount, so you can enjoy fitness activities on the bike or on a mat on the floor. A Polar OH1 heart-rate monitor shares your heart rate with the onboard computer, while the 20-watt speakers and 8-megapixel Sony camera allow you to either jam out to your preferred music mix or participate in live classes more actively. Put simply, it's an upgrade in a whole lot of ways.
Like most connected indoor bikes now, you have a few choices for your interactive experiences. Beachbody offers its Beachbody On Demand interactive subscription service, aka BODi, so you can enjoy group classes led by fitness stars from around the world. Or you can take advantage of the massive library of Openfit activities that have been added to the MYX Home Studio service found on existing MYX bikes. This includes some of the Openfit Live classes, which will be added to the bike later this year. And like current models, syncing your fitness information to your Apple Watch is supported out of the box.
MYX II and MYX II Plus are understandably a little more expensive than the current model. The standard MYX II will run you $1,599, and if you want the Plus upgrade with its added dumbbells, kettlebell, resistance band, workout mats mats and a foam roller it'll set you back $1,799. Both offer free assembly for now, but the subscriptions add up to $29 per month for MYX Home Studio and a separate $28.80 per month for the BODi service. Accessing everything this bike has to offer is not at all cheap, so we'll have to see when it's available to test if the software is worth the additional expense.