Exercise bikes with a screen: do you need one, or just a phone holder?

What is an exercise bike with a screen?

An exercise bike with a screen is a bike with a built-in touchscreen that streams the maker's own workout platform: live and on-demand classes, leaderboards, and on some models resistance that adjusts itself to match the instructor. Peloton and Echelon are the best-known makers of this kind of machine.

The important thing to understand is what you are actually buying. The bike is ordinary: a frame, a flywheel, resistance. The screen and the subscription behind it are the product. That is why these machines cost four figures while a well-made home exercise bike costs a fraction of that, and why the right question is not "which screen bike is best" but "do I want what the screen does".

Do you actually need a screen, or just a phone holder?

Here is the split that saves most readers of this page a four-figure mistake. Ask yourself what you will actually watch while you ride.

If the answer is live classes, a leaderboard, and a trainer who reacts to you, buy the machine built for that. A Peloton or Echelon with its subscription is the genuine article, nothing we sell replaces the experience, and we would rather tell you that than sell you the wrong bike. That honesty is the whole point of this page.

If the answer is a series, a film, YouTube, or a workout app you already pay for, you do not need a screen. You need somewhere to put the screen you already own. Our FoldFit X1 has a phone and tablet holder at eye level, quiet magnetic resistance so you can actually hear your programme, and it folds away when the credits roll, at £179.99 including VAT. The £1,200 you keep buys a lot of streaming.

What exercise bike has a screen TV display?

The flagship live-class bikes from Peloton and Echelon carry large built-in displays, and those are the machines this search usually means. We do not sell them, we have never tested them, and everything we say about them here is category knowledge and published specification, not a review.

Worth knowing before you shop: a "TV display" on a bike is only worth paying for if you use the platform it exists to stream. For plain watching, any bike near your television is an exercise bike with a TV display, and it did not cost four figures. If hard training rather than classes is the draw, a studio spin bike gives you the ride without the screen premium.

What do you get for the money?

With a screen bike, the money buys the platform: the classes, the trainers, the leaderboard, the polish, and on some models resistance the instructor controls. It also buys a large touchscreen you cannot detach and a machine built around it. Judged as a bike alone, it is expensive. Judged as a subscription gym that lives in your house, it can be fair value for the person who rides to classes most days.

With a tablet-holder bike, the money buys the bike and nothing else, which is exactly the point. Our whole exercise bike range runs from £59.99 to £549 including VAT, every price flat, with no fee attached to any of it. If the budget is tight, the budget exercise bikes page starts at £59.99.

What are the ongoing costs?

This is the part of the price tag almost nobody leads with, so we will. The live classes that define a screen bike sit behind a monthly subscription, billed for as long as you want them. The current fee is published on each maker's site: read it before you look at the bike's price, multiply it by the years you plan to ride, and add it to the machine. That total is the real price of a screen bike, and for many buyers it eventually exceeds the bike itself.

Ask the second question too: what does the screen still do if you stop paying? The answer varies by maker and it decides what your four-figure machine is worth in year three. A bike with a tablet holder has no version of this problem. There is no fee, so there is nothing to cancel, and it does everything on the day you stop paying for anything because you never started.

What should you look for in an interactive exercise bike?

If you have read this far and the live-class experience is genuinely what you want, judge an interactive bike on these, from the makers' published specifications:

• The subscription first: its monthly price, and exactly what the screen still does without it. This decides the bike's long-term value more than any hardware spec.
• The platform, not the panel: you are choosing classes, trainers and software. Screen size matters less than whether you will actually ride to what it streams.
• Auto-adjusting resistance: some models let the class control the resistance and some do not. Check the specification of the exact model, not the brand.
• The bike underneath: flywheel, seat and bar adjustability, and the maximum user weight, all from the published specification sheet.
• The space it takes: these are fixed machines that do not fold, so measure the room, and the route into it, before you buy.

And if that list has talked you out of it, that is a fine outcome too. A space-saving folding bike with your own tablet on the front covers most of what most people wanted in the first place.

Can I lose belly fat by riding a stationary bike?

You can lose fat overall, but no bike, screen or subscription can target belly fat, because you cannot spot-reduce: fat loss comes from a calorie deficit kept up over weeks. Our guide to using an exercise bike for weight loss explains it honestly, and our indoor bike workout ideas work on any bike on this page, screen or not.

Built-in screen against a tablet holder, from published specifications

Compare the whole range

Every bike we stock, side by side. All prices include VAT.

Screen bike questions, answered

Keep reading

• Fold-away bikes for small rooms
• Indoor cycles for harder training
• Workout plans that need no subscription
• Browse all exercise bikes
• How free UK delivery works