Bowflex – VeloCore Bike (22″ Console) Exercise Bike – Black

The bike itself is pretty solid and well-made, however there are serious issues with the alignment of the screen (which is just a giant Android tablet). You have to fiddle with the alignment of the screws to get it centered properly. You would think that for $2K they could come up with a better way to ensure that the monitor was centered.
There is no forward adjust on the handlebars, so in order to reach them properly I had to extend them beyond the “Stop” Zone.
The seat that comes with it is excruciating to use, i had to get an aftermarket seat to be comfortable.
As far as I can tell you can only use the Streaming video services if you have a subscription to their JRNY service, which is quite expensive every month. I would recommend forgoing a bike with the monitor and using an ipad instead.
It’s a fine bike, but frankly I am wavering on whether or not to return it since I don’t feel it was value for the money.

We’ve been NordicTrack customers for years. While we liked the quality of their products, encountered nothing but problems with the iFit software. The NordicTrack/iFit support couldn’t figure out what was going wrong. Nautilus/Bowflex is really the only other option out there for multiple exercise machines using a different app, JRNY. As such, we’ve been converting over the Bowflex line of machines and just added this VeloCore bike. Love it ..but much more importantly, love the JRNY app which works great!

This bike is is incredible, fun to ride and the side-to-side lean option makes it more engaging and helps make it not so boring. The bike is great, the only downside to this bike is the Bowflex JRNY application that you have to subscribe to. The software is junk, and worthless and the fact that they charge for it is a joke. They actually should pay owners to use this crappy application. it has nothing new, and the recorded videos are a silly and so bad. They never have new content and it never changes or offers anything to help you advance. So great bike, lousy software.

We had the Velocore 22″ for 2 weeks, and returned it.
I thought the “lean” feature was mildly interesting, possibly annoying (though you can always lock it, of course), and at the cost of a more complicated bike that also comes with a shorter warranty. I didn’t think the “upper body workout” was significant enough to justify the downsides.
JRNY has great elements to it, and the thing I liked best about the bike. I really like the “adaptive” workout features, and the “dial” telling you at all ties exactly how hard to work. I like how I could layer a workout over other media, or choose a “real life ride” or music. I also really like the “journal”, where I get to see the frequency and calorie-burn of my workouts. It’s simple, and motivating!
The JRNY workouts are minimally sufficient in number, but I suspect this will grow with time, so this is not a big complaint.
The screen quality is mediocre. Not nearly as good as Peleton.
The trainers seemed like nice folk, but, perhaps bc all the workouts are filmed without music (you layer your own on top, from categories provided, or from your own library), they are just very straight forward, pretty suburban, and the experience is less exciting/motivating than Peleton or other music-driven classes/rides. Still, there is excellent feedback on how hard you should be working, plus your ride profile past and future is tracked for you in real time, and this might make up for it for the music for some people. It’s great.
All in, I REALLY like the JRNY app and strongly recommend considering the stationary Bowflex C7 to retain access. Judging from the Velocore (minus lean), the quality is similar to Peleton, but you’ll be able to use both JRNY and Peleton apps if you choose. You can’t get on the Peleton leaderboard of course, but everything else is functional, and the subscription is only $13/month! See casting note below.
The only reason we didn’t go this way is because my daughter wanted access to Sufferfest, and Bowflex cannot currently interact with it, or be adapted to do so, unless you buy a $400 “Power meter.”
Also note that while Peleton and Zwift are “compatible,” only the JRNY app will appear on the included screen. The bike will send basic data to these apps, but you will need to connect via your phone/iPad, and if you want a larger screen, cast from there to that larger screen.
We went with a Keiser bike, probably the best bike available at home, bc it also connects easily with all the open apps. I love my new bike. But I miss the JRNY app a little.