Life Fitness 95Ci Upright Lifecycle Bike: My Review

I spent several days in my daughter and son-in-laws new condominium with a fitness room that looked like a Life Fitness showroom. I am writing a series of reviews starting with the Life Fitness 95 Ci Upright Bike.

Life Fitness in my opinion is the top of the line when it comes to equipment. You will pay for this quality. In this case you’ll pay about $3,000.

What you’ll get is a super wide comfortable seat and pedals that have extra wide straps. The seat has an easy to use lever that raises and lowers the seat and has 27 levels. It should accommodate everyone’s height!

You’ll get two large integrated holders for water, your iPod, cell phone and the variety of other we all put in these holders. There is a magazine rack which is integrated as well.

The arms or handles are u-shaped on this model. I found it comfortable to hold. There are heart rate sensors in four places- something I’ve never seen. The sensors are at the tops of the handles and the base. What this bike did more than others is allow me to sit in either the upright bike position or bent over in a racing position. Since it allowed me to do that I could monitor my heart rate without changing my physical position.

The console showed me distance, rpms (revolutions per minute i.e. how many times the pedals circled around), and calories burned.

I found a zone training chart on the bike that gave various ages and the target heart rate of that age by percentages. For example a 50-year old person who wanted to bike at 65% of their maximum heart rate would want the heart rate monitor to show 104 and at 84% it would show 136.

I picked either quick start or a workout. If I picked quick start I could at any time change my levels with the arrow buttons. The workouts on this bike are: fat burn; cardio; random; manual (Which is essentially quick start.); zone training plus; personal trainer; and hills.

I used the Personal Trainer program. After hitting that I pressed enter and was told how many calories per hour I should be burning. It asked me for how much time I wanted and which level I wanted. There are 25 levels on this bike.

This bike is not huge. It’s a little too big for a corner measuring 48 inches by 24 inches by 54 inches. The machine weighs 107 pounds and has a maximum user weight of a nice high 400 pounds.

I could switch programs in the middle of my workout but it took several seconds for the bike to do this. I went to the Random program and this time was asked the time and level.

There is a 2-year warranty.

There’s no doubt that Life Fitness makes amazing products however I wouldn’t pay $3,000 for this one.