HCI Fitness Sprint Outrigger Scull Rowing Machine

by HCI Fitness

Product Features

• High-quality piston rowing machine; 12 levels of hydraulic resistance
• Strong, commercial-grade cylinders
• Quickly folds into an ultra-compact unit
• LCD display shows you time, stroke count, total strokes, and calories

Product Description

Amazon.com

Designed with German engineering influences, the Sprint Rower Outrigger is a high-quality piston rowing machine made completely of metal. The seat is ergonomically designed for comfort during intense rowing. The rollers are smooth and the foot paddles are extra large to encourage a natural motion during your workout. The Outrigger features two hydraulic cylinders with the ability to set force resistance on a scale of 1 to 12 and a comfortable ergonomic seat with smooth running rollers mounted on rails. Strap your feet into the large footplates--they pivot slightly to support your natural motion as you row. Not only will this rowing machine give you a hardcore cardio workout, it will also work your upper and lower body muscles because the rowing stroke is composed of 65 to 75 percent leg work and 25 to 35 percent upper body work. Display feedback includes time, stroke count, total strokes, and calories. Also, it includes built-in workout programs based on both calories and strokes. When in use, the unit measures 55 by 68 by 15 inches (L x W x H) and supports up to 275 pounds. When you need to store the unit, it folds to easily fit under a bed or in a closet.

Features & Specifications:

• High-quality piston rowing machine made completely of metal
• Hydraulic force resistance; two hydraulic cylinders set resistance on a scale of 1 to 12
• Comfortable ergonomic seat with smooth running rollers mounted on rails
• Large footplates pivot slightly to support your natural motion as you row
• Electronic display shows time, stroke count, total strokes, and calories
• Compact and portable
• Includes built-in workout programs based on both calories and strokes
• Folds easily to fit under a bed or in the closet
• Measures 55 by 68 by 15 inches (L x W x H)
• Maximum Weight Capacity: 275 pounds

Product Description

The Sprint Outrigger Scull Rowing Machine gives you the ultimate experience in Piston Rowing. Designed with German engineering influences, the Sprint Rower is the most affordable and highest quality Outrigger on the market today. It features two hydraulic cylinders with the ability to set force resistance on a scale of 1 to 12, and a comfortable ergonomic seat with smooth running rollers mounted on rails. Strap your feet into the large footplates, they will pivot slightly to support your natural motion as you row. The Display shows you time, stroke count, total strokes, and calories. Also, it includes built-in workout programs based on both calories and strokes. When in use, the unit is 55 in L x 68 in W x 15 in H and supports up to 275 lbs. When you need to store the unit, it folds to easily fit under a bed or in a closet. Warranty is one year on all parts.

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 55 x 68 x 15 inches ; 55 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 61 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply.
• ASIN: B001KYEMVS
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,791 in Sports & Outdoors (See Top 100 in Sports & Outdoors)
  • #16 in Sports & Outdoors > Exercise & Fitness > Cardio Training > Rowers

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

114 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's Like A Review Only Mildly Amusing...., February 13, 2009

By 

Brandon May "Thanos" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HCI Fitness Sprint Outrigger Scull Rowing Machine (Sports)

This, I think, is my first review on Amazon (woo hoo) and I'm mostly doing it because I'm reasonably sure the previous review is fake and from a company rep. With that said there is some truth to the review.

I just received mine yesterday and was pleased to see it was all heavy steel with no plastic that I could see, even the casing is metal. The directions were hard to make heads or tails of which turned out to be okay given that a slow witted monkey could put this thing together in under a half hour, given that I am at least a few IQ points ahead of a slow witted monkey I was able to assemble it in about 15 minutes. Once the machine is all together feels really solid with only a slight, negligible wobble to the seat but that is not unexpected given that I'm a 6 foot 215 former bodybuilder and most things wobble or yell "hey don't sit on me" when I sit on them.

Once on the machine I was pleased with the motion and resistance as it felt pretty even and the seat glides smoothly. I know your thinking,"he seems to really like this machine why did he only give it a 4 star rating", here's why. It's all about the hydraulic pistons, if you do not have a decent amount of muscle (mostly children, hippies and very petite women such as my lovely girlfriend) you might find the resistance even at level one to be a bit much. I came to this conclusion as my afore mentioned lovely girlfriend tried it and had trouble pulling the arms or oars if you prefer, this resulted in an angry look which may have been related to my laughter. For me and other manly men or manly women, I'm not one to judge, this will not be a problem. Where everyone regardless of levels of manliness will have a problem is when they attempt to change the resistance levels which at some point you will want to do. When changing levels (which is done by a knob on each piston) even when you put them on the same setting getting the resistance even or relatively even becomes a needlessly long and tiring process (like watching The English Patient), you will eventually get it right but risk losing the motivation to work out in the process. I fortunately did not lose motivation and did two runs of 20 minutes, one last night and one this morning, and all was well with the world except the hand grips made my hands smell like the south end of a north bound horse and the pistons get really, really hot to the touch. The hot to the touch part can be solved by not touching the pistons, figured that out myself.

Lastly the computer, whoa is the computer. Honestly it would have been more useful if it was one of those old DOS based Tandy units with nothing but Oregon Trail on it. I'd suggest finding other means of counting your strides...rows, whatever since this thing cannot count. I did 100 strides as a test while I was mentally counting and it said I had done 276, and for the record I have the utmost confidence in my ability to count to 100. On a positive note the timer appears to work ok but takes several minutes to figure out and the directions are about as useful as that other guy from George Michael's old band Wham.

In closing this is a good buy and currently at about half the price of those shady Germans at Kettler. I will update my review after I put some wear and tear on the machine. Until then happy rowing.

3/13/09 - I have made this machine suffer daily abuse (minus one or two days where I had a cold I affectionately nicknamed "the creeping death") for around the last month. After several weeks of having my heavy rear end seated on this machine while I angrily and vigorously yank at the handles the machine is still performing beautifully. Given my well documented destructive powers a few weeks with me translates to about a year of wear and tear under normal circumstances. The computer is still useless but that is a minor annoyance, the only negative change I have seen in the machine with a bit of wear is the cushion hand grips are always sliding during my workout. Unfortunately I am not clever enough to fix this but am open to suggestions.

53 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty much as expected ..., June 30, 2009

By 

Minarchist "Minarchist" (CT, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: HCI Fitness Sprint Outrigger Scull Rowing Machine (Sports)

I received my HCI Sprint Outrigger today.

Packaging was in good condition, all parts present, no damage. Good job FedEx!

Unpacking and setup was pretty easy, took about 10 minutes. Only tools required were hex wrenches, and they came in the box.

Initial reactions - fit and finish are reasonably good. Welds are solid - this isn't an elegant piece of machinery, but it's pretty well put together. One nice feature is a pair of locking pins that engage the rowing arms in the folded position so that they're immobilized for transit.

Less favorable reactions - someone commented elsewhere that the soft handle grips broke up with use - I can imagine this happening pretty easily, and I also think that given some harsh use, the velcro foot straps might not last too well. Seat rollers on rowing machines typically take quite a beating. Time will tell how well the rollers hold up.

One other gripe is that the computer is pretty large - when I was using the machine, my calves were rubbing on the case. This isn't a dealbreaker for me, I count strokes myself, and I can read the time from a clock. But if you like your gadgets, this is a consideration.

After 20 minutes of moderate use, the mechanisms were running quiet. Adjusting the resistance in the pistons is achieved by rotating a collar on the piston. Inevitably, a '7' on one piston isn't excatly the same resistance as a '7' on the other, but it's pretty close, and I'd expect that once I get used to compensating for this, I'll be able to ignore the issue.

There are 3 adjustments:

Piston resistance: giving you a tougher rowing experience
Angle of incline for the seat travel: higher angle makes your legs work harder
Chassis length: so you can adjust the rower for your leg length

Conclusion:
Sturdy, no-nonsense unit with a few minor issues that don't matter too much to me. I'll be disappointed if the seat rollers give out, but I can't condemn the unit for a problem that hasn't occurred yet.

Inevitably, readers will want a comparison to the Kettler Kadett. I've used one of those, and it's a very nice piece of equipment, but also not without its faults. At Amazon prices, at the moment, I'm not sure the Kettler is $250 'better' than the HCI. And for my 4x a week, 45 minute workouts, the extra would be hard to justify, and my cardiovascular system is unlikely to be able to tell the difference.

UPDATE - 12/1/2009
------------------

Been using the rower on and off for six months now. Good cardio results, and I've stayed with the program. None of the concerns above materialized - rubber grips are still fine, I got very good at getting the piston resistance balanced, velcro straps OK, seat still fine. However, I'm going to have to contact Amazon for a warranty replacement because the chassis itself has failed. This might be just a result of a bad weld, or possibly a design fault - I'll post pictures in a day or so. I'm not going to revise the rating yet - I tend to view warranty problems as a fact of life - but I was pretty surprised to see the failure.

UPDATE - 12/14/2009
-------------------

Received a return authorization from Amazon today. I'm still in two minds over whether I'll just order another HCI or a Kettler Kadett. The problem I see is that the chassis split wasn't a failure in the weld, it was in the steel tube itself, and I find that disappointing. Do I still think the unit is a good one at the price? Absolutely - and with Amazon standing behind the product for warranty, I don't have a problem with continuing to recommend this rower as great value for the money, but once I started getting fitter, and adjusting the resistance (up to 8 on a scale of 0 - 10 ), I think I was unlucky and just happened to have a unit made with a piece of defective steel tube. But the romance is over, and I think I'm leaning toward a Kettler Kadett, despite the extra price. So I've removed a star from the rating to reflect my experience with the rower.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor Quality, Very Disappointed!, January 9, 2010

By 

LouseySmarchWeather (Portand, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: HCI Fitness Sprint Outrigger Scull Rowing Machine (Sports)

I had this rower for about a week, and I have to say it was a big disappointment. I chose it mainly because of all of the good reviews, and the price. I had been using a concept 2 at the gym and I was really excited about having a rower at home.

Shipping and Assembly:

As usual, Amazon's shipping was great and the box arrived in great condition. Everything inside was well packaged, and it all seemed very solid and well put together. It assembled really easily and I was up and running within 15 minutes of opening the box.

The computer:

Completely useless as anything but a clock. The sensor that counts your rows basically picks up on the seat sliding over a certain spot. So instead of a full row counting as a pull back and then a slide forward, each motion is counted leaving it looking like you're a super-fast rower :). As with most calorie counters, I have no idea where the numbers are coming from on this thing . For how simple the functions of the computer its ridiculous how non-intuitive it is. The button layout is confusing and i felt like I was just randomly button mashing to get the clock to start or for the data to reset. Its worth noting, I'm very computer savvy and this thing was stupid-ridiculous.

The hydraulics:

So here's were the problem starts, the hydraulics on each side have their own dial to twist for resistance. Now I'm cool with that, except that the numbers on the dial aren't the same resistance on both sides. So if you have the left set at '5' and the right set at '5', your left side may be getting much more, or much less of a workout than your right. So again, I'm a relatively reasonable person, I do a little trial and error, and I figure out what feels the same on both sides and set each dial to whatever arbitrary number gives me the same level of resistance, and off I go.

The problem:

So here's where the problem starts. As you work out, the hydraulics get hot, and as they get hot the friction changes, and lo and behold, the friction doesn't change evenly on both sides. So throughout your workout, you are constantly changing the resistance on the hydraulics on both sides so that you can keep going at the pace you're going (oh, and during all this the thing is squeaking like two steroid-induced mice in a cage match). The other problem that happens as it gets hot is the range of motion, everything gets tighter. So where you used to be able to push each "oar" well in front of you as you were coming in to end a rep, the "oars" are now hitting you in the shins. So I tell myself, this thing isn't a gym-quality machine, so you get what you pay for. Even though its not exactly cheap, in the realm of workout equipment, it is. I decided to resign to my fate of having a subpar workout machine, it wasn't great, but boxing up a 60lb workout machine and shipping it back seemed like more trouble than it was worth. As fate should have it on workout #4, about 26 mins into a 30 min workout,( "oars" hitting me in the shins and deafening squeaks waking the neighbors) , the left hydraulic explodes and pours hydraulic oil all over the place. I mean, I AM a fitness god, and no machine can tame my manly athletic prowess, but really?!?

The replacement:

So now its boxed up and on its way back to amazon. Needless to say the thing was a lot easier to unpack than it was to repack, finally a workout. I ended up ponying up a bit more dough and picking up the LifeSpan rw1000 rower, and so far so good. It hasn't exploded hot oil all over the place, so I'll call it a win.

Not to knock the positive experiences that many other reviewers had, but I definitely would not recommend this puppy to anyone. In general, quality rowers seem to be hard to come by in the entry-level price range (under $500) so I can see the appeal of this unit, but trust me this is not the rower you're looking for.