Customer Reviews

ProRower H2O RX-850 LTD Series Rowing Machine

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Really happy with this rower. First, it is a great workout. Might like for it to have actual programmed workouts, but that would not work on this rower since the resistance is the actual water. You can get creative and get an awesome workout. I go 1 minute easy and 1-2 minutes as hard as I can.

Sturdy, which is important. I weight 280, so I wanted to make sure the rower would last with my weight. So far, I am thrilled.

Overall, great buy and great machine.

Here are the Pros:

This machine is quiet and very smooth to operate. The swishing sound of water is exquisitely enjoyable. It's absolutely perfect for workouts in which you want to just get into a rhythm, shut all the mental chatter off, and let the sounds of the water meditatively whisk you away. Very, very nice!

Assembly was easy and took less than half an hour, and I'm not especially good at putting exercise equipment together. Someone with even a little bit of skill in this area could probably have done it in 10 or 15 minutes.

The rower is aluminum framed, so it's light and relatively portable. If you want to move it around the room, or from one room to another, one person can transport it with little effort.

It makes for some terrific entertainment for the cats, who love to sit and watch the water swirl around in the transparent polycarbonate container. In fact, they enjoy it so much I have to periodically shoo them away so that they don't get in the way of my workout.

Now the Cons:

Resistance is not very strong. I've rowed on open water, and there is no comparison. I've also used mechanical and hydraulic rowing machines, and all of them allow for far more resistance than this water-based rower can produce. The amount of water contained in this rower is quite small. There is simply no way to get any stiff resistance out of your workout regardless of how hard or fast you pull. I looked at a number of these types of rowers before settling on the RX-850, and from what I can see the water mechanism looks to be more or less the same on all of them. This leads me to the conclusion that water-based rowers in general are probably all low-resistance machines. You're not going to get a tremendous strength workout using this machine because you just won't be able to put a lot of stress on your muscles. The resistance is even light enough that a serious cardio workout is probably also out of the question. What you will get is a little bit of strength training and a modest cardio workout. You'll also get a very nice flexibility workout, especially for the joints of your knees, hips, shoulders and elbows. I think this machine is worth the price just for that flexibility workout alone.

The footstraps that are supposed to hold your feet against the resistance plates tend to slip off your feet and slide around more than you want them to. It's necessary to periodically stop and adjust them, breaking into the flow of your workout. I got around this by adding a couple of supplemental Velcro straps so that they now hold my feet comfortably. This small flaw should be addressed next time this machine goes for redesign.

One other downside is that it does take up some space. I had thought from reading the product page that it would fold down into two smaller pieces and I had hoped it would store away in a closet-sized space. Either I misread the product page, or it greatly exaggerated the ability to fold down this machine, because I am left with either keeping it on the floor where I use it or standing it full-size up in a corner. Again, this could have been my misreading of the product page, but it was a disappointment that I could not stash it away somewhere out of sight.

In summary:

I recommend this machine for anyone looking to get a nice, gentle workout that stretches muscles and joints. It will give you a cardio workout, but not a terribly vigorous one unless you are very out of shape and are just getting into an exercise regimen, in which case it may well give you a better bang for your cardio buck until you achieve a reasonable level of fitness. And you will get a very minimal strength workout, but nothing to write home about. I think this would be especially good for doing gentle rehab or therapy work after certain types of surgery or convalescence. Because the resistance is so light, I've found this machine to be best suited as a form of warmup exercise. Five or 10 minutes of rowing gets the blood flowing, gently raises the pulse and respiration, and does a superb job of warming and preparing muscles for other, more challenging forms of exercise. It's also an excellent cool down tool to let your body return calm down after a vigorous workout.

But if you are a hardcore muscle monster, or want something you can do HIIT training on and drive your heart rate up to 90-100% of your HRM, this ain't your baby. You'll want to look at either a mechanical or hydraulic based machine, or else get a shell and do some pulling on open water.