The BarBend team is full of personal trainers, Olympic-level weightlifters, endurance athletes, and general gym rats and fitness enthusiasts. Needless to say, we live and breathe fitness and all things fitness equipment.
When our team recommends a piece of fitness equipment, it’s because we’ve personally tested and genuinely loved the product ourselves. We take all our fitness equipment, including the best treadmills and best dumbbells, among others, through multiple workouts with several athletes to get a well-rounded perspective on the product.
In the rare instance we don’t have a chance to test a product (some popular items just go out of stock too quickly), we’ve either tested a previous version or an extremely similar option from the same brand.
[Related: BarBend Supplement Testing Methodology]
Our Priorities
At BarBend, we value journalistic integrity and keep this front-of-mind when we test exercise equipment or write about supplements. When it comes to our best home gym equipment content, these are the factors we prioritize:
- Research: We spend tons of time researching different products, specs, materials, and customer reviews in order to narrow down the best of the best items.
- Personal Testing: Our team has personally tried nearly every product on our fitness equipment pages.
- Expert Verification: We send our equipment content to qualified professionals, including personal trainers, physical therapists, and more, to make sure that all the products we recommend and information we provide is safe for use.
- Truthful Reporting: We don’t recommend any products we don’t like, no matter how popular they may be. If we try a well-known treadmill or power rack and find that it breaks down quickly or uses cheap materials, we keep it off our list (or point these factors out).
Factors We Consider for Equipment Reviews
When we write our equipment reviews, there are a few priorities we consider. In order to accurately compare one product to another, we also rate each of these factors on a scale of 1 to 5.
Performance
We like to take all of our recommended equipment through a few workouts to judge the overall performance. Our testers ensure that each piece of equipment works as intended and holds up well through the training session.
Durability
Fitness equipment isn’t cheap and we don’t want our readers investing in products that may break down after a few uses. We take a close look at the materials in each product for as much durability as possible, prioritizing steel and iron over plastic.
Optionality
Some pieces of fitness equipment have customization options, which we like to include as often as possible. That way, the products we provide can work for a variety of athletes and different fitness levels.
For instance, we look closely at the range of weights on an adjustable dumbbell — is the range broad enough for a variety of levels?
Value
While most products of similar quality have similar price points, some brands charge premium cost for standard equipment. So, we compare prices across the market for similar products, to gauge the overall value of an item.
Other Factors We Consider
Alongside the non-negotiables we mention above, there are additional factors we like to consider and mention to give readers a good perspective before they invest:
- Footprint and portability
- Assembly
- Versatility
- Extra costs
- Accessories
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