Does a Rowing Machine Need Electricity?

Short answer: most rowing machines do not need electricity. You are the power source. The flywheel spins because you pulled it, the resistance comes from air, water or a magnet, and the monitor runs on a couple of AA batteries or on the generator in the flywheel itself. Of the thirty machines in our registry, the ones that need a mains socket are almost exactly the ones with a touchscreen bolted to them — and that is the practical point of this page, because it decides which rooms in your house can hold a rowing machine at all.

The two kinds of rowing machine, by power

Self-powered machines. Air rowers, water rowers, hydraulic rowers and the great majority of magnetic rowers need nothing plugged in. The Concept2 RowErg’s PM5 monitor runs on two D-cell batteries and also harvests power from the flywheel while you row, which is why a RowErg in a gym with no socket nearby works perfectly. A water rower has no electronics in the resistance at all — it is a paddle in a tank of water. A hydraulic rower is two pistons. For all of these, “where can it go?” is purely a floor-space question, which is the arithmetic in space requirements.

Mains-powered machines. Connected rowers with large screens need a socket, without exception. The screen, the speakers, the Wi-Fi and the servo that moves the resistance all draw power, and when the machine is unplugged you have an expensive magnetic rower with a black panel on it. That is not a flaw — it is what the machine is — but it means the rower now has to live within a cable run of an outlet, in a room with reliable Wi-Fi, and it is why we flag it against every connected pick on the connected roundup.

Which is which, read straight off the registry

The table below is the manufacturer-published answer for a representative spread of machines, and because it is generated from the same data as every spec table on this site, it cannot drift from the product pages it links to.

The pattern is clean enough to use as a rule when you are shopping: if it has a screen bigger than a paperback, assume it needs a socket. If the monitor is a small LCD or a performance monitor like the PM5, assume it does not. The one thing we cannot tell you is wattage, because no manufacturer in this category publishes a power-consumption figure — so where you were hoping for a cost-per-year-of-electricity number, we are going to say “not published” rather than estimate one. The five-year cost pages are built on the figures that do exist: purchase price and subscription.

Why this decides where the machine lives

• Garages and basements. Often the only room with the floor space, and often short on sockets — and an extension lead under a rowing machine is a trip-and-wear problem rather than a solution. This is one of several reasons the garage-gym picks are almost all self-powered.
• Apartments and shared walls. Here the constraint flips. The mains-powered magnetic machines are the quiet ones, so a socket is a price worth paying if noise is your binding problem. See apartments and the quietest machines.
• Storing it upright between sessions. If the machine stands against a wall when you are done, the cable has to be unplugged and managed every single time, which is a small friction that decides whether people keep using a machine. Covered in how to store a rowing machine.
• Power cuts and moving house. A self-powered rower works anywhere, forever, including in a shed with no supply. A connected machine without power or Wi-Fi does not give you its workouts at all.

What about batteries?

The in-between case, and the one that catches people out. Many self-powered machines take batteries for the monitor only — the Concept2 PM5 takes two D cells, and most budget LCD monitors take two AAs. The machine rows fine with dead batteries; you simply lose the numbers, which for most people is the whole point of the session. Keep a spare pair with the machine. A blank monitor is also the first thing to suspect before concluding something is broken, which is where monitor troubleshooting starts.

If the answer you actually needed was “will it fit,” the floor-space arithmetic is in space requirements, and the compact roundup ranks machines on the floor they occupy. If it was “will it annoy my neighbours,” start with rowing machine noise.