Holiday Gifts & Deals

This section exists for two people. The first is buying a rowing machine for someone else and does not know the category: what the numbers mean, which machines fit which rooms, which ones arrive with a monthly bill. The second is buying one for themselves and wants to know whether November is worth waiting for. Neither is well served by the usual seasonal content, which is written in August, filled with placeholder percentages and never corrected.

So the rules on these pages are the rules of the rest of the site. Every machine on every gift guide is one we already cover, with the same published specifications, the same dated sources and the same verdict; what changes is the argument, which is written for the person giving rather than the person rowing. Every price is live from Amazon with the date under the button. And the Black Friday page contains no invented deal, no predicted discount and no percentage that a named publisher did not report in a past year.

How the gift guides are organised

By budget, because that is how most people start. Under $50 is for someone who already rows and needs the small thing they keep not buying: a chest strap, a mat, a seat cushion. Under $500 is the forgiving tier, where the ranking rewards machines that publish their weight and height limits and stand upright, because you cannot know everything about the recipient. Under $1,000 is where a gift can last a decade and where the Concept2 sits right on the line. No budget cap is where the question becomes which kind of commitment you are handing over, since the expensive machines are not better rowers; they are rowers with a screen and a subscription.

By recipient, because two of them need a different ranking altogether. For a beginner, the machine’s job is to still be in use in March, which favours forgiveness and rules out anything with a required membership. For a parent or grandparent, one number most listings bury decides the purchase: how high the seat is off the floor. A 14-inch seat means pushing up from near the floor; a 20-inch seat means standing out of a chair.

What every gift guide asks you to check

• Their floor. About a foot more than the published length and two feet more than the width. The arithmetic is applied to every machine.
• Their weight and height against the published limits, printed on every card, or “Not published” where the maker declines.
• Whether the gift has a fee attached. Every card shows the five-year cost with any subscription in it.
• Their walls. Air resistance is loud and nobody publishes a decibel figure. Magnetic and water are the considerate choices for a flat.

What the Black Friday page is, and is not

It is a record of what publishers reported discounting in past years, brand by brand and cited, with buy-now-or-wait guidance per kind of machine and the live price on each of our current picks. It is not a list of deals, because in September there are none, and it will not become one until they exist. When they do, they will be added in a dated section with the source beside each. The short version, for the impatient: the connected brands discount reliably and by hundreds of dollars; Concept2 does not; the budget machines are marked down on Amazon through much of the year and the button shows it when it is true.