Echelon Row-S Review

The Echelon Row-S is a connected rower built around a 22-inch rotating touchscreen, and its pitch is straightforward: most of what a Hydrow gives you, at a hardware price roughly a third lower. The machine itself is around $744 — well under what a comparable big-screen Hydrow costs — and it adds two things the category does not usually offer at that price, a screen that rotates for off-rower work and resistance controls built into the handlebar so you can change the load in the middle of a stroke.

The catch is the one every connected rower shares, and it is the number this review keeps returning to. The Row-S is screen-first, and the screen’s reason to exist is Echelon Premier at $39.99 a month. The hardware saving over a Hydrow is real; the subscription quietly closes most of that gap over five years, and it is a subscription Echelon can reprice whenever it likes.

We have not rowed the Row-S. Everything here is read from Echelon’s published specifications, its own listing and its membership pricing page, cross-checked and dated. What follows is an assessment of what those numbers add up to, not a report from a test session — because there was not one.

Resistance controls on the handlebar

The most distinctive thing about the Row-S is where it puts the resistance controls. Instead of a dial on the frame or a menu on the screen, the adjustment sits on the handlebar itself, so you raise or drop the magnetic load without letting go and without reaching. That sounds minor until you do interval work, where the whole point is to change effort sharply and then keep rhythm. On most rowers a resistance change means breaking your stroke to reach for a lever; on the Row-S it is a thumb movement mid-drive.

It is the kind of detail that betrays a machine designed by people who thought about how intervals actually feel, and it is genuinely useful. It is also the sort of thing a spec sheet buries, which is exactly why it belongs near the top of a review rather than the bottom.

A 22-inch rotating screen, and what it is for

The Row-S carries a 22-inch rotating HD touchscreen, and the rotation is the part that matters. A connected rower’s screen spends a surprising amount of its life showing something other than a rowing class — strength, mobility, stretching, the off-rower work that a sensible program includes — and a panel that turns to face the floor makes that usable rather than awkward.

Twenty-two inches is a large, comfortable screen to follow a class on, and it is the same size Hydrow puts on its bigger Origin. The difference is what you pay for the hardware around it, and here Echelon undercuts Hydrow by roughly a third on the machine price. On the panel alone, the Row-S is a lot of screen for the money.

Underneath the screen the resistance is magnetic, which means the Row-S is near silent in a way an air rower never is — no fan, no broadband noise through the wall behind it. That is easy to overlook on a machine sold on its display, but for anyone rowing in a flat or early in the morning it is as much a reason to buy as the panel. The frame is 85 inches long, 50 inches tall and 120 lb, so it is a substantial installation despite the narrow folded width.

The real cost is the subscription

Everything the screen does well depends on Echelon Premier, which Echelon prices at $39.99 a month. Without it the 22-inch panel loses its reason to exist — the Row-S is a screen-first machine, and the classes are what the screen is for. Buy the hardware and skip the membership and you have a heavy magnetic rower with an expensive dark display.

Do the five-year arithmetic and the hardware saving starts to look smaller. $39.99 a month is roughly $2,400 over five years — more than three times the machine’s sticker price — and it narrows the gap to a Hydrow, whose membership is $50 a month, without erasing it. The Row-S still comes out cheaper over five years than a comparable Hydrow, but the decision is a total-cost decision, not a hardware-price one. Every rowing subscription, in one table, is the honest way to see it, and the broader case for buying the fee out entirely is here.

There is a second, quieter cost to a screen-first machine, and it is worth stating plainly: everything lives behind a subscription the company controls. Echelon can change Premier’s price, and your workout history and the machine’s usefulness are tied to a service you rent rather than own. That is not unique to Echelon — it is the shape of the whole connected category — but it is the risk you are accepting when the screen is the product.

Storage, size and the numbers Echelon leaves off

The Row-S folds, and folded it is 20.5 inches wide, which is narrow for a screen rower and makes it more workable in a small room than most connected machines. It is still 85 inches long and 120 lb, so it is a machine you fold against a wall rather than tuck into a cupboard, but the narrow folded width is a real practical point in its favor. It needs mains power, like every screen rower here.

That 20.5-inch folded width is worth dwelling on, because width is what actually keeps rowers out of rooms. A Hydrow Wave is 19 inches and an Aviron is 27; the Row-S sits near the narrow end, which for a 22-inch-screen machine is unusual and genuinely useful. It does not make an 85-inch, 120-lb rower disappear, but it means the machine folds into a slimmer profile against a wall than most of its screen-equipped rivals manage.

Echelon does not publish a user weight limit on the Row-S listing. That is a common omission among connected rowers and a frustrating one at this price, and we will not fill it with an estimate. If you are near any reasonable ceiling, ask Echelon directly before ordering. It is exactly the sort of gap this site prints rather than papers over.

Who should buy it, and what we did not do

Buy the Row-S if you want a big rotating screen and guided classes for less than a Hydrow, and the handlebar resistance controls are the kind of detail you will actually use. It is a well-thought-out machine at a hardware price that genuinely undercuts the obvious rival.

Do not buy it if you will not pay for classes, because without Premier the screen is dead weight and a standalone machine would serve you better and cheaper. And go in with the five-year total in front of you rather than the sticker price, because the subscription is where most of the money goes and it is a price Echelon, not you, controls.

Set against the field, the Row-S occupies a clear niche: it is the big-screen, rotating-panel experience for people who find a Hydrow’s hardware price hard to justify but still want the guided classes and the polish. That the two products end up closer on five-year cost than on sticker price is the honest headline, and it is the reason to compare totals rather than shelf tags.

We have not rowed the Row-S. Everything above is read from Echelon’s published specifications, its own listing and its Premier pricing page, on 24 July 2026, and dated. The Hydrow it is priced against is reviewed here.