Ergatta Review

Ergatta is the most interesting idea in connected rowing, and it is also the one you can most easily buy your way around. Underneath the screen it is a WaterRower — the same hand-built wooden water rower we review on its own elsewhere on this site— with a touchscreen and a games-and-racing software layer added on top. Instead of instructor classes, Ergatta gives you races, workouts that behave like video games, and a leaderboard to chase. For a certain kind of person, that is the difference between rowing three times a week and never touching the machine again.

It is sold direct from Ergatta only, on a membership, which is why there is no Amazon listing, no live price and no buy button for it on this page. We do not attach a buy button to a machine we cannot resolve to a purchase you can track. What we can do is explain what the membership costs in Ergatta’s own published figures, be honest about what the games layer is worth, and point you at the machine sitting underneath it — the WaterRower Natural, which you can buy today with a live price and no subscription at all.

As with every review here: we have not rowed on an Ergatta. We do not own one, there is no test lab, and nobody writing this holds a coaching credential. What follows is read off Ergatta’s published membership terms and the WaterRower’s published specifications, and dated.

What Ergatta actually is

Strip away the marketing and Ergatta is two things bolted together. The bottom half is a WaterRower: a hand-built ash frame with a paddle spinning in an enclosed water tank, which is the resistance mechanism people buy water rowers for — a stroke that builds smoothly and a sound that is water rather than a fan. The top half is a touchscreen running Ergatta’s own software, which turns your rowing into games, races and pixel-chasing challenges instead of a coach counting you down.

That combination is genuinely clever, and we will not pretend otherwise. Game-based programming works for people who cannot face another instructor-led class — the motivation comes from beating a number or a rival rather than from a personality on a screen, and for the right person that is exactly what makes the habit stick. If the games are the reason you want an Ergatta, that is a legitimate reason, and nothing below is meant to talk you out of it.

The important structural fact is that the rowing hardware is not bespoke. It is a WaterRower. That is what makes the buy-around so easy, and it is the single most useful thing to understand before you commit to a membership.

Why there is no price and no buy button here

Ergatta is direct-to-consumer only. There is no Amazon listing, so there is no third-party price to compare against and nothing for this site to attach a live price or a buy button to. Every dimension in the specification table above reads “Not published” for the Ergatta for the same reason we give on every direct-only machine: our specs are read off manufacturers’ own Amazon detail pages, and Ergatta has none. We will not copy figures out of a marketing page and present them as verified, so we print the gap instead.

What we can quote, because Ergatta publishes it plainly, is the membership.

The membership, in Ergatta’s own numbers

Ergatta prices its membership at $39 per month month-to-month, falling to about $27 per monthif you commit five years and prepay. That five-year discount is not a small monthly saving you drift into — taking it means paying roughly $1,620 in one lump up front to lock the lower rate. That is a real decision, and it is the sort of commitment worth naming out loud before you make it. You can read the current terms on our subscription comparison alongside every other connected brand.

Unlike most connected rowers, though, Ergatta will still row without the membership. That single fact reframes the whole purchase, and it is where the honest question starts.

It rows without the membership — so what are you paying for?

Because the machine underneath is a WaterRower, the stroke does not depend on the software. Let the membership lapse and you are left with a working water rower and a screen that has lost the games. So the monthly fee is not buying you the ability to row — you already own that. It is buying you the games layer, the races and the leaderboard. That is the entire product you are renting.

Which makes the decision unusually clean. If the games are the draw — if that is the thing that will get you onto the machine on a wet Tuesday in February — then the membership is buying you exactly the thing you want, and Ergatta is a reasonable purchase for you. If the games are a nice-to-have you suspect you will stop using after a month, you are about to pay a WaterRower’s premium price and then a membership on top of it, for a screen you will ignore. In that case the smart money buys the machine underneath and skips the screen entirely.

The buyable answer: the WaterRower Natural

The WaterRower Natural is the hardware that lives beneath an Ergatta, and it is sold on Amazon with a live price and a working buy button — both of which sit in the cost table above. Its published numbers are exactly the ones the direct-only Ergatta leaves blank. It is hand-built in Rhode Island from sustainably sourced ash, measures 82 inches long by 22 inches wide, and — the detail that sells water rowers to apartment dwellers — it stands on end when you are done, storing in a footprint of roughly 22 by 20 inches. Filled with water it weighs 103.5 lb, which is what you are standing upright, and it runs the self-contained S4 monitor with no subscription of any kind.

Buy the Natural instead of an Ergatta and you keep the identical water-rowing stroke, keep the wooden frame and the quiet, and lose only the games. In exchange you pay no monthly fee at all — the difference over five years is not marginal, and the full cost table shows exactly how large it gets. Our WaterRower versus Ergatta comparison puts the two head to head; if it is a bigger connected screen you are weighing rather than the water feel, the Hydrow versus Ergatta comparison is the one to read.

The one thing the Natural does not do is give you the Concept2’s split times. Its S4 is a fine monitor, but the sport’s common language is the PM5, so if you want numbers to compare against other rowers that is a mark against any water rower. For most people buying for the water feel and the look, it will not matter.

The water feel, and the quiet

Both machines share the resistance mechanism, so both share its character. Water resistance builds progressively with how hard you pull, which many rowers find the most natural-feeling stroke of any resistance type, and the sound is the swish of water in a tank rather than the broadband roar of an air fan. Wood absorbs vibration in a way steel does not, which is part of why a WaterRower — and therefore an Ergatta — is a quieter neighbor than a Concept2. If you want to understand the mechanism before you commit either way, our explainer on how a water rower works is the place to start.

The running cost people forget is small but real on both: the water needs occasional topping up and a purification tablet now and then. It is a few minutes a season, not a chore, but it is a cost the connected air-and-magnetic machines do not have.

What we did not do

We have not rowed on an Ergatta, and we have not rowed on the WaterRower underneath it. We have not measured either machine or verified the membership against anything other than Ergatta’s own published terms. Everything above is read off those terms and the WaterRower Natural’s published specifications, cross-checked where a second source exists, and dated. The Ergatta is a clever machine and the games are real; we simply cannot resolve it to a purchase you can make and track here, and the honest alternative — the machine it is built on — is one you can buy today.

If you want a hands-on account from somebody who has raced on one for a year, those exist and are worth reading. What we offer instead is a method you can check, and a buyable machine with its numbers on the table.