Best Rowing Machines

Our Editor’s Choice, the competition-standard erg: near-indestructible, the most accurate data, and no subscription, for $990.

Somewhere in a school gym right now, a Concept2 erg built in the 1980s is still logging meters. That fact does most of the selling. The RowErg is the machine every competitive rowing program, CrossFit box, and indoor race standardizes on, it costs $990, and it never charges a monthly fee. Commercial-grade durability, the most accurate performance data in the category from its PM5 monitor, and the best resale value in home fitness earn it our Editor's Choice. The honest trade: the PM5 is a small utilitarian display, not a big touchscreen with instructor-led classes, so if on-screen coaching is the only thing that gets you rowing, a connected rower will serve you better. Everyone else is looking at the rare fitness purchase that never needs replacing.

Immersive instructor-led classes filmed on real water, on a quiet, compact rower, if you’ll commit to the $50/mo membership.

Do the membership math before you fall for the footage. Hydrow's instructor-led classes, filmed on real rivers and lakes, are the best reason this machine exists, and they cost $50 a month (raised in January 2026) for as long as you own it, because without the membership you lose resistance control and coaching. The Wave itself is an easy machine to like: quiet magnetic resistance, a compact, light frame that suits apartments, and the lowest price of entry into Hydrow's lineup at about $1,695. But the 12-month parts warranty is short, out-of-warranty repairs on sealed components can run hundreds of dollars, and the hardware is, at bottom, a delivery device for the subscription. The classes are genuinely motivating. Just sign up knowing you are subscribing, not merely buying.

Real-time Form Assist teaches beginners proper technique like nothing else: the priciest pick, with a mandatory membership.

'The roughly $3,295 price tag is excessive.' That is Amanda Capritto of Garage Gym Reviews, and the number is the first thing to know about the Peloton Row. The second is what the money buys: Form Assist, a genuinely unique system of sensors that watches your stroke in real time and flags mistakes on-screen as you make them, which makes this the most beginner-friendly connected rower and the fastest way to learn to row properly. Add Peloton's best-in-class instructors and a 24" swivel screen and the coaching case is strong. Against it: the mandatory membership now runs $49.99 a month after the October 2025 increase, the parts-and-labor warranty is a short 12 months, everything is locked to Peloton's ecosystem, and the company's customer-support problems are documented and acknowledged by its own leadership.

Races and games instead of classes, on a gorgeous cherry-hardwood water rower, for self-motivated, competitive types.

What if the problem was never your discipline, but the format? Ergatta's bet is that plenty of people who hate being coached will happily race, and it built an entire platform on that idea: no instructors at all, just gamified regattas, head-to-head multiplayer, and adaptive training programs, running on a handsome solid-cherry water rower that stores upright and sounds like a river. The bet mostly pays off. For competitive, self-directed people the games genuinely pull you back onto the machine, and at $39 a month (an effective $27 if you prepay five years) the membership undercuts Hydrow's $50 and Peloton's $49.99. The asks are real: about $2,199 up front, a subscription that holds all the content, and zero instructor-led classes, ever, by design.

The most big-screen iFit content per dollar, especially on sale, but iFit-locked, with NordicTrack’s mixed reliability record.

Buy it on sale or not at all. The RW900 lists around $2,299 but streets closer to $1,799 in NordicTrack's near-constant promotions, and at that lower number it is the value play among big-screen rowers: a 22" HD swivel touchscreen, dual magnetic-and-air resistance, and iFit's enormous cross-training library for meaningfully less than a Hydrow or a Peloton Row. The caveats are just as consistent. The machine barely functions without the $39-a-month iFit Pro subscription, NordicTrack's support record is genuinely poor (a software update once bricked thousands of consoles, settled by class action), the 250 lb weight capacity is the lowest in this guide, and it neither folds nor stores upright. Strong deal, known risks, eyes open.