| When it arrived I removed the r900 parts from the box and searched for 15 minutes for the owners guide/assembly instructions only to discover that my r900 didn't include any which was quite disturbing. Fortunately, the Lifecore website had a link to the owners guide. After reading the instructions I could easily see why they were not included-- no company could possibly be proud of the documentation and it appeared that it suffered from outsourcing gone wild. Any 10-year old English speaking child could have written a better manual. Despite the poor instructions assembly took about 30 minutes with the included tools. |
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The rower performs quite smoothly and comes with several pre-programmed workouts. It also allows the user to define 4 custom programs. The rower also includes a heart-rate monitor and program (which I never used). The r900 seems quite sturdy as well. Most of the reviews I had read gave the r900 high marks for their display monitor. However, the display on my r900 is nearly impossible to view at most angles. It seems the monitor has a terrible contrast problem since it is difficult to discern the illuminated numbers and symbols from the unlit ones. For instance, nearly every digit looks like an 8.
Another problem the monitor suffers from is that it's calorie counter is unrealistic, at best. I have no idea what algorithm Lifecore is using but it doesn't take into consideration the user's weight, so that is it's first problem. On one occasion, after a 30-minute workout it stated that I had burned well over 700 calories. This seemed quite high so I compared this number with an online calorie counter for rowing machines (which requires you to input your weight, imagine that). I believe I had a moderate 30-minute workout so the r900 should have reported somewhere in the vicinity of 300 calories. If I had a robust workout, then 400 calories would have been appropriate. The fact that the r900 reported over 700 calories burned seemed absurd. Each time that I used the r900 it reported unusually high calorie counts so my basic rule-of-thumb was to ignore 50% of the value (eg. if it reported 500, I figured I'd actually burned 250 calories).
I emailed Lifecore, twice, regarding these 3 issues (the missing manual, the poorly written manual, the terrible display readability and the unrealistic calorie counter) and after 2 weeks no response was received. Based on these issues and their apparent lack of customer support I returned the r900. If my r900 was defective and a replacement unit could have corrected these issues I'm sure the r900 would have been a decent purchase and my overall review would have been much better. However, Lifecore's customer service never did respond to me, so I have no way of knowing if my r900 was defective or if they are all defective (in these areas). Based on my experience I'd give the r900 a 4/10.
This review is copyright Phil
Schwartz
July 2007.
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