Manufactured by the brand tried-and-true by CrossFit enthusiasts everywhere, Rogue Fitness, the Echo Bike is a muscle-building monster of a machine. An air bike, the Rogue Echo Bike is arguably the best cardio machine on the market, and it’s the official air bike of the CrossFit Games after ousting the AssaultBike in 2021. Once you read our Rogue Echo Bike review, you’ll understand why this piece of equipment is the créme de la créme for CrossFit garage gym cardio. 

What we love: The Rogue Echo Bike’s durability makes it a great investment for affiliate and home gym owners, while the power it requires to ride makes it a great tool for athletes looking to level-up their workouts. Really, you can’t go wrong with this bike. 

What we don’t: The main downsides of this exercise bike are its bulky size and lower-tech monitor. If you’re looking for a sleek stationary bike you can camouflage into the corner of your home office or living room, this simply is not the bike for you. Ditto goes if you’re looking for a machine that allows you to live-stream a workout right to its screen.  

The Chalk Up: The official air bike of CrossFit, the Rogue Echo Bike is a great investment for any CrossFit athlete looking to improve their overall fitness level, as well as other exercisers committed to losing weight, improving their cardiovascular capacity, or toning their body head-to-toe. 

We know everyone on the internet wants you to trust them and buy stuff. Transparently, that’s what we want, too. But the difference between us and everyone else? We actually stick to our area of expertise and review products that we know CrossFit athletes will (or already do) use. Our team of product testers, writers, and editors includes multiple CrossFit-certified instructors, longtime CrossFit participants, and Quarterfinals-level athletes.

In May of 2021, CrossFit, LLC, officially announced the Rogue Echo Bike as the official air bike of CrossFit, stealing the title from the Assault Fitness AssaultBike, which had reigned supreme since it first made an appearance in the 2015 CrossFit Games. 

Since then, most boxes with any coin to spare have invested in the bike for their CrossFit gym. A good (nay, grand!) investment is exactly what this bike is. It’s simply one of the best air bikes on the market, whether you do CrossFit or not. 

Made primarily from high-quality metal and steel, the Rogue Echo Bike is sturdy and stable; durable and dependable. Reviews across the web suggest that this bike looks and works the same after a half-decade of frequent use as it did the day they assembled it. 

The bike itself is marketed as an air bike or fan bike. But unlike other air bikes— like the various AssaultBike models and Schwinn Airdyne bikes—this bike has a belt drive system. You don’t need to understand the exact mechanics of that. But as an athlete, you should know that means you have to seriously pump your arms and legs to get this bike to move and groove. 

Bluntly, this bike is not for people looking for an easy or low-intensity workout. Of course, you can pedal and push as slowly as you want on recovery days and during warmups, but during a WOD, this bike will make you feel like your legs are about to fall off and your heart is going to beat out of your chest. 

Don’t be scared, though: It hurts because it works. Whether you want to lose weight, gain muscle, improve endurance, or compete at higher levels in CrossFit, this bike will help you get there. 

Thanks to the intuitive, easy-to-use LCD screen you can either hop on the bike and simply start counting calories burned or distance traveled, or you can elect to pre-program an interval or distance-based workout. 

While the handlebars are not adjustable (like the handlebars on the Concept2 BikeErg are), the seat can move up and down, as well as back and forth. Worth noting, the seat is pretty squishy. Truthfully, the seat on this machine looks similar to cushy seats on 80s-inspired road bikes. Win!

The Rogue Echo Bike is no child’s toy: This bike is heavy-duty and overbuilt in all of the best ways.

For frame of reference, it weighs about 30 pounds more than the AssaultBike Classic and almost 20 pounds more than the Schwinn Airdyne AD7 (also called the Schwinn Airdyne Pro). 

The Echo Bike measures about 59 inches long, 30 inches wide, and 53 inches tall. So, to use it comfortably, you’ll need a space that’s about 6 feet by 3.5 feet. 

That may sound like a lot of space if you’re looking to invest in the bike for a small home gym. But don’t forget the fact that the bike has wheels, so you can easily roll it to the corner of your gym when you’re not using it. 

The Rogue Echo Bike is perhaps the beefiest air bike available, sporting a wide base, metal pedals, steel fan blades, rugged rotating foot pegs, and handles welded directly to the bike’s arms. 

A huge plus of this bike is the belt drive, versus the chain drive on other air bikes. It means it’s lower maintenance and, typically, belt drives last longer than chain drives.

Constructed of high-quality steel tubing, it doesn’t just look stable, it is stable. Unlike other air bikes, which can teeter and totter when a bigger person goes full-send, the Echo Bike is sturdy enough to stay in one place no matter your size or effort. 

The bike also sports rubber leveling feet to keep the bike glued to the ground, even when it’s not on a level surface. And, it has a 350-pound weight limit, which is in line with the industry standard for this type of bike. 

There’s one place where the Echo Bike doesn’t shine, and that’s in the tech department. 

The monitor on this bike is as basic as bath bombs and astrology tats. It is galaxies away from the high-tech monitors you find on Peloton or NordicTrack bikes: You can’t livestream a workout right to your machine, it doesn’t have an HD touchscreen monitor, and the metrics themselves are pretty limited. 

To be fair, though, this bike is not trying to be the next Peloton. It is exactly what a CrossFit athlete needs it to be in the middle of a grueling workout: Easy to use. 

To get this bike moving and grooving, you simply need to start pedaling or press start. From there, it immediately starts tallying the things CrossFit athletes care about: distance, heart rate, calories, RPM, watts, and time. (You need a separately purchased Bluetooth heart rate monitor, such as the Polar H10, for the heart rate tracking feature to work.) 

You can also easily pre-program a specific workout. For instance, you can program intervals, set a distance, or put in a specific calorie goal. 

If you’ve ever used an AssaultBike, the monitor is pretty darn similar. This is great news for the tech-challenged fitness fans amongst us, like myself. 

Most people who have bought the Echo Bike are happy that they did so. Out of nearly 4,000 reviews on the Rogue Fitness website, the product has earned an average 4.9/5 star ranking at the time of writing. 

While perusing reviews, I noticed that it seems that the people who rated the bike 1, 2, and 3 stars simply didn’t do adequate research before investing. 

One user, for instance, mentioned that the bike wasn’t for the “vertically challenged” (those under 5 feet tall), which a quick look at the product specs would have made clear. 

Another user complained about the simplicity of the monitor. And a third mentioned that the amount of air the bike produced led her to avoid it on colder, winter days, which should have been expected for any air or fan bike. You could purchase the wind guard to avoid this problem, too. 

All in all, the vast majority of buyers seem more than pleased that the Echo Bike is part of their gym equipment arsenal.  

While Rogue says they stand by the strength, design, and build of the Echo Bike, their warranty is shorter than similar machines on the market. 

Rogue offers a two-year warranty on the Rogue Echo Bike, which include free repairs or replacements on frame or any part of the product if it becomes defective or malfunctions. However, the warranty does not cover normal wear-and-tear on items such as, but not limited to, foot pedals, transportation wheels, rubber grips and plastic end caps. 

To be honest, this warranty policy of two years is paltry. 

Assault Fitness, for instance, offers a five-year warranty on the frame of the AssaultBike Classic and a two-year warranty on its non-wear parts. (And the warranties on the Pro and Elite are even longer and better!).

Rogue offers a few different financing options for orders over $250—which at the price of $845 obviously includes the Rogue Echo Bike—that allow you to buy now and pay over time. 

As for returns? If you have second thoughts about the bike, you can return any unused equipment within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. (More details here.) This is a pretty standard and reasonable return policy. 

These two bikes may be the bikes you’re most likely to spot at a CrossFit gym, but they’re actually quite different from each other. 

The main difference is that while the Rogue Echo Bike uses a belt-drive system, the AssaultBike uses a chain-drive system. That may sound like engineering word salad, but for the rider it means three things: 

First, the Rogue Echo bike is quieter than the AssaultBike. Second, it’ll last longer and is easier to maintain. And third, the Rogue Echo bike will gift you far less ghost calories than the AssaultBike. Ugh. 

Ultimately, which of the two options you opt for will depend on factors such as: 

At the end of the day, there is no wrong choice here exactly. Both will support your goals during training and last a long, long time. 

Ahh, the Concept 2 BikeErg. Or, as it’s known in boxes across the world, the C2 bike. 

The C2 bike has started to crop up in CrossFit gyms all over, but rarely in place of the AssaultBike or Rogue Echo Bike. That’s because while the BikeErg is technically an air bike, it doesn’t have moving arms like the others. 

It has a fan flywheel just like the Concept2 RowErg does. But it has fixed handlebars, instead of handles you can push or pull, making it a much more similar ride to a road bike than air bike. 

Because the two bikes are so different, which you invest in should be based around your goals. If you’re looking for a bike that can facilitate higher-intensity interval training and will tax every single muscle in your body, get the Rogue Echo Bike. If you’re looking for a machine to use primarily for endurance training or low-intensity recovery work, get the BikeErg. 

The C2 bike is also a great pick for anyone navigating lingering upper-body injuries. Because you don’t use your upper-body push or pull muscles on this bike, it’s a good alternative option for people with a shoulder, elbow, or wrist injury. 

The Schwinn Airdyne AD7 is more similar to the Rogue Echo Bike than any other air or stationary bike on the market. 

The similarities should be apparent just looking at the two bikes side-by-side! Both have heavy steel frames; adjustable, large seats; virtually silent drivetrains; and similar LCD monitors. 

However, there are two main differences. The Schwinn Airdyne AD7 has multi-grip handle options, while the Rogue Echo Bike has just one. 

The other difference is the price. The Rogue Echo Bike costs about $850 while the Schwinn Airdyne AD7 costs $250 more at around $1,100. 

All in all, the Rogue Echo Bike is something any home gym or affiliate should invest in—especially if it will be frequented by athletes looking to compete at local or global CrossFit comps. It costs a very reasonable price for air and stationary bikes, and will last a long time thanks to its durable construction. 

Is the Rogue Echo Bike worth it? 

Looking for a machine that helps you get in a hearty HIIT workout? Want to practice cranking out calories on this machine before you see it on the CrossFit competition floor? Looking to invest in an air bike for your box that will last you years and years?

If you answered Y-E-S to any of those questions, then the Rogue Echo Bike is worth the investment. Durable in build and tough on the heart and muscles alike, the Rogue Echo Bike is a good investment for athletes and home gym owners. 

Why is the Rogue Echo Bike so hard?

The Rogue Echo Bike is hard to ride by design. It uses a belt drivetrain to get moving, which is a drive system that requires more oomph compared to chain drive systems (like the one on the AssaultBike). 

Further, unlike many stationary bikes it has moving handles, which means it uses an additional half of your body compared to other bikes!

What muscles does the Rogue Echo bike work? 

The Rogue Echo bike provides a full body workout. Unlike most stationary bikes which have static handles, this air bike has handles that you pull and push with your arms while you peg. As such, it puts your quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves, core, biceps, triceps, back, and chest to work. 

Is the Rogue Echo Bike good for weight loss? 

Truthfully, any workout that calls on every single muscle in your body, jacks your heart-rate up, and requires power can help you reach your weight loss goals. 

Of course, it should go without saying that your exercise routine is just one piece of the weight loss pie. If you want to drop pounds, you also need to dial in your stress levels, sleep, and nutrition. 

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