Peloton Guide Review: Its Body-Tracking Tech Gives Good Fitness Advice

What is the difference between working out with the help of the movement tracker and doing the workouts on your own? Lots of people cheat. Even the most scrupulous ones. I arch my back during overhead tricep dips instead of standing straight. Instructor Jess Sims chided me for poking my butt into the air. It's easier to check your form if you can see yourself.

When you do a set of reps, a little more of the Movement Tracker graphic gets filled in until you hear a ding, and the set is completed. Guide shows you the parts of the body you just worked out. I discovered that I always pick full-body workouts that focus on my core and glutes when I checked my cumulative workout summary. After about a week, I began to prioritize my chest and arms.

My child was on spring break when I was testing the Guide. He and my dog like my workouts so much that they like dancing in front of me to the music, rolling on my mat and trying to lick my face. The Guide and its software did a great job of managing this chaos. Even though my companions were moving around in the frame, the system only counted one or two incomplete. Voice recognition worked well. The Encanto soundtrack was playing next to the barking I heard.

Lauren explained in her in-depth look at the Guide that Peloton is taking privacy into account. Images and audio from your home and body are kept off the internet because the movement- tracking data is crunched on the device itself. When the Guide is not in use, you can slide the front cover over the camera lens and turn off the microphones. In the future, the company may use the Guide's camera to collect facial scans, according to the privacy policy. You can always plug it in when you're not using it.

Only the lonely.

Amelise Lane said that in the last quarter, the company had over 2 million Connected Fitness subscribers who used the app to work out with their own equipment. I am in the minority as a member of that group. It is a significant minority.

In a world full of workout devices that are trying to keep you addicted to healthy habits, the special sauce of Peloton has always been its software. Out of all the apps I've tried, only Peloton understands how busy ordinary people are.