Marcy Fitness Equipment Comparison

Review by Carol Ann Mcgarrity:

This is the best equipment I have ever had. 1) It appears to have been made in the USA. 2) The price was great. 3) It works better than any other mini stepper I have ever had and believe me, I have had them all.

I am diabetic and control the disease by working out at least 45 minutes everyday which puts a strain on a mini stepper. This stepper, unlike others, can be adjusted up or down.

So far every stepper, the Wagan, Stamina, etc. etc and they have all broken. This machine is constructed so that all parts can be replaced if necessary. This is great. Thanks to Target for carrying the Marcy MS 93 Stepper with Handle.

The only negative is that they choose to use a monitor gauge made in China that has not worked from the start. But I can live with that.

Review by Spurgeon Secrest:

I'm addicted to this chine. I'm 64 yrs old and have tried the AB-DOER, the AB-Lounger, a Weider total gym, and free weights and none of them worked at all. I weighed 206 when I started using this about 2 months ago (actually, I had one just before buying this one, but the cable came off of the pulley and I couldn't get in back on and the company I bought it from (Fingerhut) wouldn't do anything about it), I now weigh 176. I turn on some music and step away in beat.I've found that my Fleetwood Mac cd is best. Enjoy

Review by Isaiah Tremaine:

I purchased the Marcy SB-410 for my 18 year old godson and his 18 and 19 year old friends. I've been coaching them with weightlifting for years. They needed a tougher exercise for their abs, but we didn't have a lot of room in our home gym. The Marcy bench was perfect. It took only 10 minutes to put together, it's light weight so you can move it out of the way. It's also convertable--from an incline crunch board to a stable bench. So, after the boys do their abs, they can stay in place, raise the bench in 2 seconds and do concentration curls from the same spot. It's solid, affordable, arrived in 3 days and I didn't pay for shipping. I couldn't have asked for a better purchase.

Review by Maxlive:

I bought the Marcy Ab bench because of its low price tag. First I must say that I was delighted by the quick shipping. It arrived in two days. Secondly, I want to talk about assembly. It wasn't much of a problem at first. I had to tap one of the screw holes in the base because it had been stripped out. Not a real problem. I also had to add a spacer on the "locking knob" that holds the leg pegs on the at the bottom because it too had different threads than the bolt. (It would not tighten even halfway.) After all that the bench was assembled and ready for use. Now I am only 5'8" and it seems to me that the bench part might have done better to be 3 or 4 inches longer, but doing the exercises was good enough to make my abs sore the next day and that is what counts. It is what it is but worth what I paid for it.

Review by Just:

In case you are not aware, muscles react 30% better to free weights then they do to machine weights. The problem for many people, is getting that free weight motion safely if you have to workout alone. This Smith Machine concept tackles that nicely.

I researched for weeks what would be the best free weight (or similar) home gym, at the lowest price possible, and as safely as possible without a spotter, but without sacrificing quality. This Marcy smith system won the toss. There were a few other possible runner-ups (like the Body Solid Series 7 Smith Machine at 00, or the PowerTec Multisystem Leverage Gym at 00). Both had their pros (quality) and cons (size/price), but in the end when I compared everything this Marcy gym won hands down. The Linear Bearings used in it dramatically increase the quality factor, and while some reviews said they were not "Thompson" bearings, I find them to be of very good quality and extremely smooth (besides, how "brand name" do you really need little steel ball bearings to be anyways).

Anyhow, there are a few things to note about this gym:

PROS:

GREAT price at only 2 on Amazon w/ free shipping (and it arrived in a week)

EVERY major exercise you can think of. I pulled out my exercise routine I followed when I was a member of Bally's Gym, and I was able to do every single exercise on my list. I am still amazed at everything this gym has!

THE SIZE of it is even more compact than I thought. The frame is only about 5 feet wide by 5 feet long (but keep in mind that the smith bar extends about 7 feet across, and the bench sticks out about 2 feet longer than the frame itself).

LOOKS - it is probably the most stylish smith gym I have seen in blue and white (coincidentally, our walls are the same color blue, so that was a bonus)

CONS:

You need to buy separate olympic weights. This is not actually a CON, since most of these free weight gyms require the same, but you can tack on a few hundred more for those (I found the best deal at Sears for 300 lbs + the bar at only 5)

The instructions - although they are fairly easy to read, they are aboslutely horrible for matching parts. NOTHING, not a single solitary part (and there are about 100) have labels. You have to actually hunt through the boxes to match the right piece with the right step and diagram you are on to make sure you have the right match. What were they thinking here? The good news is that ech part is pretty much one of a kind, so you shouldn't have too much trouble matching the piece, it's just finding it amongst 100 pieces that is the trouble. They could have made this much easier. The build time as stated in several reviews online said 5-8 hours, and yes it took me all 8 hours simply because of the hide and seek of matching parts. Proper labeling could have easily cut this down to 6 hours at a maximum.

Lastly, two of the frame pieces were bent when they got here (although no visible damage to the boxes). I had to hammer one piece back to it's correct shape, and the other had an elongated hole in it for a bolt to fit through, but because it was bent so much I had to drill about a 1/4" more space to accomomidate the bolt.

All in all, I would absolutely buy this again, as long as you don't mind an 8 hour build time and the "possiblity" of a little extra handy work.

My logic with this product was to buy it for 2, buy the Bowflex SelectTech dumbells (see my 2009 model review of those on Amazon) as well, buy the free weights, and buy an extra EZ curl bar but still stay under 00. I did exactly that, while at the same time maintaing the ability to keep free weight quality and encompass all necessary exercises.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, AND WE ARE 100% SATISFIED!

Review by John Smith:

I've had this Smith Machine for about 2 weeks now and one thing I can say for sure is that I am royally impressed with the quality-to-price ratio of this system. It does almost every exercise you could ever want or need. It also looks great sitting there in my family room. I have included a couple of pictures to give a closer and more detailed view of some of the attachment on the system because the picture that Amazon gives kinda sucks.

Well here is my rundown on this gym:

Pros are as follows:

1. Great quality/price ratio with it only costing me 9.94 and Free Super Saver shipping. It shipped with CEVA Logistics to get to me. (Just a side note here, be sure to call CEVA and have them lookup your tracking number because Amazon did not supply the correct tracking number and CEVA must contact you to schedule a delivery appointment or else they will not come out to deliver to you.)

2. This machine looks great in your living room, den, patio, or where ever you put so long as you have room for it.

3. Almost every major exercise known to man can be done on this system. I'm guessing there are at least over 100 different ones you can do on it.

4. Depending on your current weight collection, it will hold either regular 1" weight plates or 2" Olympic weight plates. It comes with these hard plastic adapters which slide over everything to make it Olympic size. It also comes with enough clips to go over every single weight peg; however, the set only comes with Olympic sized clips so if you want to use regular sized plates you have to get regular sized clips separately.

Unfortunately this system has some Cons (but that's ok, nothings perfect):

1. The chrome bars that the Smith bar and the rear cable weight slide up and down do not come with any type of lubrication so the smith bar makes an annoying grinding noise going up and down while the rear cable weight holder tend to kinda stick going either up or down. I highly recommend getting some lubricant for both of these areas. After I lubed'em up they slide up and down smoothly. Hey now, get your mind out of the gutter.

2. Build time for this system is staggering. Even though the instructions were not that bad and all of the nuts, bolts, washers, and bushings were labeled it still took 7 hours to put it together and that was with a buddy helping me the whole time. Be prepared to spend a lot of time building this if you get one.

3. It doesn't come with an Olympic weight set or regular Olympic bar but that didn't bother me any. I bought the 300lb O-Ring Olympic set from Sears for 0 and it works just fine.

I have another few tid bits of information, an "fyi" if you will, that I think everyone who is considering this gym should know. It has a spot on the bottom back support to hold an Olympic bar for storage. The smith bar has multiple locations to lock for varying heights and has adjustable emergency stops just in-case you can't stand back up. The big white Olympic bar holders in the very front can be moved to any location on the silver part of the front so you can stand and rack a bar if you are doing shoulders or put it low for declined bench presses. Last but not the least, its rated to support 600 pounds on the unit. That doesn't include the weight of the gym so it would come out to about 1100 pounds all together if you include the maximum plate weight and weight of the gym.

All in all I am 100% impressed and would buy it again if I ever needed to.

Review by Pain Mcpain:

You're looking at a power tower, same as I was when I saw this one. I saw this one at my local sports store, got to try it out. They were charging more for the thing plus a assembly charge. The thing came UPS, saved bucks with the super saver shipping and I was lucky enough to be home when the UPS guy had to lug the 80 lb. box to my door. The thing went together like clockwork. I had all the pieces and got them tight as a drum. To the guy that left the review referring the paracord, just tighten the bolt a little more, then the arms will hold wherever you put them. One problem for me on the whole deal, one of the arm pads wasn't assembled properly and it was missing the threads for the bolt that holds it to the apparatus. I called the company, they sent it out quick like a bunny, zero problems dealing with them. The pad they sent is a different color than the apparatus I bought, but my elbow won't notice. The company ships out anything if its missing, they didn't hassle me. I get a great workout on this thing. The dip arms are high, but I use a crate to get on them. I use a chair to work out to failure on pull-ups. It works like a charm.

Review by Nicholas Borgerson:

The assembly process of this item is pretty straightforward, especially for a piece of exercise equipment. I had it fully assembled in about an hour. There were a few problems with bolts lining up and so my finished tower is missing two bolts. This shouldn't be a problem because I only weigh about 150 pounds.

The pull up bar is secured with two bolts, and the dip arms are secured with one bolt. This makes assembly easy, but the unit wobbles a bit when I'm using it, and I would be worried about letting anyone who weighs over 250 pounds use it, at least with the stock bolts.

The power tower will fit snugly in a corner, with the arms in the down position. If you intend on doing pull ups, you may need to pull it out a bit from the corner of the wall because the arms will bump into the wall if try to put them up. I am currently using a piece a paracord to keep the arms up while I do pull ups (space is pretty tight in my apartment so I need to have it all the way in the corner).