Our Men's Health Labexperts covered countless kilometres on each rower, trying every feature and setting on offer to test their ease of use, design, functionality and performance. Here's what they looked out for. Zachariah explains that rowing will not only help you build strength, it can improve your conditioning and your posture too. It can also boost your aerobic ability, increase your heart and lung health and smash through the calories. Best of all, it's lower impact on your joints. The 19 pre-installed programs are a huge bonus, but the console could benefit from a re-think as it isn’t the most intuitive to use. Everything considered it is a good rower from a trusted brand, but is it a good value for money versus its competitors? Let’s take a look… First Impressions Rowers work most of your joints through a significant and beneficial range of movement, without damaging your joints. Combining top-of-the-line equipment with immersive live streaming workouts, the Hydrow is one of the most luxurious smart rowing machines you can buy. It offers a buttery smooth, quiet ride with an electromagnetic drag mechanism, and its 22-inch touch screen tilts and rotates for a good viewing angle on and off the machine. Hydrow live streams two to three rowing classes each day, and now has about 4,000 workouts in its on-demand library across the following categories: rowing, pilates, mobility, strength, and yoga. Most of Hydrow's rowing workouts are filmed live on the water, with the coach in an actual boat, so you never know what might happen. During the rowing workouts, you have a third-person view of the coach, so you can easily follow along to match their stroke rate. Hydrow also brings an element of competition and philanthropy to your workouts with leaderboards, weekly challenges, and company donations to Water.org after every 60 days you're active. Who It's For

including rowing machines for a home gym and rowing machines for commercial gyms from brands including

Ergatta

More than anything what we really liked about this rower, is the range of workout programs and the range of resistance levels. Suitable for all fitness fanatics! Sometimes combined with magnetic resistance, air rowers closely match the simulation of a true rowing experience. This is second only to fluid rowers. Powered by a flywheel, wind is used for resistance. These rowers can be a little noisy.

It's often widely thought that rowing is just an arm workout (the Olympic team do have epic guns after all), when in reality, this exercise will target your entire body. There are also people giving this indoor rower four stars for the features and saying it is about right for the price. This suggests that while there is nothing wrong, there is nothing spectacular either. Rowing works out almost all of your muscles! Up to 86% of your muscles, including your lats, quads, rhomboids, glutes, teres major, teres minor and spinal erectors. The software of this Reebok ZJET Rowing Machine shows that this mid-range model has more options than the average rower.There are comments from users about the instructions in the manual. Some found it a bit too difficult to get the programmes set up and to actually get started on their session. But, once they were used to the process it wasn’t too bad. Air (or wind) rowers are loud, but typically less expensive than magnetic options and often do not require a power outlet to operate. The air-powered Concept2 RowErg, a staple at CrossFit gyms, has a cult-like following with many devoted fans, but it doesn't offer much in the way of built-in entertainment features, so boredom can be an issue. Some machines, like those from Aviron, combine both air and magnetic resistance. The Ergatta's water tank The Wave is Hydrow's smaller and lighter rower. Like the original, the Wave is a monorail-style rower with a quiet electromagnetic resistance system. The Wave doesn't feel quite as smooth as the original Hydrow, and it features a smaller 16-inch display that doesn't rotate, but it offers access to the same fantastic workout streaming platform at a more reasonable price. Hydrow offers plenty of content for all levels, and its well-organized interface and filtering options make it easy to find suitable classes. With around 200,000 users, Hydrow's in-class leaderboards are highly competitive. Who It's For Pace, also called split time, typically indicates how long it would take you to row 500 meters. In other words, a 2:00/500m split time means it would take you two minutes to row 500 meters at your current pace. Just like when you're running a mile for time, the lower your rowing split, the better. This will vary person-to-person, but beginners may want to shoot for a sub-3:00 split, and work towards decreasing it over time. The fastest 500m split times on record are around 1:10 for a man and 1:24 for a woman. To lower your split, you must increase your intensity (push harder with your legs), but increasing your stroke rate can also help. Hydrow Wave Unlike treadmills – which, let’s face it, do not compare to being out in Mother Nature – rowing machines are a compact and practical way to enhance your stamina and fire up your muscles. They're also more accessible than most cardio machines, which is an added bonus.

Magnetic rowing machines let you adjust your drag factor via the touch screen, physical buttons, and/or a knob. Some air rowers feature a damper lever on the side of the flywheel that lets you change the drag factor, while others are not adjustable. To change the drag factor on a water resistance machine, you must add water to the tank, or siphon it out. Magnetic rowers allow for more control over a resistance setting called drag factor than air or water rowers, but you shouldn't have to adjust this often. For a traditional aerobic rowing workout, you generally want to keep the drag factor somewhere in the middle of the supported range while a high drag factor setting will give you more of a strength training workout. Regardless of resistance type, drag factor should not be thought of as a general difficulty setting. This rowing machine is perfect for all fitnell levels. If you have been using rowing machines for a while, and are ready to challenge yourself, you can do so thanks to one of the well-thought-out pre-installed programs and range of resistance levels.Here, there are 19 user programmes to help you find a better fit for your needs. Many of these rely on set targets you can work towards, such as time, distance, and calories. It is a simple way to create a goal and then increase your targets over time. The seat could do with some more padding to improve the user experience. It is not the most comfortable seat, but nevertheless, for the price range, the seat is functional. A gel overlay can help with that.