I actually bought this bike several years ago and it has worked out great for me. I changed the pedals to road bike pedals as I had a spare set. If you haven't used a spin bike before you may complain about the seat being hard or not comfortable but you'll get used to it. I usually wear my cycling shorts when on the spin bike.
Alibaba is just a platform, not a manufacture. When you says "Alibaba equipment", it may confuse someone else.dealzhuntr wrote: ↑ Sunny Fitness is just selling Alibaba equipment (i.e. they do not engineer/design these products). What this means is that the designs are just a copy-paste of real companies designs with certain things changed to reduce manufacturing costs (i.e. swap high quality bearings for low quality ones, weaker frame, shittier welds). I looked into the designs that most Alibaba manufacturers use and it appears that they mostly use older inferior designs with fundamental problems (e.g. just check youtube to get an idea of the bearing setup).
Another problem is that Sunny sells 32 different spin bike models so I doubt they sell the same model for very long. This makes it harder to troubleshoot problems as less people have your specific model and also harder to find parts since each model is so different. Sunny does sell parts if you contact them but there is no guarantee that they have the part you need. I checked the manual for this bike and it luckily includes a full parts list. Bearings are ones you can get at Princess Auto for cheap. The belt however is very unique (it's metric - not even McMaster-Carr or Misumi carry these) and I couldn't find an easy source for it. You would likely have to contact one of the transmission belt stores on Aliexpress and ask them to help you get it but it would only cost you like $10 max.
Most of the complaints with the Sunny bikes relate to noise, which is likely caused by the bearings crapping out, belt stretching, or frame bending (causing the first two problems). I should also state at this point that Sunny's warranty does not cover labour and is very short for parts. If you do have an issue, they'll just ship you the parts (but no tools) and give you a general video.
If you check Alibaba, you'll see that bikes like this range in the price of $80 to $100 USD. So accounting for shipping and landing costs, the bike's raw cost is around $200 CAD, so about $100 in markup (likely some of that covering Amazon fees).
In the future, you'll see that all of these bikes will be belt driven with magnetic resistance as the cost difference is low or lower than chain/friction setups. You'll also see that legit companies will have to lower their product costs to compete. The first company you'll see this with is Concept2 and their rower, ski, and bike machines as so many companies are 100% knocking them off - tons for sale in the US.
Examples of Concept2 rowing machine clones:
- https://www.fitnessdepot.ca/B11BCB09076 ... rower.html
- https://www.getrxd.com/xebexrower.html
- https://www.amazon.com/Lifecore-R100-Co ... B000IY84HY
Rowing machines take up more space, but I agree they are a better all-in-one workout. They are also easier on your knees. The only reasons I have a home cycle is space and my employer reimburses Peloton memberships.
