Best Rowing Machines of 2026

Our recommendation

Concept2 is our top-scoring pick in Rowing Machines, at 9.6/10 — it highlights “Air resistance with an adjustable damper setting”.

Hydrow scores 9.2 and is the one to compare against it — it highlights “Electromagnetic resistance adjusts during a workout”.

Both scores are our editors’ assessment of published specifications, pricing and terms against the criteria in our rating methodology — they are not aggregated customer reviews.

Resistance type decides the feel and the noise

Rowers are sorted by how they create resistance, and that choice affects the stroke feel, the volume, the maintenance and the price more than any other specification.

Air resistance uses a fan flywheel. Pull harder and the fan meets more air, so resistance scales with your own effort — which is why almost every gym and every competitive testing protocol uses air. The trade-off is noise: a fan rower is the loudest machine in this list and is audible through a floor.

Water resistance uses paddles in a tank and behaves similarly, scaling with effort. The sound is a swoosh rather than a rush of air, which most people find easier to live with. Tanks need a purification tablet occasionally and add weight.

Magnetic resistance is set by the machine, not by your effort, so the load stays constant whether you pull hard or softly. It is near-silent and needs no maintenance, and on connected rowers it can be changed automatically mid-class. Purists say it feels less like rowing; for apartment use it is often the deciding factor.

Some machines combine magnetic and air. In practice they feel closer to air with a wider adjustment range.

The damper is not a difficulty setting

This is the single most common misunderstanding about air rowers, and it is worth getting right before you buy.

The damper lever controls how much air reaches the flywheel, which changes the feel of the stroke — how heavy the catch is. It does not directly set how hard the workout is. A high damper feels like rowing a heavy boat; a low damper feels like a light, fast one. Your effort determines the intensity either way.

Most experienced rowers train in the middle of the range rather than at the top. If you see a machine marketed on how high its resistance number goes, that number is measuring the wrong thing.

Footprint and storage

A rower is roughly eight feet long in use. That is the measurement that decides whether one works in your home, and it is the one most people skip.

Ask how it stores. Water rowers generally stand upright on their end and take about a square foot of floor. Air rowers commonly separate into two pieces. Magnetic rowers usually fold. Each is a genuinely different daily experience — a machine that stands up in a corner gets used more often than one you have to dismantle.

Also check ceiling height if a rower stores upright: eight feet of machine standing on end will not fit under every ceiling.

Work out the subscription cost before the hardware cost

Several rowers are built around a monthly membership. Without it, the screen becomes a basic metrics display — you keep a working rower and lose most of what the screen was for.

So calculate the five-year figure: hardware plus sixty months of membership. That reordering is dramatic, and it is the honest basis for comparison. A subscription-free rower with a good monitor can cost less over five years than a cheaper connected machine.

The question worth asking yourself is whether guided classes are what actually gets you rowing. For some people they genuinely are, and the membership is the product rather than an add-on. Others prefer to row while watching something else, in which case a machine whose monitor works standalone does the same job.

What the monitor should tell you

A useful rowing monitor shows split time (time per 500 metres), stroke rate, distance and elapsed time. Split time is the number that matters — it is how rowers measure pace, and it lets you compare a session today with one from last year.

Check whether the monitor works without the internet, whether it broadcasts to heart rate straps and third-party apps over Bluetooth, and whether your workout history is stored on the machine or only in the company's cloud. Cloud-only history disappears if you stop paying.

Build quality signals worth checking

• Maximum user weight, which is the clearest proxy for frame strength.
• Warranty split — frame warranties are often ten years or more while parts and electronics are one to three. The shorter number is the one to read.
• Seat rail length, which limits usable height. Taller rowers should check their inseam against the stated maximum rather than overall height.
• Parts availability. A rower is a long-lived machine; whether you can still buy a chain, a handle or a monitor in eight years is a real consideration.

A note on resale

Rowing machines have an unusually active secondary market, and one brand in particular holds value well enough that buying used and reselling later can cost very little. If budget is the constraint, a used commercial-grade air rower is often a better machine than a new budget one at the same price. Check the monitor works and the chain is not stretched.