Echelon Fitness may not be a household name in the UK, but the Tennessee-based company has been a leader in smart exercise equipment to rival the likes of Peloton and SoulCycle since 2017.
The brand, founded by entrepreneur Lou Lentine, has released some of the best bikes (coach bus The Echelon EX-3 Bike gave a four-star review), along with the Echelon Stride folding treadmill and the Echelon smart rowing machine—which presents itself as an accessible and affordable alternative to its celebrity-approved competitors.
Echelon has now released an interactive exercise mirror, the Reflect 50in Smart Fitness Mirror, as a gateway to bringing over 2,000 exercise classes to life in your living room. This puts it against the likes of American competitors Mirror, Tempo, Tonal and Nordic Track, along with Germany’s VAHA, but could Echelon be the smartest fitness mirror of them all?
and create
The Echelon Reflect attached to its oversized stand is designed for unmistakable fitness. But without a wall-mounted bracket, the Reflect becomes a more inconspicuous piece of living room furniture. It measures 48 inches (121 cm) long, 24 inches (61 cm) long, and 2 inches (5 cm) deep, and weighs 24.5 kg.
Since I’ll be returning the mirror in a couple of months and can’t remember where I left the Polyfilla, I opted to use its stand, setting aside a corner of my upstairs bedroom to set it up. Fortunately, its weight – 20kg lighter than the VAHA X – allowed it to be lifted up the stairs and set in position.
The mirror and the base can be unpacked from the two carton boxes, and can be assembled separately. However, the small details made me wonder about the accuracy of its manufacture. Two heavy metal tubes connect the base to the screen, and are held in place by small, seemingly insufficient, screws; The disappointment is that the mirror is not aligned with the front of its base.
Accompanying accessories, such as resistance bands or light dumbbells, or even a grooming kit to keep the screen clean, are also absent. Those hang-ups aside, the mirror looks aptly polished, with a nano-crystalline coating, and is presumably anti-fingerprint glass (while it will smudge the screen every time you touch it, it can easily be wiped clean with a dry cloth).
Once plugged in, clicking the Echelon logo turns on the touchscreen and setup – connecting to WiFi and completing your profile – is relatively easy. After a couple of minutes, I’m ready to pick an exercise from the home screen’s vast library of class classes.
These range from HIIT, cardio, kettlebell and yoga to Zumba, boxing, meditation and even exercises in French or German. Along the bottom of the screen, you can go to the live classes and progress section to monitor your weekly winnings.
Mirror doesn’t require a companion app to run, but it’s compatible with Strava, Apple Health, and Fitbit, and you can sync your Spotify account with it.
There’s also a dedicated Reflect app for iPhone and Android, which I assumed would provide more analytics and the ability to track your progress on the go, but I wasn’t able to connect my device to my app or music despite numerous attempts.
Experience
No matter the IT headache, trying out the mirror reflection exercise is fun. In my first class, a 20-minute on-demand full-body strength workout with trainer Ashley, the mini-trainer with a California accent appears in the middle of the screen, while the timer appears in the upper right corner.
Below Ashley is the live leaderboard, with the profiles of each person taking the class, along with each user’s total Heart Zone Score. I later found out that this number correlates with your performance in class. By syncing the chest strap heart rate monitor with the mirror, you can track your pulse and calories burned right on the screen.
However, thanks to my technical difficulties, all I can do is count down the seconds remaining as Ashley leads us through a combination of Roman deadlifts, curved rows, reverse lunges, and Superman planks. It’s definitely effective—downward rest periods ensure that my lungs, like my hamstrings, burn to the end.
When the 20 minutes are up, the chapter shows a breakdown of the calories we burned and the points we got, as well as where we finished on the leaderboard. Since I haven’t used my HR tracker, I’m weak at the bottom of the class, which is frustrating but understandable.
Then, I’m pushed to my weekly progress report, and then back to the home screen to find a suitable warm class. At this point, I was struck by the sheer abundance of the exercises and the lack of detail to differentiate one from the other.
I count 12 strength exercises called “total body,” 15 cardio classes called “arms and abs,” and about 20 sessions of high-intensity exercise called simply “HIIT.” You can filter by coach or duration: 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes. Classes are not listed under difficulty and there are no previews or breakdown of moves to let you know what’s in store.
As a result, my 20-minute “sports” yoga routine with Nikita turned out to be an advanced handstand class. It’s a good challenge, but a world away from the energetic vinyasa flow I’ve been looking for.
Undeterred, a few days later, I embarked on a 7 Day Killer Core with Echelon’s head coach Sam Jackson. The first day is a simple cap to install the plank to set a standard to beat at the end of the plan. The following days vary from 10 minutes 45 seconds running and 15 seconds outside the basic circuit to a more challenging 20-minute workout with increasingly advanced movements.
Small-size classes and using progressive overload prove an effective way to keep me coming back for more—plus, it’s hard to skip a workout when you have to push past a 6-foot-tall reminder each day. Seeing my reflection means I can correct figure flaws in the middle of class and by day seven I’ve extended my maximum plank by 37 seconds.
Once I was able to pair my HR monitor with a reflection mirror, I also saw the benefit of a live leaderboard when diving into a 20-minute HIIT class. In a neck-and-neck duel with a user ominously called “TheHunter”, I found myself kicking straight to the end of the exercise when I could have let go.
The coach also cheered me up shouting words of encouragement to me personally, as it was a live class and not an on-demand class.
“You got this, Sam,” she said while driving, adding, “We have the same name so I really like you!”
While knowing Sam could only see my username and count points, he provided a valuable dose of accountability during my workout, which is often half the battle when it comes to completing my workout class, and kept me busy from warm-up to warm-up. .
judgment
After two months of using the Echelon Reflect, my weekly progress report shows all the days I’ve trained – and where my enthusiasm is starting to wane. After the initial rejuvenation factor wore off, I began to find the workouts repetitive and uninspiring. In strength or yoga classes, where the goal isn’t to push your heart rate too high, there are no metrics to go after.
By contrast, with competing tech brands like Fiit, you can count the number of reps logged into the strength classes, or track your pace on a connected cardio kit, to give you a score you can beat. Fiit’s classes are also more visually and acoustically stimulating, and their instructors, such as the Peloton-appointed A-list team, keep the workouts engaging and entertaining.
This last point is something I’ve also run into with VAHA, which suggests that it’s a class issue in general. But the German company at least recognized the benefit of making its mirror two-way, including a camera built into the device for 1:1 PT sessions and the ability to get instant feedback on the right shape, even with pre-recorded classes on demand.
Unfortunately, one-dimensional echo reflection lacks this level of innovation or future scrutiny. Its interactive display doesn’t offer Mirror and VAHA, or the premium accessories and additional storage that NordicTrack offers.
Since you can technically access each class via the Reflect app on your mobile phone, it also raises the question of why you sacrifice valuable living space in your home for a mirror, when all the exercises are available in your pocket. However, at £1,799, the Reflect Mirror is £151 cheaper than the VAHA X, and £700 less than NordicTrack’s Vault, so the company at least offers a more affordable option.
At the time of writing, Echelon tells us that it’s working on a next-generation device with bi-directional capability, so these issues may be corrected. But if smart mirrors are supposed to be the next frontier for home fitness tech, at least for me, Echelon didn’t break them on its first try.
Buy from Echelon | £1,799, membership £29.99 a month (first 30 days are free)
