Best Smart Home Gyms

For most buyers who want to train strength, it's Tonal, which tops Gavler's list at 9.6. The wall-mounted electromagnetic system replaces a full cable machine and rack in the space of a mirror, and the second-generation Tonal 2 added a built-in Smart View camera that tracks your form as you lift. But 'best' depends on what you train and what you'll tolerate. If you need heavy resistance in a footprint you can store, the Vitruvian Trainer+ moves up to 440 pounds from a platform that slides under a bed. If you want the lowest entry price, Tempo Move turns your phone and TV into the coach. And every one of these is only as good as the membership and the company behind it — which, in this category, is a real part of the decision.

Tonal is worth it for serious strength trainers in small spaces who will use it enough to justify the cost — it genuinely replaces a cable machine, a weight rack, and a lot of guesswork. Tonal 2, released in January 2025, is the meaningful upgrade: reviewers at Garage Gym Reviews highlight a new built-in wide-angle camera that captures your full body for AI form coaching, quieter operation, and higher resistance than the original. The catch is cost. The Tonal 2 hardware runs about $4,295 before the roughly $500 in accessories and the required membership of about $60 a month on a 12-month minimum. If you would otherwise pay for a gym plus personal training, the math closes in under two years; if you won't use it several times a week, it's an expensive wall ornament.

For pure strength, the digital-weight systems win over mirrors and bikes. Tonal (up to 250 pounds of electromagnetic resistance, wall-mounted) is the most polished and coaching-heavy, and its camera-based form correction is the best in the category. The Vitruvian Trainer+ is the powerlifter's pick — a floor platform delivering up to 440 pounds of servo-motor resistance, more than double Tonal's ceiling, in a unit you can stand on and store under furniture. Both let you do things physical weights can't: eccentric overload, chains-style resistance curves, and velocity-based training. Choose Tonal for coaching and compound-cable polish; choose Vitruvian for raw load and a smaller permanent footprint. Neither is cheap, and both require a subscription for their best features.

Almost all of them do, and it is the single most important thing to understand before buying. The hardware is only half the product — the classes, the AI coaching, the adaptive resistance, and often the touchscreen itself are gated behind a subscription that runs roughly $20 to $60 a month depending on the brand. Tonal is around $60 a month, CAROL and Bowflex's JRNY are closer to $20, and Vitruvian offers both a monthly plan and a one-time lifetime option. Skip the membership and most of these machines lose the features you paid for. Factor several hundred dollars a year, indefinitely, into the true cost — and weigh whether the company is stable enough to keep those servers running for the life of the hardware.

The connected-fitness boom of 2020 and 2021 over-built the category, and the correction has been brutal. Lululemon wound down the Mirror it bought for half a billion dollars. NordicTrack's Vault was discontinued. Bowflex's parent filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2024 and sold the brand to Johnson Health Tech for $37.5 million. Vitruvian nearly vanished before relaunching, and Forme pivoted away from selling to home buyers toward gyms and clinics. The lesson for a 2026 shopper is blunt: a smart gym is a bet that its maker will still exist to keep the app alive. Gavler's list keeps the discontinued systems visible for reference but ranks the survivors — the machines from companies still actively selling and supporting them.

Three good answers, depending on what you train. For strength, the Vitruvian Trainer+ is the standout — the platform folds and slides under a bed, so it disappears completely between workouts, yet still delivers up to 440 pounds of resistance. For coached strength on a budget, Tempo Move is a docking station roughly the size of a small cabinet that uses your phone and TV instead of a dedicated screen, so it takes almost no dedicated space. For cardio, the Hydrow Wave is a deliberately shrunk-down rower that reviewers say holds the full-size Hydrow's rock-solid feel, and an optional kit stores it upright against a wall. Tonal is also space-efficient once mounted, but it needs a permanent stretch of wall drilled into studs.