Explore the World by Bowflex

I really wanted to like this app and have it work, I'm even willing to pay for a subscription but . . . . When using the app on any device I own it does not play at a consistent rate, slowing and speeding up disconcertingly, sometimes it stops completely. We have fiber optic for Internet so it can't be slow streaming on our end. It also does not sync with the exercise bike very well, they disagree on almost everything from speed to miles ridden. Please make this app better!

The idea is fantastic; however, the reality is horrible. The "videos" are constantly transitioning to different parts of the recording, which breaks the experience. Each "video" is good for 15 to 20 minutes, so a 30 min ride has it looping over and an hour ride it repeats over and over. The speed adjusting was a great idea, but it doesn't work because the people around the camera also change speed so its ridiculous slow motion or fast forward people around you, which is quite distracting.

So, the app works. BUT. It didn't work on my Galaxy S22+. You'd select the video and it would just go to a black screen. It did work on my tablet yet for some reason, it wasn't listed in the Play store when I checked on my tablet, so I had to sideload the app. There is a massive delay between the time you start moving on the elliptical and when the video starts playing. The relation of your speed to the movement on the screen is WAAAAAY off. It does change but it moves really slow regardless. They also claim the videos are HD? I guess if HD was 480p. These are definitely not HD. The app lacks extremely basic features like the ability to show additional information on the screen. Why do I have to tap the screen to see my speed? That doesn't seem safe at all. Long and short of it is that for a company with the money and experience they have; this feels like they paid some college kids to throw something together as part of school project. No way it's even worth the subscription price of $9.99 a month.

Basic common sense features are missing. It doesn't just track your progress automatically, you have to use their boring tours of places when you'd rather watch a good tv show and have the app track your progress It doesn't keep track of the actual time that you exercised, just the day. For a company that makes a living of exercise equipment, you have to ASK, what IDIOT designed this software?

Using a Nautilus u618. With two different devices, the app does not run smooth at all. It goes fast, then slows down, then goes fast again. Moreover, I thought this would at least share the data with Google Fit, and it seems it's not the case. Can't find the feature anywhere. Since this is the only app my bike is compatible with, I am quite disappointed. I will have to buy a bunch of accessories to run Zwift instead.

Waste of Money! I purchased an Explore The World subscription for 1 year. So far, it's been a waste of money! I connect bluetooth on my elliptical and cell phone. Every time I use the app, it never connects properly. And when it looks like it finally does and I select a location to start riding or running, the screen does not move! I don't get to explore anything but a picture on my screen! My advice to you: do not purchase this subscription! Wish I could just get my money back now.

It's honestly disappointing I have to give this only 2 stars because the potential is there for 5 stars. The app syncs with the bike the instant you start to pedal. You can choose a route/workout quickly and you're on your way. It will even auto sync with Strava once you enable that option, so that's excellent. Why only 2 stars you ask? Well, the first major problem is there is no manual workout, you can only choose from a very small handful of rides, none of which are over 5 miles long. Seriously, what a waste of time, who's going to ride an exercise bike for only 10 minutes? It also isn't super accurate, not bad, but could be better. Even if Bowflex didn't add any more virtual locations to ride, that would be fine, but only if they allowed you to just choose a manual ride of any length you wanted. And I have to say, Bowflex is very disconnected with what people want if they only offer these extremely short rides. Even with a paid membership , that only give you like 10 more routes/locations and none of those are even over 5 miles. Huge swing and miss by Bowflex on this app.

Black Screen. No video at all. Samsung Note 9. It does connect to Bluetooth, but there is no video to watch. Part of the reason I bought this particular bike was to use the bluetooth connection for apps like this. From reading other reviews, this is not a new problem with Android based phones. We are all trapped in our houses, give us something new to look at. Thank you.

It does link to my Nautilus R618 but it's highly inaccurate. I thought it would pull the data from the bike but instead it appears to try and compute it and that's where things go wrong. I am assuming the bike is correct since that's where the technology lives. The time, speed, distance, resistance etc are close but no cigar... I would expect them to align with the bike. Also wouldn't you expect a place in the scenery to always be at the same mileage? Total junk!

At least connected to my Schwinn 270. While the route video was cute it was a little off sync with the time and distance on my console. Also, it did not record my workout. Update 11/17/21: I sent an email to Nautilus support for which I received a prompt response with things to check and info abou the app. I was able to get my workouts to be recorded. As well, I understand how the time and distance are recorded and how it can vary slightly from the bike console. Hence I give it 4 stars.

This app should be a quick and easy way to upload your workout data to Strava, however the data recorded in the app is barely accurate in comparison to what I see on the screen of my 170 upright bike. Distance and time both wrong, even the average resistance level was wrong. I had it set to 4 for the entire ride and the app shows 3. The only bit of data which was right was the date of the ride. When watching the video it constantly slows down even though I am pedaling at a constant 16 mph. It's so distracting I cant even watch it. At least I can enter the data from my ride accurately into Strava from the info on the display of the bike. Extremely disappointed.

The only reason I purchased the Schwinn 411 instead of a MUCH cheaper comparable not connected machine was because it seemed to have the capacity to connect like higher end machines. Alas it does not. At all. The app which is the only option, apparently, has zero controls and when it tries to connect when you try to start a run it just stalls forever and cannot connect. Then the Bluetooth disconnects and you have to re-pair and that doesn't seem to help as this app won't work even a little.

This app needs a complete overhaul. It's not reading the data from my bike. My bike shows 8.3 miles and the app only accounted for 7.47 of those miles. Also if the screen shuts off on your device the app will not track your data during the workout, it just ends the workout. On top of that, it does not integrate with Google Fit which was one of the main reasons I bought the Nautilus bike. Support also takes several days to respond to my emails. Could be a really amazing bike if the app worked.

I love this app. It syncs to my Schwinn fitness bike, which few apps do. The reason this is a 3 and not a 5 star review is that the Strava sync doesn't work at all. I have this and Strava installed and logged in on my Samsung Galaxy tablet but Strava is never updated though syncing is turned on. That was the killer feature I needed. But for that I would subscribe. Edit: had to lower the grade. It doesn't pair with my phone at all.

The app connects to my Nautilus - U616 Upright Exercise Bike via Bluetooth just fine. The problem is that the longer I ride, the more out of synch the mileage gets between the Explore the World app and the mike. The Explore the World app is always about 2 to 4 miles less than it should be. Other things like calories are the same, so the issue seems to just be with the milage. Please let me know what is causing the app to get out of synch. If this could be fixed, the app would be deserving of more stars.

Should be all FREE Schwinn IC4. Bike is great. As others mentioned, app doesn't track what bike outputs. Doesn't consider resistance at all. Speed can be way off. Also shows very little information on screen. Have to tap screen to get speed. If you accidentally tap a notification and go back the ride doesn't continue. Only links to Strava. I can't believe they actually want a subscription fee that's as much as far better apps. Even other free apps have better implemented features.

Similar to most comments, this app is severely flawed. I used it via bluetooth connection to a Schwinn 470 elliptical. The on screen display for time, distance, etc. on the elliptical are vastly different! By the end of a 20 minute workout, the app is approximately 10-15 seconds behind on time. The app might say I completed 3 miles while the elliptical shows less than 1 mile. Somehow, the app occasionally displays an average heart rate and top heart without ever touching the heart rate sensors.

Could be a lot better if the app showed RPMs, resistance level, as well as speed all the time (not just when you tap the screen). Also I noticed speed is only correlated to RPMs, ie if the resistance is high or low, the speed seems to say the same at the same cadence. So it has a lot of room for improvement.

Absolutely worthless. I am not interested in virtual routes. All I want to do is download and record my workout data, which I could not do. Deleted app after two minutes. As I had to set up an account to find this out, now have a worthless registration on an unknown server. 0 stars for the app, and -5 stars for a machine with Bluetooth connectivity, which does nothing. Fortunately, I did not choos the machine because of this feature.

After paying for premium routes it won't let me use the premium routes. Free routes are good but limited. After finally getting the app to work and paying the 60 bucks (never gave me a free trial), all I get now it's a black screen picture with the time running. Worked for only one week. Contacted Bowflex with an email twice but have not been responded too yet. I'm now going to contact my credit card service and request a refund as the app does not work.

I purchased the annual subscription when I bought my schwinn elliptical 470 on amazon. I had problems linking my subscription so I canceled it. I can use the free version of the app but I don't like how it speeds up and slows down.The other reviews say the same thing.. I don't think I will purchase the subscription. It seems to connect fine though.

Got the Schwinn 270 bike and this app since it is suggested in the manual. I'm not paying a subscription. Originally used my Huawei MediaPad so I could see the screen without squinting. Bluetooth connected fine. None of the free routes to watch would work. Did record my workouts but accuracy is off. 1km for every 10km ride. Can't read the pace graph due to numbers overlapping. With my Pixel 2 I can watch the ride videos and read the pace graph. Accuracy still off. Overall a so-so experience.

Definitely some speed / distance accuracy problems with the app. First ride out, I rode 6.8 miles on my Schwinn 170. The app said 5.9 miles. Also, the mph indicator on the screen would frequently swing from 2mph to 25 mph with the scenery matching the speed variations. Like riding through patches of mud. All the other data was fine. Scenery is nice though.

Schwinn 270 and Oculus Quest 2, Android phones. When I first tried out this app last fall I'd swear there were 3D routes available. Finally got a VR headset, not seeing options to go 3D. Thought maybe Premium? Still not seeing 3D routes. 2D via bluetooth easy enough to set up with the Schwinn, routes okay for this totally out-of-shape wheelchair rider. Better'n nothing. But frustrated.

Oddly poor performing app. It supposedly synchronizes with your machine but the speed at which the video goes is not associated with how fast or slow you are pedaling. You're basically just watching a video of someone on a bicycle ride recording their mileage not yours. It's not really worth using.

Really bad app if you use Schwinn 170/270 bike. The old Schwinn app (no longer available) kept track of all the bike's built-in workouts. You have to "go around your arm to get to your elbow" in order to do that with this app. You have to run the app at exactly the same time as the bike program in order for the app to record anything. And there's no Pause function in the app, so if you pause the bike to get off momentarily , there's no way to pause the running app. Awful!

Doesn't import data from u616 to google fit after workout is complete. Data on bike does not match the data in the app. The video does speed up and slow down with your pace of pedaling but it is not synced. I'm not even sure what this does...it seems like just a scrolling video feed. Not a virtual exercise.

As others have stated, this is all but junk. The app hardly synchs with your bike, you need to have the app running as your main app the entire ride to even attempt to log a workout and the app does not synch with Google Fit like it indicates on the website (not like that matters anyhow because of the other issues). Instead of trying to support an app they obviously can't, why not just allow the bike to synch with ANY of the other fitness apps?

Needs a lot of work: 1) metrics are not 100% in sync with connected device 2) let app run in background, whilst it’s ok to see moving picture at times, main thing I is to record metrics, ie. run in background, whilst watching Netflix. 3) sometimes in use it looses connection, stalls and then reconnects 4) the interface is odd, why ask if run or ride then discover/connect to device. Instead connect and use device ID to auto select. 5) why not control device, ie. Program, start/stop

In the beginning the app wouldn't work. Took developers awhile to fix but it's finally up and running. A little boring to look at but it's an ok app. Time and miles never match what my bike reads though. Goes slower than time and miles on the bike. All in all I think it's a pretty good app. I've enjoyed it so far