Fitness Gear Review: Bowflex SelectTech 1090

What is it? 

Bowflex SelectTech 1090 Dumbbells are adjustable dumbbells that allow you to select between 10 to 90 pounds of weight. They are designed to be space efficient, housing 17 sets of weights in one compact design.  

What you get:

The dumbbells arrive ready to use. Each dumbbell comes with its own storage tray that allows for quick and easy weight selection. 

Review:

Dumbbells are the most versatile pieces of exercise equipment you’ll ever use. They allow you to perform endless amounts of effective exercises without taking up too much space. The Bowflex SelectTech 1090 Dumbbell take this one step further. They have taken an entire row of dumbbells and condensed them into one compact design. 

Each dumbbell has a dial at each end. These dials allow you to control the weight at each respected side of the dumbbell. They easily adjust to allow you to seamlessly move from one exercise to the next. The weight options are as follows: 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, and 90 lbs. We found that selecting a weight on the Bowflex SelectTech 1090 Dumbbells is rather flawless and extremely smooth. 

Once you have selected your weight, you’ll find the dumbbells release from their trays very easily. The metal handles of the dumbbells are comfortable with enough knurling to help maintain your grip and improve friction on even the heaviest of exercises. We found them to be very comfortable and never a distraction during an exercise. To clarify, some people find that knurling (the cross pattern on the bar) or the bar itself hurts their hands, thus distracting them from their exercise. That is not the case with any Bowflex products we have ever used. The dumbbells are great for almost every exercise known to man.

Dumbbells do have some limitations. They can not replace every barbell exercise (we love barbells!) no matter how creative we get. We found that every exercise we performed with the Bowflex SelectTech 1090 Dumbbells were as good as traditional dumbbells … with a few exceptions. 

The Exception:

The Bowflex SelectTech 1090 Dumbbells can weigh up to 90 pounds. That incredible. But with that ability there has to be some give and take. The good is that you aren’t limited to weight … which we love. This is extremely important as you progress through your fitness journey. The bad is that, by design, the dumbbells have to be rather large. That’s not to say they are too big. But the additional size to hold the additional weight makes some exercise movements a little trickier. When performing a chess press, overhead press or other movements where the weights come together, the exercise has to be altered just a bit to perform the complete range of motion. In other words, your movements will be just a little wider than normal to prevent the dumbbells from touching. We noticed that Bowflex does not advertise with any pictures of people performing these types of movements. The overhead press is performed with a neutral grip (as opposed to a standard pronated grip) to allow for better clearance. That being said, we don’t mind this at all. It’s a minor issue to an otherwise outstanding design. 

We have also heard of people complaining about the weights falling off. Having used and taken care of the Bowflex SelectTech 1090 Dumbbells for over two years now, we have never experienced these issues. Not to say that do not exsist, but we have never encountered any such problems. As a side note, having been in hundreds of gyms and worked out with thousands of people we can say that some gym goers love to throw their weights down when they are done. Whether it be exhaustion, adrenaline, excitement or any other feeling of gratification, people tend to drop them more often than not. This is totally fine with traditional dumbbells, but not for the Bowflex SelectTech series. They can take thousands and thousands of workouts without breaking. But they will not hold up to much dropping or tossing.  The design isn’t build for that.