AEKE Smart Home Gym review: powerful digital resistance and AI coaching in a fitness mirror

When the enormous, hulking frame of AEKE’s smart fitness mirror arrived at my house, I will be the first to admit that I was more than a little skeptical.

After all, can a giant slab of glass and plastic really offer the same sort of workout you will find in a commercial gym or personal trainer?

Well, the Chinese company certainly thinks it can and its product differ from the likes of Magic AI, Echelon and Vaha in so much that it contains everything you need for a full-body strength workout thanks to twin cables that appear from a robotic platform at the base of the unit.

With two individual handle attachments, leg cuffs and a straight barbell, the Smart Home Gym K1 essentially provides all the tools to tackle everything from a pounding chest workout to glute-growing squats — all with the added benefit that its AI coaching technology is keeping a beady eye on proceedings.

A big ol’ unit

Let’s not beat around the bush here: the AEKE Smart Home Gym is a hench dude. It tips the scales at 77kg and measures 455 x 695 x 1,740mm when the robotic deadlift platform is retracted into its storage position

Press a little button on the side and that platform requires 1,468mm of space to do its thing. All-in-all, you need at least 1m2 of space in your home to make this thing work, as well as a serious set of guns to get it through the door in the first place.

Thankfully, it does have a set of caster wheels on the rear, so it is slightly easier to transport around when not in use, but this particular test kit also came with an optional bench (itself very heavy), numerous handle attachments and a set of smart scales to get a good read of body composition to help track progress.

All of this kit seamlessly and quickly links to the 43" 4K display via Bluetooth, and there’s 2.1 surround sound pumping out voice guidance if you need it. Set-up is as simple as logging on to a Wi-Fi network and creating an account.

From there, the AEKE Smart Home Gym mirror will then ask a few questions about current fitness levels, goals and the sort of exercise you like performing. The system itself covers strength, yoga, stretching, meditation, cardio, boxing, pilates, HIIT and Thai Chi.

It doesn’t come cheap, though, with prices in the US starting at $3,498 with the optional folding bench, or $3,298 without it. AEKE doesn’t list it in British Pounds, but they will deliver to UK addresses, where it costs €2,983 for the bench package, minus any postage.

Strength is its key strength

Personally, I like to fill my week with a mix of strength and cardio workouts, ticking the vanity box with some hypertrophy-style workouts and ensuring my muscles don’t wither with some low-rep, high-weight sessions thrown in for good measure. I'll also chuck in a few runs or light sparring to keep the ticker in good health.

During the initial setup of the AEKE Smart Home Gym K1, I entered all this information into the mirror, and it then built a programme for me based on the types of workouts I enjoy and my goals.

It also weighed me and assessed body fat using the provided scales, although I’m not sure how accurate these actually were, considering they felt a bit like they came out of a Kinder Egg.

The initial session was a gentle introduction to an upper body workout, using the twin handles attached to the nylon cord cables to provide digitally-adjustable resistance. AEKE says it can deliver 220lbs (around 100kg) of resistance in 1lb (around 0.5kg) increments via a dial on the screen.

Just before the session commenced, the mirror suggested I wear fitted clothes, remove any hats (?!) and ensure the lighting is good in the room, all so the camera and AI tech can better track form and offer feedback.

A real digital coach then entered the screen/mirrored surface, which felt a bit weird and futuristic at first, but soon became second nature. With some muscly dude demonstrating each move, it was then my turn to follow suit, with the unit automatically adjusting resistance if it felt things were too easy for me.

What’s more, the resistance delivery could be tweaked so it offered more elasticity for power and explosive strength gains, or to place emphasis on the eccentric or concentric part of the movements if you really wanted to get nerdy with the gains.

Tougher than it looks

I was pleasantly surprised at how tough this initial workout proved, with the real-time feedback suggesting I tuck my elbows during a chest press and rotate my wrists slightly during a bicep curl to maximise each rep.

The challenge doesn’t just come from the hefty amount of digital resistance you can pile on, but also the constant tension the digital resistance technology offers. After 12-or-so reps on a chest press, my pecs were burning.

It is also neat how the accessory handles and the barbell feature a dedicated button (an included add-on for the latter) that rapidly drops any resistance.

It means you can get into position for a dumbbell or barbell bench-based exercise comfortably. Once in place, hit that digital button and the weight piles on. It's also great for when you reach those final punishing reps or push to complete failure.

On top of this, I was impressed with the number of exercises you could perform with merely a bench, two handles and a straight bar. Flat bench presses, deadlifts, squats and even hip thrusts were all included in the various strength sessions I undertook over several weeks of trialling.

All the while, the AI-powered assistant and front-facing camera would make suggestions on form and tempo to get the most out of each activity.

Once the workout was finished, performance was fed into the big data machine that then determined what the next session would look like, employing progressive overload for strength gains, or simplifying things if it felt things were a little too spicy.

Be still my beating heart

but Despite excellent guided sessions for strength, some of the other workouts didn’t quite deliver the same kind of experience. Stretching, for example, was packed with badly dubbed videos that didn’t really know what language to settle into.

Similarly, without additional cardio equipment, such as a treadmill or a spin bike, it’s very difficult to achieve a proper, heart-pumping cardio workout. These sessions not only require a lot of floor space, but they also rely on things like mountain climbers and burpees to work up a sweat.

That’s fine for the occasional quick-fire sweaty session, but it’s not the most fulfilling when looking at long-term goals. For those wanting to build proper cardiovascular resilience, users might be better off in a class-based environment or heading towards a dedicated tool, like a Peloton Tread or the new Peloton Cross Training Bike+.

High Intensity Interval Training workouts proved more involving and challenging, although there’s a lot of jumping between floor-based exercises and attachment-swapping, which is more limiting than free weights, whichever way you cut it.

That said, there is a deep collection of workout sessions that, while no way near as vibrant or engaging as something from Peloton or iFit, do a good job of working most of the major muscle groups in the body. Alternatively, you can build a bespoke workout by selecting from a whole host of exercises.

If all of that working out gets boring, there are a number of interactive games that use the front-facing camera. A Just Dance rip-off and a Flappy Bird clone proved popular with my kids.

Verdict

The AEKE Smart Home Gym is definitely one of the most engaging fitness mirrors I have ever tried, moving away from simple guided workouts to something that includes enough equipment to perform a proper strength training session.

It didn’t convince me to rip up my gym membership, as the twin cables are fairly limited in what they can offer in terms of individual exercises, and I found that things like deadlifts and squats didn’t feel particularly natural.

The same can be said for when you really start ramping up the weights, as the resistance curve feels forced, and I’m not sure I fully trust the nylon cord that acts as the cabling to withstand anything too heavy.

However, if you’re stuck for space at home and don’t want the bulk of a multi-gym, a rack of free weights or multiple kettlebells, the AEKE Smart Home Gym is a neat solution and one that takes the guesswork out of long-term fitness programming.

Alas, from what I could work out, the AEKE Smart Home Gym doesn't sync up with fitness watches from Apple, Garmin and more, nor is there any easy way to link to any other fitness-tracking app you might use.

Instead, it's a self-contained system that keeps all of its analysis to itself. Great for those new to fitness, but perhaps not what real workout aficionados will want.

The AEKE Smart Home Gym K1 is available now directly from AEKE for the recommended price of $4,598 / €3,921,61 / AU$6,943 (~£3,415.62). At the time of writing, the machine was on offer for $3,498 / €2,983,43 / AU$5,282 (~£2,598.61).