Keiser M Series Hack 4.2.4 + Redeem Codes

I found this app after attending a spin class that used another Kaiser App to create a class wide “dashboard” on a shared screen attached to the instructor’s laptop.

The app, which is free, offers two FTP tests: a “brief” 30 minute workout that calls for a 5 minutes of all out effort as well as an extended 45 minute workout that calls for a 20 minute all out effort to estimate the users FTP

In addition there are guided sessions for improving endurance, cadence, FTP and VO2 Max. There is no voice over narration for the “guided session” instead there is a combination, bar graph, watt meter and rpm gauge that suggests the optimal gearing and rpm to accomplish the workout. Kaiser has a subscription service that provides traditional narrated workouts..

I waited in great anticipation for my bike once I placed the order. And I can tell you it has been the best piece of exercise equipment I’ve ever owned. I’ve been working out at home and I’m gyms for most of my life time and this bike is amazing.
It’s smooth and quiet. It’s sturdy even when I stand to pedal. And the app tracks all my activity so accurately. It’s easy to use and fun to watch while you ride.
The app also makes me work harder because I can see where I need to be. It allows me to compete with myself.
And the app immediately hooked up with my bike and the heart monitor.
I just can’t say enough good things about the app and the bike

The ability to take an FTP test periodically helps gauge progress. The guided sessions that are tailored to your FTP results are great! The app is a little glitchy though and sometimes has trouble starting up or pauses mid ride. If you open another app, your final data will tracked will be influenced by the time period you ran this app in the background, which is annoying. My biggest gripe though is with the calorie count. Since they have incorporated the Polar heart rate monitor readings in the app and have details from the rider profile, you wouldn’t think it would be too difficult to get accurate calorie counts. It is unclear what if any rider specific data is taken into consideration in the calorie count. Please address this. I wore my Suunto today out of curiosity and there was quite a disparity!!

I really do like the redesign of the app. It does a better job of illustrating and communicating one’s metrics. But I’ve run into two big issues that result in the low rating.

1. The time spent cycling and distance travelled don’t match between the app and the bike computer. Time spent cycling is based on when you open the app and not when you start peddling. The app also displays a farther distance traveled than the bike computer. I first assumed that the app had a better algorithm to determine distance. But given difference in time spent cycling, I’m not sure anymore.
2. Since the introduction of the new app, cycling sessions no longer sync with Apple Health. It worked just fine before the update. But not since. And I’ve tried troubleshooting and still doesn’t work.

Yes I’m using the latest update of this app, the recent iOS on my iPhone X, and a Bluetooth HR monitor. I upload the .tcx file to Strava as well. This is my second attempt to use this app with the M3i for data acquisition.

Our health club got in a room full of the M3i bikes. I figured this was a good opportunity to now, do power work in the club I was already paying money to every month; instead of at home on my own bike with a power meter.

The app is a hot mess if your bike is the only one with a ‘bike number’ which mine is. All the other ‘number zero’ bikes overload your app screen with pop up requests to start a session as you wait for the chaos to clear out and link to your saved bike number. It connects eventually but this requires me to show up to the club 15 minutes before class as I open and close the app several times, waiting for it to auto-connect to my bike I.D. number.

And today, it connected after the 10 minute open/close dance, but the app froze to the screen with all the line items of average data. I wasn’t able to swipe back to the main screen/ dashboard. Not knowing this until I got home; the app only recorded 3 minutes of my 60 minute workout. Not cool.

I’ve owned my M3i for over 3 years now and it is so much higher mechanical quality than Peloton or any other spin bike. That said, Keiser needs to do some serious investing in this app and digital user engagement experience. First of all, I shouldn’t have to click multiple times to connect the app to my bike at the start of a workout. Second, once connected, the app doesn’t actually register any data from the bike without having to end and restart a workout in the app often as many as 5+ times. Third, the app no longer syncs my workout data with Keiser; it only stores it on my phone so if my phone or the app goes bye bye , so goes my data (note the “Migrations have been temporarily disabled” warning on the app opening screen). Good thing I have the Peloton app, because this app is pretty much unusable.

At the end of each ride, after the M3i’s LED screen loses power, the app will prompt me to end the session. If I don’t confirm it in time (several seconds), the whole session’s data gets lost. Why is there a timeout for confirming end of session? And why deleting all captured data? I also found that if I leave the app running without confirming end of session, eventually it goes to a bad state in which it only shows the time is ticking but all the other meters show zero. There is no way to get out of that state except for forcing the app to close from IOS. I noticed the latest version is 1 year old. It’s time to get an update. By the way, can we have an Apple Watch version of this?

This app is so broken, if I had it to do all over again, I would’ve bought a different bike. First, the bike computer shuts down your ride if you need to hop off the bike for more than 30 seconds to pee or blow you nose or whatever. So you lose all your data and start over. Second, once you have the app, the cross talk between the bike computer and app is almost nonsensical. It’s rare that the calorie count ever matches. And again, if you hop off the bike, the bike computer restarts and can reset app data as well. Even though the app indicates your ride is paused! A week ago, I lost 700 calorie ride and got credit for 1 calorie. All of this seems like an easy fix—app should always override bike computer. But Keizer seems unwilling or unable to fix it, instead expecting the quality of the bike to carry the brand. Sadly, without functional tech, it’s a dinosaur.

Update: still a one-star app. It’s like they *upgraded* this app by breaking everything that used to work on the previous version, which itself was NOT great to start. As I keep finding more stuff, I will keep updating this review. Looking forward to when i can add at least another star.

Problems:
Active calories no longer contribute to Apple Health’s Move ring. The previous version did this seamlessly.

The graphs in activity history are a low resolution mess. And to make things worse, the app doesn’t support landscape mode so there’s no way to make it less messy. What’s the point of having the graphs when it’s essentially impossible to discern any trends?

Too many clicks just to get going. Just Ride -> select bike ID -> select model -> confirm. Every single time! For people with one bike in the house, this is such an drag and totally inefficient.

The updated app still does not run in the background (contrary to what the release note says). If you navigate away from the app, it stops recording. Same old problem as the previous version.

Font size is too small and there’s too much information per screen. Make the screens customizable please.

Love the brand. Love the bikes. I have loved the app until a month ago. I have an iPhone 8+, I’m running iOS 12.1. The app will perform normally until it’s time to end the session. I end the session and it looses the correct data. For example -It will read that I’ve only ridden 5.7 miles and I’ve actually ridden 24.6. All of the stats become similarly skewed when the session is ended. I have read other reviews, also looked online and tried the suggestion of waiting until my bike screen powered off to “end my session “ and it has not helped. I would like to use this app every day and I would even pay for a better version. As it stands I’m very disappointed that I will have to find another way to track my progress. Please fix so I can update my rating. Thanks 🙏