Cubii JR1 Honest Review: What I Like and What I Do Not

Four years ago I bought a Cubii JR1 the week after I nearly went off my own porch steps with a bucket of potatoes in each hand. I did not fall. That is the whole story, and it bothered me more than falling would have, because I had stopped trusting my own legs. My daughter Karen is a nurse and lives two hours away, and she sent me the link to the Cubii that same weekend. I have used it most mornings since, and there are a few things about it I would rather say out loud than let you find out in February.

I am 68. I carried mail on a rural route for 31 years, and I live in a two-story farmhouse outside Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania with my wife Joan. I am not a trainer and I am not going to pretend to be one on the internet. My right knee is stiff from old wear and my lower back is tight most mornings, and that is the extent of my medical file as far as this machine is concerned. Everything below comes from roughly four years of sitting on the thing in a spare bedroom, not from a photo shoot. Before you start anything new, check with your doctor or a physical therapist. Mine was the one who told me my legs and my balance were the problem and my heart was fine.

How I Actually Use It, Four Years In

The Cubii sits under a small desk in the spare bedroom upstairs. That room is cleared out and it is my only exercise space, and it is the only one I need. On rainy evenings I carry the machine downstairs, slide it in front of the recliner, and pedal through the evening news. I use it seated, 15 to 20 minutes most mornings, five days a week, after coffee. I have never used it standing, and I have never used the mobile app.

I started on resistance level 2 and could not hold it for ten minutes. Four years later I ride level 4 or 5 for the whole session, and 5 is where I stay most days. It weighs about 25 pounds, so when I move it between rooms I pick it up with two hands and my knees bent, the way I was taught to lift a crate of potatoes. It has never broken. Not a wobble, not a squeak, not a pedal that worked loose.

It is quiet. Joan reads in the next room and has never once told me to turn it down, which is more than I can say for the treadmill a neighbor loaned me for a month. If noise is what worries you about exercising indoors, this is not the thing to worry about.

The footprint is small enough to sit under a desk without moving the desk. It measures 23.2 inches deep, 17.56 inches wide and 10 inches tall. Ten inches is the number to check against your own furniture before you buy. My knees cleared the underside of the small desk by about an inch, and an inch is not enough when you are pedaling. I raised the desk on blocks the first week and it has been fine since.

I measured twice before I ordered, and I still got it wrong the first time. My desk surface sits 28 inches off the floor, and on paper that left plenty of room under it for a machine 10 inches tall. What the tape measure does not account for is your knees coming up as you pedal. I spent one uncomfortable week clipping the underside of that desk every few turns, then I set two scrap pieces of two-by-four under the desk legs and never thought about it again. Check your own clearance with your feet actually moving, not with a tape measure and a hopeful attitude.

The Resistance Knob Is Not What You Think

The Cubii JR1 has eight resistance levels and you change them with a knob on the machine. What the listing does not say is that the eight are not spread evenly. Levels 1, 2 and 3 feel close to the same to me, like pedaling through warm air. The step from 3 to 4 is where it starts to be work. Level 8 is not something I can hold for fifteen minutes, and I doubt most people my age could.

In practice I use three settings out of the eight: 4, 5, and 6 when I want to feel it for a few minutes. That is the honest version of eight levels. It is still a good range for me, and I would rather have a narrow useful range than a wide one that runs from nothing to unusable. But if you are buying this expecting eight clear steps, you will be scratching your head somewhere around level 2.

I tried level 7 exactly once, in the second year, out of plain curiosity. I lasted about four minutes and my right knee registered a complaint the following morning that I could feel going down the stairs. That is how I learned to leave 7 and 8 alone and stop treating the knob like a scoreboard. Six is my ceiling, and I only visit it in the last few minutes of a session when the coffee has kicked in and I am feeling foolish.

The knob does not change how smoothly the pedals turn. It changes how hard you have to push to keep them turning. The stride is short, 18 inches at the very most, so you never get the long stretch you feel on the elliptical at a gym. That is the trade you make for a machine that fits under a desk. If a long stride is what you are after, this is not it, and I go through the difference between this and a plain pedal exerciser in [a separate piece](/cubii-jr1-vs-mini-pedal-exerciser).

The Little Screen, and the App I Never Used

There is a built-in display that tracks strides, time and calories. It is small, it sits low on the machine, and I have to lean forward to read it, which rather defeats the point of sitting up straight. I set a timer on the kitchen stove instead and do not look at the screen at all anymore.

The calorie number runs generous. I do not believe it and I would not plan a meal around it. If you want to track something, track minutes. Minutes do not flatter you.

Joan brought home a small wind-up timer from the hardware store after the second time I lost track of the clock while reading and pedaled for forty minutes without noticing. That timer has done more for my routine than the display ever did. Twenty minutes, the bell rings, I stop. Some mornings I add a few minutes if a radio program is still running, and some mornings I quit early because my hip is talking, and I do not apologize to anybody for either one.

The app is a manual affair: you read the numbers off the display and type them in yourself. There is no automatic anything about it. I did that for about two weeks and then stopped, because I could not see the point of copying numbers from one machine into another. Some people like a log. I am not one of them, and I do not think you need one to keep going.

It runs on batteries, and I have replaced them a couple of times in four years. There is no cord running across the bedroom floor for me to trip over, which at my age is not a small feature. If you are the kind of person who forgets to buy batteries, buy a spare pack when you order the machine.

Four Small Annoyances, Four Years In

First, it is heavy enough to be a chore. At 25.4 pounds it is not going to sit in your lap, and carrying it up and down a staircase twice a day is why mine stays upstairs more often than I planned. Second, there is no handle on it, so you find yourself gripping the plastic housing and hoping.

Third, the display is dim in low light, and in winter I am on this thing before the sun is properly up. Fourth, the pedals travel a short fixed circle and there is no way around that. After twenty minutes I am ready to stop, and not because I am worn out. Because the motion has gotten old.

The housing on mine has picked up a dull scuff on the side where my boot heel catches it when I climb on without paying attention. That is not the machine's fault, but it does tell you something about how you will use one. It also sits on four small feet that slide on a hard floor. By the second week the thing had walked about a foot out from under the desk, so I laid a scrap of old carpet under it and it has not moved since. If your exercise room has a nice wood floor, plan for something under it.

None of those are deal breakers for me after four years, or I would have sold it. But they are the things I would want said out loud by somebody who has lived with one, instead of left for you to discover on a cold morning.

The Part That Surprised Me: My Knee Complained First

Nobody warns you about this. For the first two weeks my right knee was sore, and not in a good way. I had spent years not bending it through its full range, and the Cubii made it do exactly that for twenty minutes at a stretch. My first thought was that I had wasted my daughter's advice.

It was late October of that first year, cold enough that I had quit walking the garden for the season, and I remember sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing that knee and thinking I had let Karen talk me into a piece of furniture. I gave it one more week before I decided anything. That week is the only reason I am still using it.

What I did instead of quitting was cut back to five minutes at level 2 and build from there. By about the sixth week the soreness was gone and the knee felt looser in the mornings than it had in years. I am not going to tell you the machine fixed my knee. It did not, and the stiffness is still there on cold, wet days. What changed is how much of it I notice on the stairs.

This is the part where I would be careful with yourself. If you have a knee or a hip that has been operated on, or a back that goes out on you, talk to your doctor or a physical therapist before you climb on. I am not qualified to tell you anything past that. My doctor's only input was that my legs and balance needed work and my heart was fine, and he was glad I was doing something seated rather than something I could fall off.

I started at level 2 and could not hold it ten minutes. Four years on I do twenty at level 5, and the only thing that has worn out is the batteries.

What It Did for the Garden and the Porch Steps

The garden is the reason I exercise at all. There is a big bed behind the house, mostly potatoes, carrots and beets, with butternut and acorn squash running along the fence. Two things used to give me trouble: getting up off the garden kneeler, and carrying a bucket in each hand from the truck to the shed.

I can get off that kneeler now without pushing off the ground with my hand. I carry two feed bags from the truck without stopping to set them down halfway. On a dry day I take the porch steps without the rail. On ice I still use the rail, and I would tell anyone to. These are small things unless they are the things you quietly stopped doing.

I want to be straight about credit. The resistance bands and the balance pad did as much for the carrying and the balance as the Cubii did. The Cubii is the piece that got my knees and hips moving without me worrying about going over, and that is worth something real. But it is one leg of a three-legged stool, and anyone who tells you a seated machine straightened out their balance is selling you something.

Who This Is For

This is for somebody who sits too much and wants to move their knees and hips without standing on anything or holding onto a rail. It suits a person who will leave it set up in one spot and use it for fifteen or twenty minutes while the coffee is going, the way you would use a rocking chair. If you are looking at it because your stairs have started to feel like a decision, that was my reason too.

It also suits somebody who wants to keep moving through a bad winter. Between the porch and the garden I get plenty of walking from April to November. January is a different story, and that is where this earns its place under the desk.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if what you want is cardio. Seated pedaling does not get your heart going the way walking does, and it does nothing for bone density because you are not carrying your own weight. Skip it if you are over the 150 pound limit the listing states, plainly and without argument, because that limit is lower than most people guess and it is a limit, not a suggestion.

Skip it if you are going to fold it away. This is the one I feel strongest about. Any machine you have to set up gets used for three weeks and then lives in a closet. Skip it too if you want a long smooth stride or a real hill to climb, because 18 inches and a narrow band of resistance will not give you either one.

What I Would Do Differently

Two things. I would start at five minutes instead of ten and spare myself two sore weeks and a bad mood to go with them. And I would set the machine up in the room where I actually sit in the evening, not the room where I thought I would exercise, because the walk up the stairs was the reason I skipped days in the beginning.

If you want the longer version of how this has held up, year by year, that is in [my long-term notes](/cubii-jr1-review-long-term). If you are still deciding whether a seated machine makes sense for you at all, start with [the reasons it suits people our age](/10-reasons-seated-elliptical-suits-seniors).