Speediance V3 Is Cleaner, Messier, and Still Missing the Obvious

Speediance V3 is here, and the short version is this: the software is better, but the rollout was rough. It looks cleaner. Some controls are genuinely improved. The nagging ads appear to be toned down. But Speediance also managed to remove, break, or bury some of the exact things that made the machine feel different from the rest of the smart strength market.

That is the frustrating part. I still think Speediance is a strong product. I have lifted more than 1.1 million pounds on mine after previously logging more than 10 million pounds on Tonal, and for the way I train, Speediance has been a real upgrade. It costs less, gives me more flexibility, and does some things Tonal simply cannot do because of the dual-motor setup.

But V3 is a reminder that great hardware can still be held back by uneven software priorities.

First, Who Speediance Is Not For

Before getting into V3, there is one buyer caveat that keeps coming up in the Speediance community: if someone in your household specifically wants a polished, guided, female-coached experience in English, Speediance may not be the right machine yet.

The reason is oddly specific but important. Speediance builds workouts from individual movement videos, and the coach options vary by movement and language. There is a female coach with broad exercise coverage, but the current broadly available female-led videos are in Spanish. If you mute coaching audio, like I do, that may not matter at all. In fact, I think some of those videos are better produced than the older English clips, with more camera angles and a cleaner visual presentation.

But if your spouse, partner, or family member wants an English-speaking female coach talking them through the workout, Speediance is not currently delivering the same kind of coached content experience that Tonal does.

That is one area where Tonal still clearly wins. Tonal invested heavily in studio production, instructor-led programming, and guided classes. I personally did not use much of that because I mostly trained through custom workouts, so I was paying for a lot of production value I did not need. But for people who want coaching, encouragement, and a very intentional class-like experience, Tonal still has the more mature content ecosystem.

What V3 Gets Right

The V3 interface is cleaner than the old 2.x software. It looks more modern, and a few of the practical controls are easier to use. The best example for me is eccentric mode.

In the older software, changing eccentric settings could be tedious. You were either tapping plus buttons repeatedly or trying to land a wheel-style control exactly where you wanted it. In V3, maxing eccentric weight is faster. For someone like me, who frequently changes eccentric settings inside custom workouts, that is a real improvement.

The software also seems to have reduced the constant Workout Plus popups. Before V3, Speediance could feel like it was trying to sell you something every time you turned on the machine. In V3, those ads are much less aggressive. That matters because the machine should open into training, not into upsell friction.

Speediance deserves credit for listening there. The community complained, and the company appears to have adjusted.

The Freelift Problem

The biggest V3 issue is Freelift mode. In the new software, Speediance changed the Freelift interface so it matches the rest of the workout screens. Consistency sounds good in theory, but the result is worse in practice.

Controls that used to be easy to access have been moved. Buttons now sit at the bottom of the screen. Some controls appear in places where they are not actually useful. For example, there is a barbell/dumbbell accessory button that appears in regular workouts even when it does not behave like a meaningful control. That is not just visual clutter. It makes the interface harder to understand.

More importantly, V3 removed partner options from Freelift. That is a major miss because partner Freelift was one of the more unique things Speediance could do. The dual-motor system allows two people to use separate sides independently in a way Tonal cannot replicate with its single-motor architecture. Speediance showed this kind of capability in early demos because it was novel and technically interesting.

Now, with V3, that specific Freelift partner flow is gone. Speediance has said it is bringing partner mode back, but removing it in the first place is hard to understand. This is exactly the kind of feature that should not disappear during a major software refresh.

Partner Workouts Are Still Too Limited

To be clear, partner workouts are not completely gone from V3. They still exist inside program-based workouts. If you choose one of Speediance's existing workouts, you can switch from solo to partner and select another account.

The confusion is that partner mode is gone from Freelift, and it still does not solve the larger family workout problem.

Speediance sells Workout Plus with family-oriented messaging, but paying for the family plan does not mean you can actually train through your own custom workouts as a family. You cannot take the custom workouts you built and run them properly with your spouse. You cannot easily combine two users' goals into a shared workout. You cannot use the family branding in the way many buyers would naturally expect.

That is the real missed opportunity. I would gladly pay for a family plan if it let two people train together properly. Give me shared custom workouts. Give me partner Freelift tied to real user profiles. Give me a Wellness Plus workout that merges my goals with my wife's goals and builds a shared session for the day. That would actually feel like a family product.

Right now, the name and imagery promise more than the feature set delivers.

The Safety Start Rollout Was Awkward

V3 also introduces, or at least prepares for, a new Safety Start feature. On my Speediance 2S, the button appears, but it does not work because the firmware is too low and the newer firmware is not available to me yet. That leaves me with a visible feature that cannot be used.

I suspect this is tied to the staged firmware rollout for newer Gym Monster hardware. Speediance has indicated that some features, including Safety Start and Pilates-related functionality, are limited to the newer Gym Monster 2 and 2S models because of hardware requirements.

I am not automatically upset by that. Free software updates do not have to bring every new feature to every old machine forever. Tonal did something similar when it introduced Aero Row for Tonal 2, which required more advanced real-time calculations. Hardware limits are real.

The problem is the wording. Calling something a safety feature and then saying it will not come to older hardware is a marketing problem waiting to happen. If it is truly about locking the arms or supporting a new movement mode, call it arm locking. Do not frame it as safety unless every supported machine gets it.

How I Actually Train

Part of why I am skeptical about Safety Start is that Speediance already works very well for my training style.

I usually mute the coaching and music, leave system sounds on, and rely on the rep dings and set-end sounds. When I am training near failure, I can bring the handles back slowly while the weight is still active, touch the machine's rubberized stoppers, and let the system shut the weight off naturally.

That is one of my favorite differences versus Tonal. On Tonal, bringing the arms back under load could trigger warnings because you were effectively hitting plastic against plastic. Speediance feels more tolerant of that movement, and for my training style it makes failure sets feel safer and less awkward.

So if Safety Start requires extra steps before every lift, I may not like it. Maybe it will be useful for top sets or specific movements. Maybe it will be essential for Pilates. I will wait until I can actually test it before judging it fully. But I am not convinced it should become the default way people use the machine.

Final Take

Speediance V3 is an upgrade, but it is not a clean win.

• The interface looks better.
• Eccentric adjustments are faster.
• The reduced ads are a welcome change.
• Freelift is worse than before.
• Partner Freelift should not have been removed.
• Family Workout Plus still does not feel like a true family training product.
• The Safety Start messaging was handled poorly.

What I keep coming back to is that Speediance has excellent hardware and a company that does seem to listen. That is not nothing. I did not always feel that way with Tonal. Speediance is clearly iterating, and the pace of development is encouraging.

But V3 shows the difference between shipping a lot of software and shipping the right software. The community did not need a prettier interface more than it needed better partner training, better custom workout support, and clearer family features.

For me, Speediance is still the better fit. I train through custom workouts, I care more about resistance behavior than instructor production, and I like the flexibility of the machine. But if Speediance wants V3 to feel like a real leap forward for more users, the next update needs to bring back partner Freelift properly and make family workouts mean what the name implies.

The foundation is strong. The software just needs to stop stepping around the most obvious use cases.