📝 Transcript

Title: Speediance V3 Software Is Here… But Is It Good?
Date: 2026-01-27
Video ID: -BuRtR6WNOc
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BuRtR6WNOc
Source: auto-captions

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Hello and welcome to Toby on Fitness Tech. Today I wanted to go over the V3 software. So I'm back upstairs with uh the Speedance and this one actually has the new software. So I figured I would take a little bit of time to discuss that with you. I also wanted to talk about who the Speedance is not for. And the reason why I wanted to talk to you about that very quickly is I've buried it in another video, but it's come up again in the speed community and I realized that it's I think a very important thing for people to understand that the speeds in general is great for most people. And I would say for someone like myself, I've lifted over a million pounds on this now and I had lifted, you know, 10 million pounds on the tonal before switching to this device. And I can say for me it was uh an upgrade, an actual upgrade, even though the devices are about 20% cheaper. actually kind of ran the numbers on how cheap the device would be. Uh because they're coming out with a Speedance Mini, which is like the Voltas, and I was estimating what the price would be on them, just because someone was asking, and if you work out the math, these are about 20% cheaper. Uh so I would guess that they're going to be 20% cheaper than the Voltra. But who this device is not for in particular, I would say that this device is for sure not for anyone whose wife wants a female coach. And I know that sounds like a very specific weird thing, but it comes up quite a bit where a guy will buy one of these things and then their wife will not use it because the only female coach there is on the machine right now that has most of the the videos um available for all the moves. So basically what they do is they record each move independently and then they kind of stream them together into the programs and stuff like that. So these programs aren't as designed as a tonal program is from what I can tell. So when tonals people do each program, they do a lot of the moves specific for that program. So it's a lot more effort. Basically, there's a lot more effort put into the video content on tonal. And what I'm getting at is if you're in the situation where your wife wants a female coach and basically wants a coach to coach them through things um and wants specifically a female, this is not the device for you because the only female that has all of these videos uh you know available speak Spanish. Well, unless your wife is Spanish, right? Then if if you speak if you speak Spanish, then you're good to go because the the female coach is actually speaking Spanish. Now, what's funny is the way I actually work out, I have the voice guidance muted and I only have the system volume and I have I have the music and voice guidance completely muted. And then I have the system volume up at about 50%. And that allows me to hear the dinging noise as you're doing reps. so that I can know when I'm at the end of my set. So, I hear each of the dings and then I hear the end of set ding and then I can continue forward. So, I have an idea of how close I am to the end of each of the sets. It's uh it's the way I've I've kind of always done it. I've always muted the muted the guidance from the person. So, I actually switched to the the Spanish female and I think her name is Liz. I was trying to look up the names and you can't find them on the website, but I was able to find her name. I believe it's Liz. Uh because it doesn't tell you in the app or on the or on the picker whenever you're going in. And what what it is now is when you're picking when you're on the custom workout screen, you can go through and you can pick which coach. And most of them have translations. So if I look at So if I look at if I go custom and then I edit one of my workouts. So, let's edit this one. This is probably one where Yeah, this is one where I already switched it over to her, but you can see I have my choice of someone who speaks English. I would assume Chinese and uh Spanish. That's what the flags beside them mean. And then there are other exercises where there's even more coaches. And I'm assuming those coaches are all in English, but I'm not 100% sure because they don't have flags beside them. But that's the general idea of it is there's coaches and then they have flags beside them and that's the language they're speaking. I didn't realize that the flag meant the language because I have it muted and I actually think her videos are better and I I think it's not fair that those videos are better um because they're three camera shoots so they're definitely like higher a little higher production value than the very original videos that some of them that they're going through. And by the way, replacing with newer videos. So there is a lot of work being done to update all of these videos. And it is a ton of work because they have like 500 moves or something like that, even more than that. Uh which is way more moves than the tonal had. But if you want to coach and you want a guided experience, then unfortunately you're stuck paying the $60 a month because that's actually the experience that Tonal delivers. realize I always use custom workouts inside the tonal ecosystem. So I was throwing all that away. So they invested millions and millions of dollars on video production studios to be able to do live videos and then realized it was a waste of money. So you know, not to be mean to them, but like they blew tons of dollars on something that they thought they thought they were going to get into the live video space and they were going to have tons of engagement on them. And I just don't think it was successful in any right to be honest with you. Um it was like their big pivot during COVID and then they also didn't figure out a way to monetize it separately from the subscription so it was included in your subscription but they were just burning money. It made no sense from a from a logistical standpoint of you know it really frustrated me with their platform. But speaking of SP frustrations the V3 software. So, this has been uh really not uh regarded well inside this the speediance community and that's because I alluded to it whenever I shot my last video because it's I was shooting it with the feature that was gone. So, in the V3 software in Freelift mode, all of the partner options are gone. So, in this new Freelift, the partner options are gone. And what they did is they took the UX and they actually made the UX match the the UX of all of the other screens and that makes this UX also uh pretty hard to use in in comparison to the way it used to be. Like there used to be a whole bunch of buttons up here and all those are going and moved down to the bottom of the screen and that way they can use the same screen on every screen. But like there's a button down here that switches between barbell and dumbbell, the accessory type. And that button is now there in your regular workouts, but isn't clickable. So it it not only made this screen worse, it also made the other screen worse because now there's a random button that I couldn't figure out what it did. And even worse on my screen, there's a safety start button down here. That's what I just clicked. It says firmware version too low. My theory is that has to do with the fact that I am on the Speedance 2S and the new firmware is not actually available for the Speedience 2S. So, I'm stuck in this loop of having the new feature but not actually having it active because I got the V3 software, but the firmware is not available. So, whenever I do a firmware upgrade, it doesn't show that it's available. So, that's the concept of of what of what I think went on here. And I I'm still uh waiting on a response from Speedy and Support. I've gotten no response, which usually I get a response way sooner than I have on this one. So, um anytime I've reached out to them in the past, it's been a pretty quick response time. And this one, it's just dead silence. But I imagine that that has a lot to do with the fact that they're also trying to bring back the So they announced to the community that they're going to bring back the partner mode inside here and uh they're working on that. Plus, I don't think they have the firmware available for me to update to. So, you know, even if they got back to me, it'd be like, hey, it's going to be a couple weeks, which I'm okay with because that is actually a feature that they're adding. Uh, so that safety started. It has the ability to lock these in place, and I will wait to judge it until I get it, but I have a feeling I will be judging it. Let's just put it that way. I don't think it's a a feature that should be There's people who are turning it on and doing it for every lift, and I have a feeling that I'm going to think that that's a bad idea. Um, maybe it's a good idea on some top sets where you uh where you lock them in place, but I can tell you part of the benefit of the way I lift is I bring the thing out, right? I'll bring it to here. So, I bring it the whole way out, bring it here, then I turn it on, right? And then whenever I go to take it back, actually, I have the thing on now, but I'm not going to do that at 260 lbs. Let me switch it to something that's not ridiculous. And where's the eccentric mode? So, I'm going to actually make this lifelike. So, what I just did is I switched it to uh dumbbell and then I switched it to eentric. You don't have to worry about what's actually on my screen, but now I'm driving the weight down to something that's manageable. Let's just say 35 lbs. And then I'm bringing the eentric up to 17 lbs. So, that's max eccentric. So, the one thing that I love about the new UX is it's very easy to max the eccentric. So, it was really timeconuming to hit the plus or to try to scroll the thing to get the max eccentric in the other like wheel version of the 2.x software. This software is actually a lot easier to uh not finely tune but to very quickly up up it to maxentric. I guess a lot of people are having problems with the actual weight slider because it's sliding too quickly on them. But for someone like me who's never touching the weight slider, but touching the eentric slider a lot to get them on max anytime I do a new a new workout, it's it's a it's a great feature. So, I'm bringing this out. Bringing out the whole way just to make sure that my arm is fine. Bringing it back. Turning it on. I got to actually turn the handles on first. Sorry I didn't do that before the video. So now the handle is waking up any day now. There we go. So now it turned it on. So now I'm going to pull it out. Turn it on. Pull it out. Turn it on. And now when I bring this back to the device, what I do is I slowly bring it back without turning it off. Right? And that's how I do all of my sets. So I don't turn it off. And usually the weight turns itself off. So I bring it back and then it waits the second and turns itself off. So when I'm in an actual workout, I've hit my 15 reps and then it's asking me to do another rep. And instead of doing the the other rep, if I feel like I'm at failure, I will bring it back slowly to the device. And that will keep it from turning the weight off until it actually taps the device. That is one of the things that I love about the speediance that you couldn't do with the tonal. I can bring the thing safely back to the device and touch it. The tonal would freak out whenever you when you would bring it back with the weight on and hit the device. This thing has rubberized stoppers and I feel like it's pretty safe to do that and it's designed to do that in the way that the the tonal wasn't. Right. So, the tonal was plastic on plastic. So, when you'd go to bring it back, it would throw an error on your screen telling you not to do that. If you if you accidentally, especially in mid set, if you accidentally brought the whole way back to the machine, it would be like, "No, don't do this, right?" Because it's because you could actually break the machine. So, it's not without reason that they did that. But, that is that's the way I lift. So, I have a feeling that I'm actually not going to care about that safety feature once I do get it. But, yeah, this V3 rollout was a mess. Um, you know, they took away a feature. I have a broken feature. Uh, it's definitely been and the bigger criticism that I didn't want to say, but someone else said it for me and so I'll repeat what they said. But why did they do all of this? Because no one asked for this, right? I mean, like 1% of users were asking for something like the safety start feature. So, that was a thing that people asked for. And I do think it's actually probably required for the Pilates thing that they're building. the the next um the next feature that they're going to roll out that oh by the way they are also rolling out features that as of right now are only going to be gym monster 2 and 2S. So, the safety start and the Pilates are only going to be on the new devices. And their reasoning for that is well, they were very kind of oddly not descriptive about the reasoning for it, but they they basically alluded to the hardware capabilities of the original was not capable of doing these features. Um, and I have a speculation as to what is going on here because because I found out the processor specs by reaching out to them directly. I have a feeling that they're not lying to us on this. And in fact, the same thing happened with the tonal and the tonal too. they brought brought out a new feature called arrow row which requires many many many more calculations whenever the the whenever you're actually pulling on these. So their arrow row was a way more sophisticated type of you know type of movement pattern and that required the tonal too. So speed is just kind of mirroring something that tonal already did and I don't think they're lying to us on it. And also it doesn't matter to me because these are things that I bought the original speeds not expecting, right? And that's one of the things that we've got to remember. These software updates are free. And so I have no problem with them not adding a new feature to the original Speedance. Now, the problem that people have with it, and I agree, but this is just to Expedians being terrible at marketing to be honest with you. They marketed this new safety start well, first of all, as a safety feature, which if it's a safety feature, then it should never not come to the original model, right? Like, if you're building safety features, so they really should have called it arm locking, you know what I mean? Or something like that. and not not called it a safety feature if they weren't going to bring it to the original one because I I agree with the community that that wording is an absolute disaster. And speaking of wording being being an absolute disaster, I also posted something on the Speedians community because it does bother me that their family workout plus does not actually allow you to do workouts as a family. So, if you pay for Family Workout Plus, so if I go in here, I can actually I can tell you the price right now. So, I'm just I'll just show you the price real quick. So, I think that is in is it in settings? Oh, they got rid of, by the way, they used to pop up ads for this constantly. So, they were popping up ads every time you started uh the device. With V3 software, they've eliminated those. So, those constant popup ads are gone. I've noticed that now that I have this new software. So, they do listen to their community. People were really complaining that it was popping up an ad for Workout Plus and all kinds of other stuff that they wanted you to do outside of working out whenever you whenever you started up your machine and those don't come up anymore. So, they they are listening. It's not like they do not listen. It's just is it account management? No. Trying to find where. What's funny is it went from being hard to miss to potentially hard to find in the V3 software. Uh, okay. Probably set goal. Here it is. Get discount. Okay. So, it's it's down in the middle section now is the only ad for it. Before there were like three ads all over your screen. So, yeah, family. And right now, I'm looking at $25 a year. But realize if I pay this $25 a year, I don't actually get the ability to work out with my wife with this, right? You can't use uh partner workouts inside custom workouts or inside Wellness Plus, right? So all of my custom workouts we cannot do together and we cannot do partner workouts. People were saying that there is no ability to do partner workouts in the V3 software. They are wrong. They are absolutely wrong. And I can show you where it is. So, if we go in here and go to all workouts and pick any of these workouts, right? Any of the any of these, you know, any workout in any of these tabs. So, here's one of the Hy Rocks ones. And I click this little button. It says solo here. If I click partner, it'll it'll give and then hit start, it'll give me the option to select to select a partner. Now down downstairs, it'll actually show my wife's account. I can click my wife's account and click start up here. She does not have an account. She does not work out in my office. So yeah, it's still there. Like it's still there in the V3. And this is the superior version. This is the way it should work in Freelift where you pick a partner and you pick uh the actual count that they're tied to or you have the option of guest. So this partner whenever I tap this and hit start it should give me the option of add new account or guest like it should be me add new account or guest which is not there like that is actually the way it should work and then if I go in and I click freelift before the freelift comes up it should ask if I want to do a partner lift or not. Now, what makes this really complicated is the way it worked in V2 is partner only worked for handlebased movements and barbell based movements. There was no partner mode. What would have to happen if you do it the way I would want it done is you would have handles this way, barbell this way, and you select the person or you can select handles and then select individual, you know, put an individual tab and then in the individual, each person gets assigned a handle by the system, right? Um, so it makes it even more confusing, but basically you can have what we have now where both are working in unison. So you're doing dual handle movements or single barbell movements or you have the ability to only with handles do individual movements on individual rails so that you can still do the thing that tonal can't do which is individual movements on individual on indivi on individual you know u rails like you can't do that on tunnel because it's one motor so they both have to be moving at the same velocity. right? You can't have one moving at a different velocity than the other on on tonal, which is why they showed that off in all of their early tech demos. I think it's hilarious, and maybe this is just me being me, but I do think it's hilarious that they took away the feature that they show in all their original ads. It's not in their new ads because they realize it's not important to most people. Like it's not important to so many people that this went through beta testing and wasn't caught until they went live with it, you know? So like realize this this feature is not used very much, but it is so novel and so unique to the device that they were showing it off in their early demos. Right. It is a unique thing that this thing can do because of the dual motor technology that they use. Yeah, all in all though, the V3 software is an upgrade, but the fact that we still don't have custom partner workouts or workout plus partner workouts, I think is a bigger detriment. And someone online was like, "This is ridiculous that we don't get the one thing that is number one for the user community and we get all of this other UX stuff that doesn't help anyone." And it really does not help anyone. The the UX in in general, it is. It looks a little better, but in terms of practicality, it's not gonna add to my workouts in any way. the UX itself. I guess in conclusion, the V3 software, if if I want to give it a quick conclusion, the V3 software I do think is an upgrade in UX, but to remove a feature that uh you showed in a bunch of videos is just bizarre that that made it the whole way through QC. And also when they bring that feature back, they should bring it back the right way and also bring it back, you know, ideally they bring it back in freelift and they bring it in custom workouts when they do and they do them both the right way because it was already done wrong in freelift. Like that is the wrong implementation of partner mode to where it only partners uh when you're when you're each using a side of a handle and not actually tracking it to a and it doesn't track to a logged in user in any way. And one of I I love that realize whenever you reach out to if you reach out to to speed to after sales you you'll get a a really good report and you'll get I think her name is Julia. um she will give you really good answers. She's actually like paid by uh Speedants, so she'll give you very good answers um inside the Speed community. But realize you will get some really horrible answers from people who are group experts who clearly haven't used some of these features like like the partner mode in particular. Like they didn't some of the group experts didn't even know that partner mode was still there, still working. it's just not there in Freelift. And I had to tell them that. And it's like, I shouldn't be the one telling someone who has a group expert label what the device does and doesn't have in the V3 software. But I I wanted to ask a question around workout plus because I don't have it. And and I wanted to make sure that that still doesn't have the ability to work out as a family. And I know it sounds like people are like, "Oh, well that's dumb. We don't need that." And I don't necessarily disagree, right? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing. The thing I have a problem with with Workout Plus, you're paying $25, and it's called a family plan, and it has one person high-fiving another person. And then if I scroll through these images, wait, does it really not have the image anymore? Okay, so on the app, it had an image of Oh, no, it's there. So, here's the last image. It's a kid, a mom, and a dad all working out together, right? Or seeming like they're going to work out together, right? You can't do that if you pay for this, which is just mind-boggling to me. And it it shows all of the different things that you get with Workout Plus. But just realize that you don't get um you don't get the ability to work out with your family, you know. And and by the way, they could lock instead of bringing me my custom partner workouts if they brought me wellness plus workout family workouts, right? If they took like I was explaining how they could do it, right? They take my goals and they take my wife's goals and and put them together and and uh merge them and then create a workout from that. Basically, like a hybridized workout of our goals together and make that the day's workout for both of us, right? In the case where we want to work out together, that would be an amazing solution that I would pay the $25 a year for, right? Because it's something we don't have. I can't do custom workouts with her. I would have to do their program workouts. And both of us have complained about those not having all of the features that we want. So, what I'm getting at is I really do think in the near future they need to add some sort of a partner mode that works outside of these outside of these uh programbased workouts. I mean, that would be the dream. But in terms of the V3 software itself, I try not to be super critical. Uh I'm only critical that they didn't add the feature that I wanted and they added all the stuff that I didn't want or don't care about. But in terms of a software upgrade, I do think the UX is a little better. It's just the roll out of this was pretty bad. I mean to be honest with you to have a button on my screen that doesn't work for uh some users are complaining that the retraction isn't working properly now. So whenever it goes to retract it goes too slow and it it doesn't retract as quick as you would expect it to with the new firmware. I haven't gotten new firmware. So I'm hoping I they fix that before they ship me the firmware. That's also why I'm not really upset that I have a button that doesn't work because if that button working is tied to the retraction not working correctly, I would much rather wait and get a version of the firmware that doesn't do that. So, there's a lot going on on these devices. They did a a massive UX overhaul. I can tell you they they got rid of a lot of the nagwear that you see on the main screen that people were complaining about. The one thing is they're always listening, which I felt like was not happening on the tonal front. So that's uh that's what I had for you today. Pretty simple update. I've lifted, by the way, over a million pounds. So if we're going to look at how much I've actually lifted, I have lifted, you know, 1,143,000 pounds. So thank you today. Um, if you have any questions, let them in the comments below.