Centr Multi-Gym Review

I have been doing some strength training to maintain fitness and mobility and to stave off osteoporosis. They say that you need weight-bearing exercise for that and neither my bicycle riding nor hoisting tankards of ale seem to count. Thus, I am reduced to mundane exercises like biceps curls, lat pull-downs, chest presses, and so on.

I found the Centr Multi-Gym at Costco for just $499 in-store ($699 online), which is ridiculously cheap for a cable machine that can do leg extensions and leg curls in addition to upper body exercises. As far as I can tell, this machine is only available at Costco; it does not even appear on Centr’s website.

At that price, and given Costco’s generous return policy, I decided to bring one home and give it a try.

I do not usually write product reviews on my blog but, since I could not find any reviews of this gym anywhere else, here is mine. So far I have put it together and done two workouts.

Centr Multi-Gym Pros

• The machine does plenty of exercises, as long as you are an average size person and don’t need a ton of weight.
• It has a lower cable so you can do leg extensions and leg curls in addition to upper body exercises.
• It was very well packed with very good assembly instructions.

Centr Multi-Gym Cons

• The frame is flimsy. If you do an exercise too quickly, the weights bind on the guide rails and the whole machine shakes.
• Neither the seat nor the backrest are adjustable.
• Not a lot of range of motion. I am 5′ 9″ and my arms are long enough to bang the weights into the stops.
• There are no instructions for how to do exercises, either online or in the printed assembly manual.
• Customer support is hit or miss, only available via website tickets and email. No chat or phone.

Centr Multi-Gym Assembly

The Multi-Gym comes in one box weighing 271 pounds. You will not be surprised to know that I did not carry the unopened box down the basement stairs; it came down to the basement one piece at a time. You can see the results in this photo. The three boxes in the bottom right corner are the weights, two boxes have five 10 pound weights each, the third has four weights.

It took three hours to put the Multi-Gym together and it was a full body workout doing it! I am an experienced DIY-er with lots of my own tools. And I had my wife helping with stuff like finding the next piece and unpackaging stuff. She easily saved me an hour of work. On the plus side, everything was unexpectedly well packaged and the instructions were clear and reasonably accurate. I did not hit any snags.

Workouts

This is my first home gym and I’m a retiree. I don’t have a lot of experience with cable machines and my goal isn’t bodybuilding, just general fitness and range of motion stuff. In that context, this machine is OK.

The Multi-Gym does not come with any instructions for how to do any exercises. There are no instructions on Centr’s website, either. With YouTube’s help, I have figured out how to do an initial set of exercises:

• Biceps curl
• Triceps extension
• Shoulder press
• Leg curl
• Chest press
• Lat pull-down
• Leg extension
• Cable crunch

Inside the Centr app, which I got free access to for a year, I found one program for the Multi-Gym. I started that program and then drilled down into each day’s workout. I found a 15-20 second long video of how to do each one. It is kind of a pain to have to poke through workout after workout to find them but at least the videos exist. Here is one example.

The arms on the machine only swing forward/backward. They don’t articulate inward. So if you want your hands to move toward each other as you press outward, you use straps attached to the ends of the machine’s arms.

There is not a lot of range of motion. For instance, doing a chest press with the straps, I can bang the weights into the stops at the top of the guide rails. I also have to be careful with a triceps pull-down. I am 5′ 9″ and do not have orangutan length arms.

Leg extensions work OK but you may need a cushion behind your back since the backrest does not adjust.

Beyond that, it’s a cable machine. You pull on the cables and the weights pull back.

Centr Annual Membership

IMHO, the Centr Multi-Gym is a way for Centr to sell subscriptions to their membership program. This lets you use the Centr app to manage your fitness, meals, and mind. The Costco website said that I would get a 3 month subscription for free with the machine. In fact, the coupon inside the box got me a free membership for 12 months.

I did sign up for the program since it is free. I had to enter a credit card but Centr did not charge my card. I plan to cancel my subscription next December, since I do not want the program.

From my perspective, the good thing that the app provides is mini videos of how to do some exercises on the machine. As I mentioned above, there is no documentation on how to do exercises. However, Centr has one program inside the app for this machine, Strengthen & sculpt with Multi-Gym Strength. By starting the program and then starting one of the workouts, it got access to the individual steps of the workout. Within each step is a mini video that shows how to use the machine for that exercise.

Centr Support

Support has been hit or miss. I cannot find a way to reach a human either by chat or phone. I opened a support ticket on the Centr website on December 13. I did not hear back until December 18. I replied to that and heard back a second time in just 14 hours, which is quite respectable given that Centr and I are on opposite sites of the planet.

Conclusion

The Centr Multi-Gym is a heck of a good deal for $500. It is definitely a cheap machine and has a lot of limitations. But if your needs are basic, it may suit you quite well. It comes with a generous free trial period for the Centr subscription program, which allows plenty of time to decide whether the program is useful for you or not.

I give the Centr Multi-Gym 3 stars ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

I will be keeping my Centr Multi-Gym. It works for me.

Revised on December 22, 2024 to include more information on exercises.