It's not a rental fee for the device, it's a subscription fee for the content that can be used on it. You can still use the bike as a plain exercise bike without a subscription.
It's the same thing as buying a Roku and paying for Netflix.
It's the same thing as buying a Roku and paying for Netflix.
Seems more like buying an expensive Netflix player, which will only show photo albums from an SD card unless you subscribe to Netflix.
Or, buying a Peloton bike is more like buying a Roku to watch movies and then having to pay for a Roku subscription or it's useless because it doesn't work with Netflix.
Thank you for the overly-literal semantic quibbling, it wouldn't be HN without it.
There are features gated to the Peloton bike which gives a downside to the bring-your-own-bike route and muddies the waters somewhat. If the Peloton app supported ERG mode with full interactivity, I’d probably be willing to pay $25/mo, because it is a really high quality service.