The 30-second verdict for Kiwi clubs
Running a NZ rowing club, a Maadi school programme or a Bond Cup university squad at Otago, Waikato or Canterbury? Buy Concept2 RowErgs. Pricing through Elite Fitness NZ and Sportlab Rowing sits around NZD 2,300, the 5-year frame warranty covers the kind of 15 to 20 year service life Kiwi club gyms get out of them, and Rowing NZ trial sheets only accept Concept2 splits. The boatsheds at Karapiro, Ruataniwha and Lake Hood standardise on the RowErg for exactly that reason. WaterRower lands near NZD 2,600 with a 5-year frame and 3-year parts warranty, fine as a home machine for steady-state work but unrecognised in any Kiwi selection process. Hydrow Wave starts around NZD 3,200 plus a mandatory NZD 100 monthly membership, with a 5-year frame and only a 1-year parts warranty. That is a connected cardio device, not a club erg.
Quick comparison: three ergs side by side, NZD pricing
| What you care about | Concept2 RowErg | WaterRower Original Oak | Hydrow Wave |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price in NZD (single machine, 2026) | NZD 2,100 to NZD 2,500 (Standard or Tall) via Elite Fitness NZ or Sportlab Rowing; only erg accepted on Rowing NZ and Maadi Cup trial sheets | NZD 2,400 to NZD 2,800 with S4 Bluetooth Monitor | NZD 3,200+ hardware plus NZD 100 a month membership (USD-priced, converted) |
| Resistance system | Air flywheel with adjustable damper; drag factor sets the RNZ trial protocol standard | Water paddle wheel inside a sealed tank | Magnetic resistance, computer-shaped by the class instructor |
| Stroke feel vs an actual boat | Closest of the three; the catch every Maadi crew already knows | Pleasant, smooth catch (water gives an honest pickup) | Software-shaped for entertainment, not boat transfer |
| Monitor and data export | PM5: splits, watts, drag factor, ErgData app, Concept2 Online Logbook API; the format every NZ programme already files in | S4 Bluetooth: basic splits and stroke rate, no Logbook equivalent | Proprietary subscription content, no open export |
| Scoring acceptance in Kiwi rowing | Specified for Rowing NZ trial protocols, NZURA university selection and Maadi Cup erg trials; the only score type that lands on a Kiwi selection sheet | Past British Rowing partnership 2016 to 2019; never adopted by Rowing NZ or NZURA | No federation acceptance; scores do not feed any NZ rankings |
| Warranty cover (frame / parts) | 5-year frame, 2-year parts; in Kiwi club service routinely 15 to 20 years (RNZ programmes plan around that) | 5-year frame, 3-year parts | 5-year frame, 1-year parts (subscription kills the screen if you cancel) |
| Best fit | Every NZ rowing club, Maadi school programme, Bond Cup university squad or serious home rower chasing RNZ-comparable scores | Home buyers who want a beautiful wooden machine for steady-state work | Home cardio with guided on-screen classes |
Prices verified May 17, 2026, against concept2.com, waterrower.com and hydrow.com, with NZD figures from Elite Fitness NZ and Sportlab Rowing where the retailers list them. USD, GBP and EUR sticker prices converted at the prevailing rate. Mandatory subscription costs broken out separately.
Concept2 RowErg: the standard erg in every Aotearoa boatshed
Image: Concept2
Concept2 has built indoor rowers in Morrisville, Vermont since 1976, when brothers Dick and Pete Dreissigacker founded the company. The Model A first shipped in 1981. The current RowErg is the machine Rowing NZ trial protocols, NZURA Bond Cup selection, Maadi Cup erg trials and almost every senior Kiwi club run their winter testing on. When a Kiwi coach calls for "a 2k", they mean a 2k on a Concept2 - the same machine you will find lined up at Hamilton Boys' High, Saint Kentigern, Christ's College, St Andrew's, the Otago University boatshed and the Karapiro high-performance centre. Inside New Zealand the RowErg is sold through Elite Fitness NZ and Sportlab Rowing, with pricing in the NZD 2,100 to 2,500 band depending on legs and freight.
Why every Kiwi coach trusts the PM5 monitor
The PM5 is what turns a flywheel and a chain into a piece of testing infrastructure. Every stroke is logged - split, watts, stroke rate, distance, drag factor, heart rate over Bluetooth - and the lot exports through the free ErgData app to a phone or straight into the Concept2 Online Logbook. That logbook is the engine behind the Concept2 World Rankings, so a club sculler in Dunedin, a Maadi rower in Cambridge or a masters athlete from Ashburton can see exactly where they sit on a global percentile band. Row HQ accepts Concept2 score uploads today via CSV import, and a direct Concept2 Logbook API sync is on our short-term roadmap so scores land in the coach dashboard automatically. No paper sheets, no Messenger threads, no spreadsheet hunting after a test. See the ergometer glossary entry for a fuller definition.
What drag factor really means for Maadi-grade testing
The damper lever changes airflow through the cage, but the number that matters for repeatable testing is drag factor, which the PM5 displays directly. Kiwi squads normally lock senior men to drag 110 to 130 and senior women to drag 100 to 120, with each athlete pinned to a personal number so conditions never drift between trial blocks. WaterRower has no exposed drag factor in this sense, and Hydrow sets resistance for you. Comparing erg scores honestly across a Maadi 1st VIII trial sheet or a Rowing NZ selection block needs a Concept2. Pull our drag factor calculator open to dial each athlete in properly.
Why one RowErg outlasts five club committees
Concept2 ships the RowErg with a 5-year frame warranty, but in Kiwi club service these machines routinely log 15 to 20 years of daily use. Chains, handles, seats and footstraps are all owner-replaceable for under NZD 100 a piece, and Concept2 still carries parts for ergs built decades ago. For a club equipment manager pricing a fleet of 10 to 20 machines for the boatshed, lifetime cost per machine is the figure that actually matters. NZD 2,300 spread over 15 years works out around NZD 155 per machine per year. Nothing else gets near that number.
Where the RowErg slots into a Karapiro winter
The Concept2 sits at the centre of every structured Kiwi programme. Use the erg pace calculator to translate splits into watts and projected distances, run a 2k prediction off a recent 5k or 6k, and feed the result through the bodyweight-adjusted erg score so a Year 12 lightweight is not unfairly buried under the openweight stroke seat. Push the whole lot into Row HQ training sessions via CSV or manual entry, with direct API sync on the roadmap. The reason the indoor-rowing record book - Josh Dunkley-Smith's 5:35.8 heavyweight 2k, Henrik Stephansen's 5:56.7 lightweight 2k, Brooke Mooney's 6:21.1 women's heavyweight - was set on a Concept2 is not coincidence. Hamish Bond and Mahe Drysdale set their own erg PBs on the same machine.
It's the best all-round fitness machine in the world, and suitable for anybody, not just international athletes. No matter how hard I tried, I could never beat it. It never broke and it never let me down.
WaterRower Original Oak: beautiful in a Ponsonby flat, marginal in a boatshed
Image: WaterRower UK
The WaterRower is the wood-framed machine you spot in interior magazine shoots and the gyms of upscale Auckland hotels. John Duke, a Yale engineer who rowed for the US National Team, designed it in 1988 in Warren, Rhode Island. The paddle wheel does its work through a real tank of water, the catch lands closer to a boat than most owners expect, and the wash of water through the tank is genuinely calming. Reviewed on its own merits, it is a handsome piece of furniture you can train hard on, with NZ pricing around NZD 2,400 to NZD 2,800 for the Original Oak with S4 Bluetooth Monitor.
Why Kiwi clubs almost never put WaterRowers in the boatshed
The S4 monitor on the WaterRower is thin. You get time, distance, split and stroke rate, but the export story is poor next to ErgData. There is no equivalent of the Concept2 Online Logbook, no native pipeline into Rowing NZ rankings or Maadi Cup trial sheets, and resistance is set by how much water you tipped into the tank. That figure is not adjustable per athlete and it is not directly comparable to a Concept2 drag factor.
For a NZ club, this rules WaterRower out as a testing platform. You cannot run a valid 2k on a WaterRower and pin it against a Maadi 1st VIII trial sheet, an NZURA Bond Cup figure, or your own boatshed's historical Concept2 PBs. Benchmarking a mixed squad falls apart the moment half the athletes are on Concept2 and half on WaterRower. The two machines cover roughly the same distance but they are not interchangeable for measurement that any Kiwi selection process will accept.
When a WaterRower is genuinely the right buy
A WaterRower suits the home rower who wants something quiet, beautiful and largely steady-state, and who has no need to put a score against a Concept2 league table. A small number of clubs around Aotearoa keep one or two as variety machines, but no serious Kiwi programme runs a WaterRower fleet as the primary testing rig. WaterRower's formal British Rowing partnership from 2016 was never repeated with Rowing NZ. Even in the UK that deal did not result in clubs swapping out their Concept2 fleets.
We are proud that WaterRower has become the Official Water Rowing Machine of British Rowing. Great Britain is currently the most successful rowing nation on the planet, and British Rowing are the driving force behind this success.
Hydrow Wave: a Peloton with oars, not a club erg
Image: Hydrow
Hydrow is a connected fitness device. The Wave pairs a software-controlled magnetic flywheel with a 16-inch touchscreen running on-demand and live classes, and a mandatory Hydrow Membership at roughly NZD 100 a month after USD-to-NZD conversion. Cancel that subscription and most of the machine stops working. Bruce Smith, formerly a US National Team coach and Executive Director of Community Rowing Inc. in Boston, founded the company in 2017 and has since raised over USD 300m. The Wave is well built, and the production quality of the class content is high.
Where Hydrow falls short for real rowing training
The Hydrow stroke profile does not match real rowing mechanics. The catch is softened, the drive is shaped to look dynamic on camera, and the recovery glides more smoothly than a real boat ever does. A coach watching a developing rower on a Hydrow will see habits forming - early body opening, weak catch, hurried recovery - that translate badly back into a single or an eight. There is no drag factor, no ErgData pipeline, and no Concept2-compatible ranking infrastructure.
Hydrow targets home users chasing guided cardio framed around a rowing aesthetic. That is a real market and a fair product. It is simply not in the same category as a club erg. A Kiwi rowing club kitting out a boatshed with Hydrows would be like a NZ cycling team buying Pelotons in place of road bikes: locked data, the wrong habits, and a per-machine subscription that makes fleet ownership unworkable for any committee budget.
When a Hydrow is genuinely the right buy
If a club member wants a guided home cardio device, can absorb the hardware spend and the monthly Hydrow Membership, and accepts that times will never appear on the Concept2 World Rankings, the Hydrow is a fair pick for that buyer. Just do not install one in the club gym and expect to run testing on it. Even Hydrow's founder has been candid about what the product is and is not.
Yep, rowing can be really boring. I want Hydrow to be the antidote to those dull, clunky Concept2 machines you find in most gyms.
Three-year cost in NZD: side by side
Sticker prices hide the recurring story. Concept2 carries no subscription. Hydrow attaches roughly NZD 1,200 a year of mandatory membership at current exchange rates. Here is what each machine costs to own across three years in NZD, before any servicing or replacement parts:
Three-year total cost of ownership (New Zealand, NZD)
Hardware plus mandatory subscription, May 2026 pricing, USD and GBP figures converted at the prevailing NZD rate.
Headline: the Hydrow Wave costs 3× the Concept2 RowErg over three years - almost entirely because of the mandatory subscription. The two non-subscription machines come within 13% of each other.
Push the window out to a 15-year fleet horizon, which is realistic for a Concept2 in a Kiwi club gym, and the gap widens hard. A Concept2 amortises to roughly NZD 155 per machine per year. A Hydrow over the same period, subscription included, exceeds NZD 18,000 per machine and still cannot produce a score that any RNZ, NZURA or Maadi Cup selection process recognises.
Buying advice by situation
You run a NZ rowing club at any level
Concept2 RowErg. No exceptions.
Standardise the boatshed on Concept2 RowErgs. Buy as many as the gym fits. Do not mix erg brands when you are testing. Swap chains, handles and footstraps as they wear, and the fleet will still be putting valid scores on selection sheets long after the current committee has rolled over.
You run a Maadi Cup school programme
Concept2 RowErg.
Same answer. Maadi school squads need scores that drop straight onto Maadi Cup erg trial sheets and Year 13 selection comparisons, and that means Concept2. The machine also stands up to thirty teenagers a day driving the seat back to the catch without breaking.
You run a university programme (Otago, Waikato, Auckland, Canterbury, Victoria)
Concept2 RowErg.
NZURA Bond Cup selection runs on Concept2 figures. So does every recruiting conversation with Rowing NZ. Buying anything else for a university boatshed cuts your athletes off from the only score line that gets read at the next level.
You are a home rower training for a 2k or rankings
Concept2 RowErg first; WaterRower as a fallback.
A Concept2 puts your numbers on the same line as your clubmates and on the Concept2 World Rankings. If the budget genuinely will not stretch, a WaterRower beats no erg at all, but accept that your scores will not slot cleanly into Concept2-based comparisons or any Kiwi selection sheet.
You want a beautiful home cardio machine
WaterRower.
If how the machine looks in the living room matters more than score comparability with a club, the WaterRower is a satisfying piece of equipment to own and train on for steady-state work.
You want guided workouts and motivation, not technique
Hydrow, if the subscription suits you.
Hydrow is a connected cardio product that borrows the rowing motion. If that is what you want at home, fine. Do not expect it to support a real rowing programme.
FAQs
Are WaterRower scores comparable to Concept2 scores in NZ?
Not directly. The two machines quantify work differently, the WaterRower S4 monitor calculates distance differently, and there is no shared ranking system. A 7:00 2k on a WaterRower and a 7:00 2k on a Concept2 are not equivalent results. Every NZ rowing benchmark that matters - Rowing NZ trial protocols, NZURA Bond Cup selection, Maadi Cup erg trials, Hamilton Boys' and Saint Kentigern selection sheets - is set on Concept2. Comparing against any of those lines requires a Concept2.
Can I use Hydrow data to track 2k erg progression?
Not in any useful way. Hydrow does not export into the Concept2 Logbook, the resistance is software-set rather than tied to a Concept2 drag factor, and the stroke profile is engineered for visual appeal not physiological accuracy. If you are tracking 2k progression for rowing performance, you need to test on a Concept2, even if day-to-day training happens on a Hydrow.
What is the price difference in NZD across the three machines in 2026?
In New Zealand, a Concept2 RowErg sits around NZD 2,100 to NZD 2,500 through Elite Fitness NZ or Sportlab Rowing. A WaterRower Original Oak with S4 Bluetooth Monitor runs roughly NZD 2,400 to NZD 2,800. A Hydrow Wave is approximately NZD 3,200 of hardware plus a NZD 100 per month mandatory membership at current USD to NZD rates. So roughly NZD 4,400 in year one and NZD 1,200 every year after that. Across three years that lands at NZD 2,300 vs NZD 2,600 vs NZD 6,800. Push the window to ten years and the Concept2 is far and away the cheapest of the three.
Do NZ rowing clubs ever actually buy WaterRowers?
Rarely, and almost never as the main fleet. A handful of clubs around Aotearoa keep one or two WaterRowers as variety machines for members who like the feel of water resistance, but the testing standard right across the country - from North Shore RC in Auckland down to Otago University Rowing Club in Dunedin - is Concept2. We have not encountered a single Kiwi club using WaterRowers as the primary testing rig.
Can data from each machine flow into a club management system?
Concept2 exports cleanly via ErgData and the Concept2 Online Logbook. Row HQ accepts Concept2 scores today via CSV import, and a direct Logbook API sync is on our short-term roadmap so scores land in the coach dashboard automatically. WaterRower offers limited app connectivity through its own apps but nothing equivalent to the Concept2 Logbook or the global rankings. Hydrow keeps every data point inside its own ecosystem with no open export pathway. For a club running structured testing, only Concept2 plays cleanly with third-party tools.
What is the world record 2k on a Concept2?
Heavyweight men: 5:35.8, set by Josh Dunkley-Smith (Australia) in March 2018 at the Senior Australian Rowing Team Trials. Lightweight men: 5:56.7, set by Henrik Stephansen (Denmark) in January 2013, ratified by Guinness World Records. Heavyweight women: 6:21.1, set by Brooke Mooney (USA) in 2021. All three were set on Concept2 RowErgs. There is no equivalent ratified record book for WaterRower or Hydrow.
Keep every erg score in one place
Row HQ keeps each athlete's erg scores with their training record. Coaches can see progress without chasing spreadsheets. Set up your club free for up to 20 members.
- Jason and the Row HQ team
Sources and references
- Rowing NZ official site (programmes and club development resources) — Rowing NZ
- British Rowing PT Testing Protocols (November 2022 PDF) — British Rowing
- British Rowing teams up with WaterRower (2016 partnership announcement) — British Rowing
- Concept2 2025 Year in Review (141,735 new athletes, 79.7B m logged across 210+ countries) — Concept2 (accessed May 17, 2026)
- New 2k world record 5:35.8 (Josh Dunkley-Smith, Australia) — Concept2
- Concept2 Online Logbook — Concept2
- Concept2 RowErg product page — Concept2
- How much does a Hydrow cost? (subscription pricing breakdown) — Hydrow (accessed May 17, 2026)
- Hydrow founder Bruce Smith interview — Evening Standard
- Why Sir Steve Redgrave uses the Concept2 rower — Fitness Etc