The "Cheapest" Modular Cable Tower (Lat Pulldown, Low Row, and Functional Trainer from XMARK)
Introduction
Having a weight stack lat pulldown or functional trainer in your home gym is pretty much a guaranteed way to take your gym to the next level. This is the XMARK Commercial Lat Pulldown and Low Row, and is also a fully equipped single stack functional trainer. This machine features 3x3 uprights with 11 gauge steel, a very smooth adjustable-height cable trolley system, a removable lat pulldown seat, stainless steel low row footplate, aluminum pulleys, a 220LB weight stack, and more. This beast of machine can outfit your home gym or heavy duty enough to be dropped into a commercial setting, but how does it work and is this a good option for your gym? Lets check it out.
Hey guys this is Michael with The Jungle Gym Reviews, today we are reviewing the XMARK Commercial Lat Pulldown and Low Row Single Stack Functional Trainer as it’s officially called. This thing is a big boy, coming in at nearly 550 LBS and at 101 inches tall, sturdy and stable, with a lot of nice touches, and some well thought out functional and aesthetic upgrades, that make it look and feel premium. This machine is one of XMARK’s newest 3x3 cable integrated series, designated their Commercial line, and this one is made to compete with the likes of the Rep Adonis and the Rogue LP-2 which are other single stack cable towers with similar features and functionality which we will compare later, but this one is definitely the most affordable of those.
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Trolley System
So right off the bat, my favorite feature about this machine by far is the functional trainer. When most people think of functional trainer, they think of the typical dual sided two separate weight stacks and uprights machine like you see at every gym. This is what is considered a single stack functional trainer meaning it only has one weight stack. For most people single stack systems can be really effective for home gyms because you get what I consider probably 90% of the same movements that you can do with a typical dual sided functional trainer, minus things you need to cable pulley systems for like chest flys or any two sided handle movements, but a single stack cuts down on the overall footprint and costs compared to the equivalent dual sided version because you need half the real estate and half the actual metal and mechanical infrastructure.
Now one of the things that make this a functional trainer is the sliding cable trolley system on the front of the rack. It’s basically a square bracket that goes around the upright that has rollers built in that allow you to easily slide it up and down the rack by pulling out the pop pin and grabbing onto the nicely knurled integrated handle. The trolley is very smooth and unlike some of the lever arms trolley systems I have seen in the past, this one you can move both up and down with a single hand which speaks to just how well it glides up and down the rack. Where the cable comes out of the front is a 180 degree swivel pulley system so you don’t have to be only directly centered in front of the machine to use it, so just like a normal functional trainer, you and the cables can move left to right or side to side to accommodate the specific movement pattern. The other thing that makes this a good functional trainer is the 2:1 pulley ratio which is typical on most functional trainers because it allows for more cable travel, which as you will see here, has well over 10ft of distance that you can use. The other reason 2:1 is used because it halves the selected weight on the stack to allow for smaller weight increment jumps in between the 10LB weight plates on the 220LB stack, meaning that the functional trainer effective weight is 5LBS – 110LBS in 5 LB increments. I also wanted to mention the top cable height that you can use for the functional trainer, where the cable actually starts on the front uprights is 84 inches.
Lat Pulldown
The other main purposes of this rack is the lat pulldown. The lat pulldown is why this machine is so tall, so that all users of any height can get a full range of motion for that exercise. Even though the machine is over 100 inches tall, the height where the pulley carabiner actually starts is 93.5 inches and in fact, that is so much room, that although I am 6FT2 and with long arms, I still have to add about 9 inches of chain just to move the height down, so I can actually grab it before starting a set. So this would easily accommodate literally probably any human users no problem up to 7 ft tall I would imagine.
The lat pulldown itself uses a 1:1 ratio which means that every pound selected on the 220LB weight stack is the exact weight you feel on the lat pulldown, compared to the 2:1 ratio you get on the functional trainer and low row, which we will talk about in just a few minutes.
The lat pulldown seat is comfortable and has the newer, trendy, grippy vinyl that a lot of companies are using for benches and some machines now that keep you solidly locked in place. The leg rollers are adjustable up and down and you can adjust and lock them in the desired vertical height with that red pop pin right below them. The entire lat pulldown seat assembly itself is an attachment meaning you can actually remove it from the rack and store it on the side when not in use. That also means you can dial in the seat height into any of the 1 inch hole slot on the front upright in 2 inch increments, since that is the upright hole spacing. There is a secondary safety or locking mechanism in the included mag pin so that the seat is never going anywhere no matter how heavy you are pulling, but it does move up and down every so slightly as you do lat pulldowns because the weight of the stack pulls you against it which results in the slightest up and down movement and you pull and release during the lat pulldown because of the slight play in the seat peg where it attaches to the rack and the mag pin. This is completely normal and expected due to manufacturing tolerances but wanted to mention it does happen.
The lat pulldown itself works well, but the actual smoothness during both the eccentric and concentric portions of the movement, honestly made me a little disappointed. Comparing this to the other cable driven trainers or lat pulldowns I have owned, like the REP PR5000 selectorized lat and low row, my previous two Inspire Fitness trainers, my Mikolo Falcon functional trainer, the Dialed Motion cable trolley systems, and others this 1:1 lat pulldown and top pulley portion is noticeably less smooth than the rest. It’s not, unsmooth, if that’s even a word, but when you compare it to the 2:1 pulley ratio functional trainer on the front its about a 30% difference in overall resistance smoothness, and switching back and forth between the two is noticeable because the trolley pulley feels as buttery smooth as I would expect but the lat pulldown especially at higher weights is not as good as I would have hoped and you can just feel a little more drag and resistance comparatively.
Although the smoothness could be better, the position of the lat pulldown pulley is great and comes appropriately from the machine to be positioned directly above the user, and ability to take the seat on and off easily or adjust to your height and ergonomics is really nice.
Low Rows
For low rows you just move that functional trainer trolley to the lowest position, which means the cable will be at approximately 14.5 inches from the floor, but you can have it a bit higher if desired. For low rows the main feature is this really nice adjustable stainless steel footplate with 3 different distance settings which you can lock in and tighten down with the corresponding red pop pin attached to the plate on the front foot of the machine. By default there is a locking bolt on the underside of the footplate so that you can’t slide it off accidentally but I think some people might want to remove it when not in use, so if you don’t install that bolt just know you can actually take it on and off easily as desired if you are worried about it getting in your way.
Since the low row pulley is the same as the functional trainer pulley, you get the same 2:1 ratio and it is very very smooth and feels great. The range of motion is fantastic with respect to where the pulley is located and the footplates options are, means just like with the lat pulldown that even super super tall people will have plenty of room for any big range of motion.
The downsize to the low row is that since it is a 2:1 ratio which in part makes it so smooth, that the ratio halves the effective usable weight meaning that even though it’s a 220 weight stack, even if you max that out at 220LBS, you are really only feeling 110LBS of force. Now this is going to be a problem for most moderately trained individuals and even for myself as I can row 170/180LBS for over sets of 10, which means I am used to rowing over 60LBS heavier than the max weight this unit can do for low rows. The good news, is there plenty of aftermarket attachments made to address this problem on other machines, and my favorite one to use is the Bare Steel 10MM Stacked Weight pin. What this allows you to add Olympic plates to the weight stack via a weight horn. I will link the exact one I have here below, but it’s allows you 10inches of loadable length for the plates and comfortably fits 3, 45LBS plates. What this all now means is I can add the additional 135 pounds of weight plates to make this an effectively 355 pound combined weight stack, and then with the 2:1 ratio it makes it 177.5 pounds of usable weight for low rows which is now adequate. But again that’s not maxing out this singular weight stack pins, unless you get their longer weight stack pin version, get multiple weight stack pins, use thinner plates, get creative with bands or chains, or something similar. At the end of the day, the fact there is no native way to add more weight to a low row that maxes out at 110LBS is definitely a missed opportunity.
Attachments
Besides the included lat pulldown seat, this machine also comes with a few attachments to get you started, there is a lat pulldown bar, a tricep rope, a couple leg cuffs, a close grip row attachment, and a short angled and straight bar attachments. They look nice and they are OK but not anything that I would consider premium as the bars are hollow and made out of aluminum, so like with the very passive knurling they offer, they feel a bit cheap. However, I personally am ok with this because then I can use or source my favorite nice attachments and that way they price of the attachments isn’t baked into the upfront cost and increase the machines price by $200 or something more expensive. Just know, while that’s good to me, I could see that being a downside for others that even when they buy a $2500 machine they still may have to shell out a few extra bucks if they want some upgraded premium attachments.
Price
One thing I didn’t mention so far was the price, and that is $2529 for the version without the shroud and $2659 for the version with the shroud. The shroud itself aesthetically is very pleasing and definitely makes this machine look aggressive and high quality. Also in case you haven’t seen in my prior XMARK product reviews, I mentioned that they frequently XMARK frequently have 5-10% discount offers you can find with either email signup or sales.
Other Options
So if you are in the market for a single stack lat pulldown, low row, and functional trainer you there are a few other options on the market that come to mind, especially when talking about one that use this modular 3x3 upright with 1 inch hole design.
The Rogue LP-2 has the seat integrated into the machine meaning you cant take it off, but it has a 300LB weight stack, band pegs for using resistance bands, is even taller this XMARK one at 108 inches, a dedicated low row pulley that’s a 1:1 ratio meaning you don’t need a weight stack adder out of the box. However it’s also about $1000 more expensive, plus another $500 or more depending where you live in shipping which puts it into much different price category.
The REP Adonis is a little bit more expensive at about $3000 when you get their selectorized version and include the seat attachment they call the Pegasus which has an adjustable pad angle and removable leg rollers so you can use it as a chest support for certain movements. The Adonis has a 210LB weight stack but come with two built in weight horns on either side of the weight stack to achieve the same thing I have here with Bare Steel Weight Stack Pin, but it is already integrated into the machine which is really nice foresight. It also has a dedicated 1:1 ratio low row pulley, band peg attachment posts, and the weight stack shroud itself has built in pegboard holes for additional attachment storage.
Overall
So where does that leave us? Overall the XMARK black diamond is a versatile piece, I really like the idea of these single stack functional trainers with the 3x3 modularity, since you can connect it to existing 3x3 racks and make it part of a 4 post configuration, place it on it’s own freestanding like I have here with the included legs, or really connect it in any way you think possible to any existing 3x3 rack or crossmember configuration.
While the overall design and build of this machine is solid, coupled with the nice touches in the aluminum pulleys and laser cut badging of the shroud, to the red aluminum accents that add a nice pop of color, all give this the look a machine that would warrant this price tag. However, although in theory it seems like a good idea, I think XMARK didn’t take into consideration some main functions and use cases for this machine, like the fact a low row should be a 1:1 ratio and probably have it’s own dedicated pulley like the REP Adonis, or have an out of the box way to add more weight. Similarly, and that the lat pulldown, for whatever reasons, even after I would hope the pulley bearings and everything would break in over a few months, did not, and it’s not as smooth as I think a $2000+ machine should be. Other things like the ability to use bands or have the option to purchase a weight stack upgrade would be nice, and even though the machine looks commercial and has nice features on paper, I don’t think it lines up dollar per dollar on the value compared to something like the REP Adonis or similar.
I will say though, this is the 3rd XMARK product I have owned along with their CAT 5 commercial Air Bike and the Black Diamond commercial weight bench, which are both easily 9/10 rated products for me and absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, this lat pulldown falls a bit short of those expectations but I think XMARK still has plenty of great options to check out and I am still excited to see them get into this 3x3 rack mounted weight stack space even if this is just their V1 as I have no doubt that they have room to grow and will improve with next versions to address some of the shortcomings here.
Signoff and Q&A
So guys that’s it for this review for the XMARK Commercial Lat Pulldown and Low Row Functional trainer machine. As always, if you have any questions, please comment down below and I will be happy to answer or at least try. Thank you for tuning into The Jungle Gym Reviews, we will see you next time, take it easy, peace.
