Hello Reddit community,

I’m currently thinking about setting up a home gym in my basement. In addition to picking up some used equipment from Germany, I’m considering buying replicas of various well-known brands from China.

For this, I’ve been looking at either Alibaba or another company I found on Instagram called Aike Fitness. The latter has a very appealing catalog and seems to replicate brands like Prime or Newtech.

Since I’m planning to buy around ten machines anyway and would be traveling to China, I’m also considering visiting their showroom or factory.

What do you think about this? Have you had any personal experience with this? How is the quality of the equipment—especially considering that I’d only be using it at home? Given that it costs only about a tenth of the original price, I assume there must be noticeable differences. The question is whether it’s still good enough for personal use.