New Piece of Equipment

In spite of the fact that I purchased and love the P90X program I am not generally interested in what I see on TV infomercials. My son, who is 4, loves all of them and thinks we need everything he sees on TV but that is besides the point. Given this I was surprised at how interested I was in a recent infomercial I saw. We had just finished a workout and I switched back to broadcast TV from the DVD and there was a commercial for the Dosho Gym 5000. As intrigued as I was I am still pretty skeptical. This device was apparently designed by the same guy who came up with the original bowflex stuff. I own the selectech 552 dumbbells from bowflex and I like them a lot so I thought maybe this is the real deal. After doing a little digging around on the web I have not been able to find many reviews of the Dosho Gym other than complaints from some bodybuilders who have actually never used the system so I am not putting much weight (no pun intended) behind what they say. Besides these are some of the same people claiming the selectech dumbbells are junk and I could not disagree more with that, you can't just drop them on the floor like iron dumbbells but they are pretty sturdy and a real space saver.

What I have found out about the Dosho is the dumbbells only adjust up to 45 pounds each in 5 pound increments but there is an add on you can buy that will increase that to 70 pounds, I would like to see more like 100 pounds but 70 is certainly better than 45 which is no where near enough. I am not sure how useful the "lift assist" part would be for me but the bench appears to be constructed pretty well and would give me a range of exercise capabilities that I don't currently have at home and variety is a good thing. I like the fact that the dumbbells are a sturdy metal construction. This is one of the complaints people have about the selectech dumbbells, they are a plastic and the adjustment mechanism can break if you drop them. I have not had problems with this but I am careful not to drop them. The Dosho dumbbells appear to be a design that would not suffer from this problem. The price is also attractive given that I was thinking about buying the next level selectech 1090 and the cost of the Dosho is $100 less, I would need to spend an extra $79 on the extra weight for the dumbbells but still cheaper. It appears the only way to get this equipment is by ordering through the web sit and this is a drawback. I would like to be able to go into a retailer and try the equipment first before shelling out that kind of money.

Bottom line for me is this looks like a promising idea but I think I will wait for some reviews and/or the ability to try the equipment in person before I buy. If anyone has any more direct experience with this I would love to hear about it.