With all of the Fitness Bikes that we’ve reviewed on this site (Upright, Recumbent and Spin Bikes), I often go out to stores ~ in the brick and mortar world ~ to compare prices, see what stores carry which brands, to check out the exercise bikes, talk to people in the stores about the fitness bikes that they carry and find out about the latest sales going on.

This weekend I was surprised to discover that a few of the stores that I consider primarily consumer electronic stores also have a very good selection of high quality exercise bikes and fitness equipment. The three electronic stores that I checked out were Best Buy, hhgregg and ABT in Glenview, Il.

The first store that I visited was ABT in Glenview, Illinois. ABT is a huge store that has been in business for quite a while and has survived the consumer electronics wars of the past but I believe that there is just the one store in Glenview (so this is not a national chain). ABT has grown into much more than just consumer electronics at this point. If you live in the Chicagoland area this is a good b&m store for fitness equipment.

What I found at ABT was that they carry Proform, Life Fitness, Schwinn and Spirit Fitness exercise bikes. There was a good selection of Life Fitness and Proform, one Schwinn Fan bike ~ the Schwinn Airdyne AD2 Fan Bike ~ and one Spirit Fitness bike. 

One thing that was really nice at ABT was that they had the popular Proform Tour de France TDF bike set up and on display. Although this bike is very popular online, there are not a lot of stores at this time where you can actually see and try out this bike so if you are interested in the Proform TDF this is a great place to see it.

My next stop (for fitness equipment at electronics stores) was hhgregg. Hhgregg is a chain of b&m stores (over 190 at this time according to their website) mostly located west of the Mississippi at this time.

I like hhgregg, I think that they are a good alternative to Best Buy and I found that they carry some very good quality fitness equipment too. The HHGregg store by us carried the Life Fitness, Horizon and AFG brands.

What I found very nice about hhgregg is that you can see and tryout the Horizon Fitness bikes that I reviewed at the Horizon headquarters in Cottage Grove Wisconsin and have reviewed and recommended on this website for quite some time now.

Horizon does not have a large selection of exercise bikes ~ just one Spin Bike (the Horizon M4) and one Recumbent Bike (the Horizon RC30) ~ but they are a very high quality brand and also very affordable (a nice combination). I would really like to see them come out with an upright but we will probably need to wait for that one.

The prices for the Horizon bikes at hhgregg were better than online list prices at Amazon and Horizon (factory direct) but not as good as the price from our site when you apply the 10% discount code that we are able to offer at this time. See the two Horizon links above for more information on the 10% discount if you are interested in this.

I would have to say that all the exercise bike brands that hhgregg carries are good quality  and, in general, their prices are also very good.

And my last stop on the electronic store/fitness bike tour was Best Buy. I have seen exercise bikes (and fitness equipment) on the Best Buy website but I actually did not remember ever seeing fitness equipment at Best Buy but since I was never looking for it there I thought that I might have missed it.

As it turns out Best Buy only sells fitness equipment online (through 3rd party stores) and does not sell fitness equipment in their stores (according to the sales rep that I talked to (and who seemed knowledgeable)).

So there you have it. A few more brick and mortar stores that you can go to and find and try out different fitness equipment brands.