What Used To Be The Best $200 Barbell: Bells of Steel Barenaked Powerlifting Bar Review (2025)

This is the cheapest powerlifting bar that money can buy. Well, it used to be the Bells of Steel Bare Naked Powerlifting Bar. It's a 29 millimeter barbell, 20 kilograms with IPF specs, and it used to come in sub $200. Some of the most aggressive knurling you can get for that price.

Bad news with tariffs and some of the price increases. It has gone up a bit, but I'm here to tell you a little bit about my six months using this bar and whether or not you think this would be a good fit in your gym. So let's check it out. Hey guys, this is Michael with the Jungle Gym Reviews. Today we're viewing the Bells of Steel Bare Naked Powerlifting Bar. It's no longer called the Bare Naked Bar, strictly called the Powerlifting Bar on their website because they now have two finishes. I am showing here the Bare Naked or Bare Steel version, which they've had for the last few years to my knowledge.

Now they have a Cerakote version as well. Be aware before we get started in our review, it is no longer the cheapest quality powerlifting bar. It used to be sub $200 for a long period of time.

Now with tariffs, since an import bar and the tariff surcharge that Bells of Steel offers, it is no longer in the $200 price range. Before I get into the video, if you could quickly hit that subscribe button below if you haven't already, it's going to continue to help us grow the channel and make sure you get notified when we post our weekly review videos throughout the rest of 2025. And if you're interested in purchasing this bar after the review, please check out that affiliate link in the description below.

low. All right, right off the bat, let's go over the specs for this bar. It is a 20 kilogram bar, meaning around 44 pounds, not 45. And it is a 29 millimeter power bar, 29 millimeter diameter, which is pretty standard for most power bars and a power bar because it is two things.

One, a very stiff shaft at 210,000 PSI tensile strength. And two, you'll see here this center and earl, which is especially great for things like squatting to keep the bar firmly in place on your back. Now, as far as what was enticing about this bar, again, the price, it used to be sub $200. Plus, sometimes you could find coupons made this around the $180, $200 range, which was absolutely fantastic deal. Now, there are better deals out there, especially when you look at the main USA ones, things like Rogue, who are pretty much known for their barbells. They undercut a lot of this bar and other bells of steel bars now with those tariff surcharges.

So despite similar specs, I honestly, at the end of the day, still think those might be a better option. But I still want to go over and highlight what this bar is. Maybe the price goes down in the future. Maybe you already have this bar. Maybe you have the chance to get it at a good deal. So let's take a look at it.

One of the things to note, particularly that is really nice about this bar besides some of the specs is the knurling. You'll see here from some of these up close shots, the knurling is fairly, if not very aggressive. This is probably the most aggressive barbell that I've owned.

The bare steel finish is one of the things that makes the knurling a little more stand out or aggressive. There's no coating to kind of diminish the volcano knurling here. And I would say this is about a eight out of 10.

Definitely on the verge of being a little bit too much. I actually personally don't like bench pressing with this because of just how it sits in my hands. It kind of rubs up against my calluses or pressing in general. I don't really care for it, but for things like deadlifting, fantastic because you almost don't even need to use chalk, you know, just with a hook grip, you can just really just rip it and grip it here.

And that's kind of their goal. Again, since it's a power bar geared towards power lifting, squat bench, deadlift and squatting, of course, with this aggressive middle center knurl sticks right on your back, won't be going anywhere. Some of the other things, the sleeves themselves have this ribbing to them. So you can see that there's these almost little notches all the way across. This is to just simply two things. One, probably just a nice little look. Two, I believe it's to actually stop the weight plates from sliding off. If A, they're not clipped or B, maybe the clip is not strong enough to hold however, six, 700 pounds that you're deadlifting. Speaking of which, if you do want to max the thing out and you have narrow enough plates to do so, the max weight is 1500 pounds.

So feel free to go nuts. I've personally used this just like how it's supposed to be used, all the power lifting movements, but then normal traditional everyday movements, rowing, curls, overhead press, upright rows, you name it. I've used this bar for just because it's on that higher end of the knurling scale. I tend to not use it as my everyday driver bar, just because it does get a little rough on the calluses. I prefer to use things like my bare steel blue collar barbell or even the slightly more aggressive bare steel iron skull power bar. This is more aggressive than nose bars. I've also owned the rogue kind of equivalent of this, which is the well known rogue bare steel Ohio power bar. That one definitely not as peaky aggressive as this. And I think I actually prefer that again. This one just is a little bit too much for my liking, but if you like aggressive knurling, this should definitely be an option. It does have bushings built into the sleeves so that it rotates.

You'll see here the bronze bushings and the nice little engraving, which is a nice touch that sells bells of steel 2010. Now the sleeve length itself is just shy of 17 inches, which is plenty enough to load. Again, I don't think you can actually load enough weight to max out the max capacity of this bar.

The overall length of the bar is approximately 86 and a half inches. And again, it weighs 20 kilograms. Now currently the price is 329.99. That includes 241.99 plus an $88 tariff surcharge. That is for the bare naked power lifting bar version that I have here with the bare steel shaft hard chrome sleeves. They do also have the black sericote shaft and sleeves version at $389.

The serico version of this would be a little more equivalent to my iron skull power bar because the sericote would just dial back a little to the aggressiveness on here, which would take this from what I consider probably the eight out of 10 back probably to a seven, maybe even a six. Now as far as maintenance goes, I've barely had to do anything on this. Otherwise I've had this bar outside in my non humidity controlled, but temperature controlled.

Jim in Michigan for about six months. As I mentioned again, if you do live in a very humid environment, I probably recommend to go the serico version as it will make it potentially a little more strong against the elements. I haven't had to do zero anything, nothing in the six months that I've owned it and it looks pretty much as good as it is now as it did on day one. Overall, it's a really good bar and again, a very aggressive bar, especially considering the price. But now the price kind of makes this bar a lot less desirable.

I was really excited to review this and show this as an awesome daily driver. The best probably power lifting bar that you can get under 200 bucks. No longer the case, it's almost one and a half times that. For that price, I would definitely recommend probably a rogue Ohio power bar. All things created equal, specs are almost near identical. And again, rogue has the made in USA going for it among some of their other quality and other standards. That being said, if prices ever reverts, come back down.

This goes lower. This is an excellent option to have in your gym without breaking the bank. So I would definitely recommend this giving a go in those situations.

So guys, that's it for today's review of the bells of steel power lifting bar. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. I'll be happy to answer at least try. Thank you for tuning in to Jungle Jam Reviews. We'll see you next time. Take it easy. Peace.