The Bench I Didn't Expect to Like: GetRXd FIDAB-2 Adjustable Bench Review

Hey guys, this is Michael with the Jungle Gym Reviews. Today we're reviewing the GetRXd FID AB2 adjustable bench. This is GetRXd top of the line ladder style adjustable bench that combines a premium look and feel with the thing that we all really want in a bench, stability and the ability to adjust it easily.

Featuring both 7 gauge and 11 gauge steel construction, this thing is heavy and heavy duty. It stores upright when not in use, has 7 back pad positions, 4 seat positions including the ability to go into a decline for decline benching. And it's about $100 cheaper than the other top of the line competitors, so let's check it out. So I had a chance to see this bench in person at home gym con earlier this year and to be quite honest, when I first saw it I thought it was just another mid-tier bench and didn't really have any plans to review it and I'm actually very glad I ended up with this for review because this has very much impressed me. It's a ladder style FID bench, so different from other ladder styles, again the D flat incline and decline. This has a bunch of different adjustments, 7 on the back pad ladder, 4 on the seat ladder, but as I mentioned the coolest thing about this is ladder style and decline. So for the decline, the back pad stays up and the seat is actually what goes into decline mode. So just a slight decline on the seat and you put the back pad somewhere around here, leg roller or no leg roller depending on what you want to do and now you have a decline bench. The positive about this bench and usually ladder styles in general is they're easy to adjust because you just lift up the back pad and you're golden to their super stable because they usually have something like this bracket here that basically locks exactly into the grooves but then doesn't allow for any side to side play on the ladder itself and what this ends up as is when you are in an incline position you end up with a very solid back pad. So with no play in the back had left to right, no wobble. If it's wobbling here, it's due to my floor in the slope, but this thing is very stable and you can just feel kind of like the force transfer. I know as weird as that sounds through the whole bench on the floor when you're like you're putting weight into it. So this became my bench now that I've used for the last few months and I've been overall very happy with the performance. Again, the ladder style makes it very quick to adjust.

It does have dual knobs for the ladder one on each side just with this little like rubber coating on it, which is fine. Nothing to write home about, but it's comfortable enough. You can grip it easily move it up quickly move it down quickly and it's always safe and secure. That's really the dream with the ladder style. The other thing about this bench that makes it so stable is going to be the actual frame itself. It has a mixture of seven gauge and 11 gauge steel. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert and know which specific parts are made of which gauge steel, but I'll just tell you this bench is a whole is heavy and solid. It weighs about 115 pounds, which is less than something like other competitors.

I'm going to be doing a review soon of the rep blackling on the channel. That thing is so heavy and almost like unnecessarily. So I understand why it's heavy, both from a construction standpoint and let's say overall capacity and durability standpoint, but this is kind of like the sweet spot for me. This like 100 to 115 pound rage. So once you get over that, it is honestly really heavy to pick up a very like long bench, deadlifting it off the ground and then to try to wheel it around and move it is kind of difficult. This bench stores upright as you can see. And the cool thing about it is you're able to like maneuver it in a very small area. Like this is almost vertical and I'm able to, you know, wheel it around the handle here is just some like foam covered padded handle.

It works fine. It's not super fancy or a neural or anything, but I think really the premise with this bench and all of the get our X stuff is maximizing that like price per value per quality functionality that you get. I still say even their tornado rack, which I've reviewed in the past same thing, you know, it's not the nicest rack you can buy, but they do the best job at maximizing the things you want and therefore minimizing some of the overall price just due to it, you know, being import or being, let's say a little more simple on certain things like not choosing a neural handle, maybe before going some of the other badging and aesthetic things, yada, yada.

Overall, they do a really nice job at combining those two. So the upright storage is achieved. It's got a nice plate here on the end. So rather than just like a small little spot, like I've seen on some other benches for like kickstand, it's got this big plate.

So the plate and the feet, the little brackets on the wheels. Once it's upright, it's not going anywhere. So it's safe. You can store it in a corner and it's not going to fall over.

Overall, this is a easy bench to move. I typically use it in my smaller studio, what I call the rack room, which is like a 12 by 15 single car garage bay. So this is about the heaviest and the biggest bench I'd want in there. I actually prefer stuff even smaller technically. I've done a review of the Freak ATHLEI ABX recently and that's probably a good, you know, six inches shorter than this. That probably weighs about 20 pounds lighter.

I typically just like that because it's a little bit easier and shorter for a smaller room. This is a still a long bench. The main back pad is 42 inches long.

The seat is 12 inches long and the actual width of the back pads and the seat pad is 12 inches. The seat does taper down a little bit. So just know it does take up a little bit of space and the whole point is to be able to be used obviously like kind of as a flat bench as well.

So if you want to use this and not use the seat and still have like that singular or more, you know, powerlifting style flat pad, you can have that. The one thing I will say, if you're interested in that is two things. One, this is actually a little bit higher than IPF specs. I believe the height off the ground is 18 inches, whereas something like the rep black wing is 17.3. So it's in that range of IPF specs graded.

Again, for the practical average person, it's not going to matter, but for those of you who are interested in powerlifting and that does need to be considered, just know this is a little bit out of that range. The other thing is the seat pad gap here is about 1.8 inches in the flat setting. As you incline it a bit more, it gets smaller to me. Honestly, it's a non-issue. I used to be a huge fan and still am of the rep, like zero gap products, but I found that zero gap mattering less and less to me in real life. So this seat gap, I would say is minimal and completely acceptable and truly not noticeable, at least for me in my training, more hypertrophy bodybuilding style, you know, normal, sort of everyday strength training movements. I don't have a problem with this.

And I actually prefer that because now that I switched to something like the zero gap, having to turn a knob and slide something, there's a lot more effort than just, boom, being done and just getting on and going. The other thing I forgot to mention is the actual density and thickness of the pad. They've done a really good job at like making it, I would say it's on the firmer side compared to other benches that I've used. It's 2.6 inches thick and it's definitely not gonna wear over time.

It has this like grippy textured vinyl, which is pretty standard for like top of the line industry benches right now. That's what everyone's doing. That's what everyone likes. But just know like the pad itself is definitely more on the firmer side, not quite as firm as something like the Rogue adjustable bench 3.0 that I used to own, but definitely a little more firm than some of the other benches I've used.

And I actually like that a little bit more. Between the firmness and the support, it just feels very, I would say natural and it doesn't ever feel like I get stuck. My shoulder blades and everything are still able to move freely and on softer benches, sometimes it can get a little stuck. I don't know if that quite makes sense, but for me, I like the little bit harder, more dense padding. And then that makes it more durable for things like setting stuff on it, doing hip thrusts, you know, where you're kind of rolling your back off the side, step ups, stuff like that.

Overall, I think they really did a good job at just making this thing heavy, durable, and very functional. The other two things I wanted to mention quickly, besides its functionality as a bench, is it does have an attachment port slash attachment tube on the end. And that's one thing that in our era of adjustable benches, that is one thing I will continue to recommend going forward is this attachment port and tube.

It is a 1.7 by 1.7 inner diameter made for attachments that are 1.6 by 1.6 inch outer diameter tube sleeve. Basically, this just means you're gonna put attachments on it, most notably the leg roller from GetRX. The one that you'll see here in the video is actually a bolt fitness leg roller that fits on this. This does have the exact same size attachment port as rep does on the Blackwing. So just know if you're interested on future rep attachments or want to do them vice versa, or same thing with the bolt fitness ones, they're all pretty universal.

In the fact, you can swap those. The one I will say is that ABX I recently reviewed is not because that is actually, I think 1.8 by 1.8 inches, and the attachments are bigger. So as of now, the freak athlete attachments and stuff are not compatible with these, but GetRX, bolt fitness, rep fitness, they all have that same attachment tube, which is nice. Then you can add things like potentially the rep fitness leg developer on here, or like I've shown the bolt fitness decline leg holder attachment on here, no problem. I would consider that when going forward long term is when you're spending $500 on a bench, which is what this costs, $4.99, and or up on some of those other benches, you definitely want to consider attachments, especially for home gyms and like maximizing overall functionality per space. As far as price compared to other options, $500 I think is better value again over something like the rep blackwing, unless you very specifically want that zero gap technology, or you just say, hey, I like all rep products, I want to support them, I like the knurled handle, that's fine. That's still a fantastic bench, and I have no problems with it, but if you're like, hey, I want the best bench, but maybe I don't want to spend the most, this is it.

Get our X products in general, or pretty much filling that typical category, because again, they are more import products, maybe don't have the same level of customization and other things, but functionally they work really well. Now the last thing I want to mention on here is this little kind of brace bracket. You might be wondering what this little square thing is. Normally on benches you'll have used to see a post or something similar on the back, this has this dual post.

The reason for this is, and you'll actually see, they're kind of mini, I don't know if they're two by two little posts with a half inch hole. On here you can add these little dumbbell cradles, dumbbell holders. I actually have them somewhere here in the studio, no idea where, but long story short, you can add these little cradles, which then you can put a pair of dumbbells on like this, and you can adjust the cradles to different heights on the left and the right, and you can basically do chest supported rows, but your dumbbells have like a spotter or like a starting point, so you can just lean down and grab them. To me, I found those actually getting in the way of other movements, or like when I actually wanted to do chest supported rows, those little cradle notches would kind of get in the way of the dumbbell. So I took those off, and I leave it like this, and I have no issues. I'd probably recommend not to purchase those unless you really, really, really have a use case for them, because I think it's easy enough, even when you're doing heavy dumbbell rows, to just grab them, kind of, you know, waddle on over here and support your chest stand or fall face first on it.

That's just my personal preference. The other kind of hidden benefit I did want to mention is when you do something like decline sit-ups, what's nice is this actually becomes sort of like a step-up platform for you, like a step up and down, and I'm pretty tall at 6'2". Sometimes I like to do my decline sit-ups this high. It allows me to kind of like, you know, use it to get up and down. So otherwise I'd be like having a real hard time doing this. So that just, I call it more of like an Easter egg.

Maybe it wasn't obviously probably put there purposely for this, but it's a little bit nicer to be able to like get in and out for something like that. So that's pretty much it for the bench. Overall, I think it's a good price per value. They now offer a couple of different color options, which is not something they used to do. They offer black as shown here, but also like a red, a yellow, I think a green and a blue.

So go nuts with either having a pop of color in your gym or matching it to your current gym color scheme. Otherwise, that's pretty much it for this review on the GetRx FID AB2. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below.

I'll be happy to answer or at least try. Thanks for tuning in to the Jungle Gym Reviews. We'll see you next time. Take it easy. Peace.