REP Ares 2.0 Review - The Best Rack Mounted Functional Trainer

This is the REP Ares 2.0. This is Rep Fitness' newest top of the line, all-in-one functional trainer, lap pull down low row, that is rack integrated to their PR4000 or PR5000, three by three racks. This thing is meant to be the ultimate all-in-one home gym solution, combining your power rack and your cable system, all in the footprint of your choosing, whether it's a small four post, all the way to a full six post rack configuration, but does it live up to its price tag or the advertising hype?

Let's check it out. Hey guys, this is Michael with the Jungle Gym Reviews. Today we're reviewing the REP Ares 2.0. Home gyms in general are seeing the industry standard change to these all-in-one functional trainer, power rack cable systems, with each major manufacturer coming out with their own. So I wanna talk about what makes this unique and basically what my experience has been using it every in my training for the last few months. Before I get into the video, if you could quickly hit that subscribe button below if you haven't already, it'll 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 after the review, please check out that affiliate link in the description below. Now the REP Ares is their top of the line dual weight stack center mount, lat pull down, low row, and side functional trainer trolleys. And this is their 2.0 version.

They had a 1.0 that they came out with a few years ago. By default, it comes with two 260 pound weight stacks. It's a two to one cable ratio. So the weight listed on here is the actual weight that you feel, meaning that the very bottom selected says 130 pounds, even though this is 260 pounds of plate, it's because it is a two to one ratio. This is the effective weight that you will feel at the end of the cable when doing any movement. If you want to go in between the five pound jumps that you'll get on here, they actually have these half slash adder weight sliders at the top, which is a two and a half pound increment. There's a little pop pin here and they slide down the guide rods, rest on top of the weight stack.

So now you can basically go from 10 to 130 pounds in two and a half pound increments, which is actually really nice for some micro loading and especially with cables, you can dial it into exactly what you like. And when you're not using these, they simply store out of the way very easily. As I mentioned, this has both the functional trainer trolleys on both sides, as well as the center mounted lat pull down and low row. It's all connected via the same cable system. And as you can see here on the sides and the top, there is some pretty crazy cable routing going on, both the plane of motion of the cables and the number of pulleys and the brackets and the switchbacks, et cetera. That was actually one of the most confusing things during assembly. Definitely the cable routing on here is one of the more complicated things that I've assembled.

I don't know if they have a video showing how this all works, but potentially that could be helpful for people in the future. So speaking to the functional trainer aspect of this, these are the side mounted functional trainer trolleys. It's got a 180 degree swivel pulley system here on the front and they actually include these nicely knurled functional trainer handles. They actually come with two pair of these so that you can leave one on the functional trainer trolleys and potentially one either on the lat pull down or the low row.

How these adjust, it's pretty straightforward. They have this magnetic hitch pin slash detent pin here. This is a secondary locking mechanism. You'll see on this side, there's an actual pop pin which engages into the one inch holes along the side of the uprights and this knurled handle for which you can hold it. Pull the pop pin, hold onto the handle and it unlocks from the side holes and you can slide it down or up pretty easily.

As you can see, I'm doing this with one hand. This square trolley actually has some plastic. I'm not sure if it's UHMW or some other plastic but basically it's just to protect the metal of the trolley and the metal of the rack. Coming up and down my rack, there are quite a bit of scratches, marks. It's definitely scratching, scuffing my rack a little bit. More than anything, the actual pop pin for the trolley slider I can see here is scuffing this up just a little bit. I know some other companies are starting to go with like a chrome or stainless steel front upright which then allows this to be more durable instead of paint or powder coat like this is. The other cool thing about these trolleys is it does show which height it's on.

It just highlights the laser cut numbers so that you can see, okay, this is height 15 and you can match the other side to that as well. Nothing too crazy. There's no rollers or anything in these trolleys just because they're not that heavy. Now moving to the lap pull down and low row. They do include a lap bar with it as well along with joiner bracket. I'm not sure what the official term is here but it basically takes the two individual cable sides and puts them from a two to a singular carabiner. You would prefer you can simply just connect to these two carabiners together with one carabiner. The other interesting thing about their center mount lap pull down and the low row which is nice is the fact that these pulleys also have a swivel. So if you want to start some sort of center mounted exercise but then move slightly to the outside or just keep it really narrow, the swivel pulley mounting system will accommodate that. You don't get any side to side friction here and they have plenty of space so you can pull this out without hitting anything distance wise this way.

Obviously if you have this lap bar storage installed you have to be careful a little bit on your side to side. I really like doing lap pull downs. I like doing low rows. Speaking of the low rows, this is some of the cool technology that makes this system unique. Again, as I mentioned, the swivel pulley system's here so that no matter if you're pulling narrow to a little bit wider or even if you want to get close and do things like bicep curls where you're standing right above this, that is one thing I actually really like to do. It's nice that how they have this pulley configuration to be able to accommodate basically any movements you want away from the rack, right above the weight stack, right above the pulleys. The other thing that is really cool about this is this low row foot plate. It has a couple of different things here. Obviously it has what else to call the flat section which is very traditional where you put your feet right on here for the low row.

As you'll see it kind of angles a bit backward here. This is so you can do seated rows off of a bench or something. So rather than your butt being on the floor and just doing the traditional low row foot plate, you can actually pull up a bench, sit on it, and do a little bit higher rows. And then that way you can put your feet here. It kind of angles along with what your torso and body would be while seated on a bench. The other thing about this foot plate is you'll see these 90 degree cutouts at the bottom.

This is one of the coolest things they have. And basically that's to allow your adjustable bench to be able to roll into here and then not have the wheels hit the foot plate and therefore stop you from getting a little more clearance. This way you can do things like incline bench or basically anything where you need the bench to slide back more in order to be able to use the front of the rack even in this narrow 16 inch depth.

And it gives you just a ton of possibilities then. So you're not limited with the bench hitting the weight stacks. And now you can use the front posts for exactly what they're meant to do as far as barbell powerlifting, etc. Tight movements. The last thing about this low row foot plate is they have this threaded pop pin. And you can pull the low row foot plate out to give you plenty of range of motion for low rows, which is really nice because then if you're seated like this and you have some sort of closed grip, you can get a very full back stretch.

Go all the way back. depending on how exactly you want to do that movement. And again, this is just a pop pin. When you want to put it away to go bench or do your other movements, slide it in there, thread it down and you're done. And if you want to take this off, you can actually take off the entire low row foot plate.

I haven't found a reason to do that. So as far as the different configurations they have, as I mentioned again, they have the PR4000, which is their 5 eighth 3 by 3 rack, the PR5000, which is their one inch 3 by 3 rack. They have heights for both of those at 80 inch and 93 inch.

I here again have the 93 inch PR5000 version and the 16 inch depth, four post configuration. When you do the four posts, they actually tell you to get these mini front feet extensions. These are essentially stabilizers so that the rack doesn't tip forward.

And they actually tell you to do both front and rear. If you want to do the four post rack, as you can see, I definitely do not have the rear live in life on the edge. I made an executive decision to say that even though there's a potential when you have the weight stacks and you're pulling and the weight is now up here, you're pulling forward, the majority of the risk would be tilting forwards and not backwards. The rack in general is a little susceptible and actually you can see here. I'm hitting my mini split, but I can get the front feet off the rack. Please do follow the recommendation.

If you do want the 16 inch four post configuration for this, get the front feet, obviously, and do get the rear feet. I am not responsible. Please use this at your own risk. So the ARI system does add about an inch to the height of their uprights. So again, this is a 93 inch uprights to the top of the pulleys though. It is 94 inch. So if you have the 80 inch rack, just know it'll probably add an extra inch as well. But even with the feet, it's only about 40 inches front to back.

And then left to right is about 52 inches, including the little extra bit that the pulleys and the bolts and everything add on both sides. But having all this functionality in that small footprint is absolutely fantastic. I can do all of my barbell movements on here.

I can do all my bench movements on here. You can pretty much put it up against a wall, depending on if it's a six post configuration, et cetera. They do offer configurations, four post, six post, and the different spacings. So please check their website as far as what the configuration is. Now the price of this will depend on the configuration. The most minimal price is about $3,000 for just the cable system and the mounting hardware itself.

All the brackets and stuff that are particular to the Ares system. Plus then the uprights and depending on the pull-up bars, J-Cups, spotter arms, other accessories you have, starts adding another $1,000 plus to that. So for all in, if you're going from zero to wanting something like this, it's going to be around $4,000. You have to have a rep rack. This is only compatible with rep racks. Now one exciting thing I have to share with you is after this review, I will be turning this Ares retrofit into a 100 inch Titan series Titan rack. And I'm going to show you the steps that you need in order to retrofit it to your rack at home as well, which allow this Ares 2.0 system with a few minor modifications and a few minor purchases to be able to put on your existing rack at home. I don't want to spoil that too much now, but do know that video is coming in a few months.

So stay tuned for that. Now when we talk about spotter arms and J-Cups for barbell movements, one thing you have to note is when you put the J-Cups on this rack, you can put a bar here, but I would recommend to put the trolleys down all the way to the bottom most portion. That way you don't get barbell knurling or something rubbing up against these cables.

Just know that is the downside of these all-in-one compact cable systems is you do have to be thoughtful and accommodate switching from cable movements to barbell movements. Now in this four post configuration, one other thing to keep in mind, if you do want spotter arms or some sort of safety spotters, this is a pair of SMAI spotter arms, depending on where I wanted to put these, you have to be careful because it will hit this trolley, even though it's trolley, it's all the way to the bottom of the rack. You'll see I don't have enough clearance.

That means this is about the lowest position. I can mount spotter arms in. Now when I was bench pressing, this is pretty much perfectly to my chest. So I just want to point that out as maybe one specific movement, where if you do want spotter arms and a four post configuration, there could be the issue where you can't get a full range of motion due to just the limitations and everything. If that were the case, I would say just for this one movement, back to the top of somewhere, a little bit of barbell touching your cables, gonna be fine.

This would allow you to put your spotter arms now, pretty much in the lowest position and have no issue now when it comes to range of motion, for any size, for any bench, et cetera. So now taking everything into consideration, overall, I do think this is definitely one of the best cable systems that exists second to Rogue, because they're pretty much made in USA, although always overbuilt, obviously then more expensive. This blends the perfect amount of functionality, durability and premium design choices, things like the pulleys, things like the actual cables themselves, the attachments they give you are all very, very good quality and noticeably better than some of the other competitors that I've tried.

The one gauge I use in almost all these cable systems is cable feel. It is very smooth, very snappy. The center cables, I think just because they have less pulleys to go on are a little bit smoother. I would say if I had to give this a rating, the center pulleys are elasticy, snappy, 10 out of 10.

The smoothest things I've used, these side trolleys noticeably less smooth by like one or two points. So these are probably an eight, eight and a half. These are like a 10 out of 10. I had a friend here goes to a big box gym, LA Fitness for anyone who's familiar. He was using these, man, I wish the ones at the gym felt this good.

And I was like, yeah, no, these feel absolutely fantastic. Overall, the entire cable system extremely smooth. The other one I've compared to this recently that I also think is very, very good is the GetRX Tornado rack. And because that one has side mounted functional trainer stacks, there isn't the bending and twisting and multi routing of cables. And that's probably the only thing that takes these side trolleys from the same 10 out of 10 smoothness to that eight and a half. One thing I would like to see from Rep as an improvement to this, they nailed it with the design, with the shroud, with the space saving footprint, with a quality of materials.

The only thing that I could think to make this better, the GetRX Tornado arms and mother companies that are offering those articulating angle adjustable arms in and out and up and down. Now that would take this to the next level. But I think Rep's actually going to make their own version of this.

And that's the only thing I think right now that could make this better. When you're talking about one stop shop for something for your home gym with the rack and the trainer that can be all you need, you can have a full gym in a four by five ish footprint for four grand. That is honestly not a bad deal. The only downside again, this only fits a rep rack. So depending on your current configuration or depending on your budget, you may or may not be able to do that. But I'm excited to highlight some of the opportunities in the next video on maybe retrofitting this to your rack at home. So guys, that's it for today's review on the Rep Ares 2.0. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below.

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