EnterSports 27kg Adjustable Dumbbells Review: The Heavier Sibling, Worth the Extra?

The EnterSports 27kg pair is the brand's heavier dial dumbbell: ten settings per hand from 2kg to 27kg, a 360 degree rotating dial and a lock that stops it sitting between numbers, for £279.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing. It's a good buy for anyone who's already strong enough to outgrow a 20kg set, or who will be within a year. Beginners who mainly want light arm and shoulder work are better off with the cheaper 20kg EnterSports pair, because this one's jumps at the light end are clumsy.

So the real question isn't whether these are decent dumbbells (the spec sheet says they are) but whether you need the extra 7kg per hand. For pressing, rowing and leg work, plenty of people do. For curls and lateral raises, almost nobody does.

Who should buy the 27kg rather than the 20kg pair

Picture someone who's been training at home for six months on lighter dumbbells and now finds that a 20kg dumbbell bench press or one-arm row is a warm-up set. That person is exactly who the 27kg pair is for. An extra 7kg per hand is a 35% higher ceiling, which buys a lot of time on the big lifts before you're stuck.

Lower-body work is where it pays off fastest. A goblet squat holds one dumbbell against your chest, so even a fairly new lifter can handle 20kg and up within a few months. The same goes for Romanian deadlifts with a dumbbell in each hand, where 27kg a side (54kg total) is a properly useful load for most people training at home.

It's a weaker choice if your training is mostly accessory work. Lateral raises, rear delt flyes, triceps extensions and curls rarely need more than 10 to 15kg for most people, and that's precisely the range where this set's steps feel coarse.

Check price on Amazon£279.99

The weight settings, and why the jumps matter

Each dumbbell runs 2, 5, 7.5, 10.5, 13, 16, 18.5, 21.5, 24 and 27kg. That's ten settings, the same count as the 20kg pair, stretched across a wider range, so the gaps get bigger. They also alternate: 3kg, then 2.5kg, then 3kg again, all the way up.

At the heavy end it barely matters. Going from 21.5kg to 24kg on a dumbbell press is a 12% increase, and moving from 24kg to 27kg is 12.5%; most people can manage that by building an extra rep or two first. The light end is a different story. The first jump, 2kg to 5kg, is 150%, and 5kg to 7.5kg is another 50%. If you're doing lateral raises with 5kg and can't yet move 7.5kg with clean form, this set has nothing in between.

The 20kg sibling handles that better, with even 2kg steps throughout (8, 10, 12kg and so on). You trade fine control at the bottom for a higher ceiling at the top, and how much that bothers you depends on what you train.

There's a reasonable workaround. A 2022 trial in PeerJ (Plotkin et al., on PubMed) compared adding load with adding reps at a fixed load in trained lifters over eight weeks, and found muscle growth and strength gains were broadly similar between the two approaches. So when the next setting up feels too big, stay where you are and push the reps higher before you move. It won't fix a 150% jump on a lateral raise, but it smooths out the 2.5 to 3kg steps nicely.

How the dial and lock work

You sit the dumbbell in its base, turn the dial to the weight you want, and lift. The plates you've selected come away with the handle, and the rest stay put. EnterSports says the dumbbell has to be seated and click into the base before the dial will turn, and that the dial can't rest between two settings. That's the design you want, because the classic failure on cheap selector dumbbells is a half-engaged plate sliding off mid-rep.

Being one-handed helps more than it sounds. In a superset or drop set you can change weight with one hand while the other dumbbell's still in its base, which keeps rest periods short. It's not as fast as grabbing a different fixed dumbbell from a rack, but it's far quicker than a spinlock set with collars to unscrew.

One habit is worth building anyway: give the handle a small wiggle in the base before you lift, especially in the first few weeks, so you know it's fully on a number.

The wobble, the length and other honest cons

EnterSports is upfront that slight plate wobble is normal, and that matches how selector dumbbells generally behave. The plates need a bit of clearance to slide in and out of the handle, so a little movement at the ends is the price of a dial system. On slow presses you'll barely notice it. On a fast row or the turnaround of a curl you'll feel a faint shift. What it shouldn't do is clunk loudly or feel loose enough to worry you, and if yours does, 30 days is your window to send it back.

Length is the bigger practical limit. At about 36cm, these are much longer than a fixed hex dumbbell of the same weight, and they stay 36cm long whether you've selected 5kg or 27kg. That's the same listed length as the 20kg pair, which is a small plus for the heavier set, but it still affects a few movements:

• Hammer curls and lateral raises, where the inner end can brush your thigh
• The bottom of a dumbbell bench press, where the outer plates touch your chest before your elbows reach full depth
• Renegade rows and anything else where the dumbbell rests on the floor under your hand, because the base housing isn't flat like a hex head

Delivery is the odd one. The listing says the two dumbbells arrive as separate parcels and may turn up on different days. That's fine if you know to expect it, and mildly alarming if you don't.

Then there's the warranty. One year is short for a product with a mechanical lock and a dial that turns thousands of times. The SGS fatigue test is a reassuring claim, but it's the manufacturer's claim, and EnterSports doesn't have Bowflex's decade-plus of owner history behind it.

Is 27kg per hand enough?

For most people training at home for general strength, comfortably. The NHS physical activity guidelines ask adults to do strengthening activities that work all the major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and a 2 to 27kg pair covers every one of them with room to grow.

Where it runs out is with genuinely strong lifters. Someone who bench presses 100kg on a barbell will probably want 30kg-plus dumbbells for pressing before long, and a heavy Romanian deadlift can exceed 27kg a side too. If that's you, look at a higher ceiling now rather than buying twice. Our guide to whether adjustable dumbbells are worth it covers the trade-offs against fixed weights if you're on the fence.

How it compares with the 20kg pair and other dial sets

Against its own sibling, the maths is simple. The 20kg pair costs £201.86, so you're paying roughly £78 more for 7kg extra per hand. Per kilo of capacity the two are almost identical (about £5.05 versus £5.19), which means the 27kg set isn't poor value; you're just buying more weight.

The ATIVAFIT pair is the closest rival in shape, with ten settings from 2 to 25kg in steps of roughly 2.5kg. It tops out 2kg lower. The Strongway 32kg pair (£339.95 when we reviewed it) goes 5kg higher for about £60 more, but in coarse 4kg steps. And the Bowflex SelectTech 552 still has the finest progression and the longest track record, but it maxes out at 23.8kg and the current UK listing is per dumbbell, so a pair costs considerably more.

	EnterSports 27kg pair	EnterSports 20kg pair	Strongway 32kg pair	Bowflex SelectTech 552
Range per dumbbell	2 to 27kg	2 to 20kg	2 to 32kg	2.27 to 23.8kg
Settings	10	10	9	15
Step size	2.5 to 3kg (3kg first jump)	2kg throughout	4kg (after 2, 4, 8kg)	2.5lb, then 5lb
Sold as	Pair	Pair	Pair	Single (UK listing)
Best for	Intermediate lifters wanting headroom	Beginners, accessory work	Strong lifters	Fine progression

For the full field, including heavier and cheaper options, see our best adjustable dumbbells UK roundup.

What to buy alongside it

A bench makes the extra weight usable: flat and incline presses, chest-supported rows and step-ups all open up once you've got somewhere to lie or sit. Our best weight bench UK guide covers solid options in a sensible price range. A rubber mat under the two bases protects the floor and gives you a soft spot to set 27kg down, because like every selector dumbbell these aren't built to be dropped. You'll find more kit for a small setup in our home gym section.

Check price on Amazon£279.99

Recommended reads

• EnterSports 20kg adjustable dumbbells review
• Best adjustable dumbbells UK
• Are adjustable dumbbells worth it?
• Dumbbell bench press guide
• Goblet squat guide
• Home gym equipment reviews