EnterSports Adjustable Dumbbells Review: A 20kg Pair for About £200

The EnterSports 20kg pair is a sensible budget dial dumbbell: ten settings from 2kg to 20kg in even 2kg steps, a twist-handle selector and a safety lock, for £201.86 on Amazon UK at the time of writing. It's a good buy for beginners and anyone training for general strength in a small room. The catch is the 20kg ceiling, which a reasonably strong lifter will hit on pressing and rowing well before the dumbbells wear out.

That's the whole decision really. If 20kg a hand covers what you'll lift for the next year or two, this pair does most of what a Bowflex SelectTech 552 does for noticeably less money, with finer steps at the heavy end. If you're already pressing 20s, skip it.

Who it's for

Think of someone starting out at home, or coming back after a long break, who wants one pair of dumbbells that can cover a full-body dumbbell workout without a rack of hex weights taking over the spare room. Women training for general strength, older lifters and teenagers learning technique will find 20kg covers a lot of ground. So will anyone who mostly does accessory work (curls, lateral raises, triceps extensions, rear delt flyes) where you'll rarely need more than 12 to 16kg anyway.

It's a poorer fit for experienced lifters. A trained man pressing dumbbells on a bench will usually want 25kg or more per hand fairly quickly, and lower-body moves like goblet squats and Romanian deadlifts outgrow 20kg faster than anything else.

Check price on Amazon£201.86

The weight range and those 2kg steps

Each dumbbell runs 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20kg. Ten settings, all 2kg apart, which is genuinely better spacing than some pricier rivals. Our Strongway adjustable dumbbells review covers a set that goes much heavier (32kg) but jumps 2kg to 4kg to 8kg at the bottom and then moves in 4kg steps; going from 8kg to 12kg on a lateral raise is a 50% jump, and most people simply can't make it with good form.

On the EnterSports pair, progressing a shoulder press from 10kg to 12kg is a 20% increase, which is still a lot on small muscles but manageable if you build reps first. A simple approach: stay on a weight until you can do the top of your rep range (say 12) on every set, then move up 2kg and drop back to 8 reps.

There's a listing quirk worth clearing up. The title says 20kg x2 and also quotes 44lb. That 44lb is just 20kg converted to pounds, so it's the maximum of one dumbbell. Load both to the top and you're holding 40kg in total.

How the adjustment works

There's no button to press and no pin to pull. You leave the dumbbell sitting in its base, turn the handle to the weight you want, and lift. The plates you've selected come with the handle, while the rest stay in the base.

The locking mechanism is the part that matters for safety. On cheap selector dumbbells the classic failure is a handle turned halfway between two numbers, so a plate is only partly engaged and can slide off mid-rep. EnterSports says its lock prevents the handle settling between settings, so the dumbbell shouldn't lift out unless it's properly on a number. That's the right design, and it's worth checking each time anyway: give the handle a small wiggle before you lift, especially early on while you're learning how it clicks.

Changing weight with a twist of the handle is quick, which suits supersets and drop sets. It's not as fast as picking up a different fixed dumbbell, but it's faster than any spinlock set with collars.

Size, length and the footprint claim

EnterSports lists each dumbbell at about 36cm long. That's reasonable for a 20kg selector dumbbell and a bit shorter than a Bowflex SelectTech 552, but it's still longer than a fixed hex dumbbell of the same weight, and selector designs don't get shorter in proportion when you set them light. On moves where the dumbbell travels close to your body (hammer curls, lateral raises, the bottom of a dumbbell shoulder press) a long dumbbell can catch your thigh or shoulder, so you may need to adjust your path slightly.

The 0.25 sq ft footprint claim looks optimistic to us. A quarter of a square foot is roughly 15cm by 15cm, and a 36cm dumbbell sitting in a base obviously takes up more floor than that. In practice, budget for a strip of floor around 40cm long per dumbbell. That's still tiny compared with a rack of ten fixed pairs, which is the real point.

Is 20kg enough? An honest answer

For a lot of people, more than enough. A review of loading research in Sports, published on PMC, argues that muscle growth can happen across a wide range of loads as long as sets are taken close to failure, while heavy loads still have the edge for building maximal strength. In plain terms, a pair of 16kg dumbbells taken to a hard 15 to 20 reps still builds muscle. What lighter weights won't do is make you as strong at a heavy one-rep max.

So the ceiling bites hardest in two places. Lower-body work is the first: a strong lifter's goblet squat or Romanian deadlift will go well past 20kg, and higher reps or slower tempos only stretch that so far before sets become tedious. Pressing is the second, because dumbbell bench press numbers climb quickly in the first year. If either describes your training, a higher-capacity set from our best adjustable dumbbells UK guide will last longer.

For general health, the NHS physical activity guidelines recommend strengthening activities that work all the major muscle groups on at least two days a week. A 2 to 20kg pair covers that comfortably for most adults.

EnterSports vs Bowflex SelectTech 552 and Strongway

The Bowflex SelectTech 552 is the benchmark. It goes to 23.8kg per dumbbell across 15 settings, with 2.5lb (about 1.1kg) steps at the light end, and it has more than a decade of owner history behind it. It also costs a lot more, and the current UK listing is per dumbbell, so a pair adds up fast. The 552 wins on finer low-end steps and a slightly higher ceiling. The EnterSports pair wins on price, with its 2kg spacing holding steady all the way up rather than widening at the top.

The Strongway 32kg pair (£339.95 when we reviewed it) is the better choice if you know you'll outgrow 20kg. You pay roughly £140 more for 12kg extra per hand, but you accept coarse 4kg steps.

	EnterSports 20kg pair	Bowflex SelectTech 552	Strongway 32kg pair
Range per dumbbell	2 to 20kg	2.27 to 23.8kg	2 to 32kg
Settings	10	15	9
Step size	2kg throughout	2.5lb, then 5lb	4kg (after 2, 4, 8kg)
Sold as	Pair	Single (UK listing)	Pair
Best for	Beginners, small spaces, tight budgets	Fine progression, proven track record	Stronger lifters wanting headroom

There's also a smaller EnterSports 18kg set with only five weight levels. It's slightly cheaper, but five settings across 2 to 18kg means big jumps, so we'd pay the difference for this 20kg pair.

What to buy alongside it

A flat or adjustable bench roughly doubles what you can do with a pair of dumbbells: chest press, incline press, supported rows and step-ups all open up. Our best weight bench UK guide covers sensible options. A rubber mat under the bases is worth having too, both to protect the floor and to give you a soft landing spot when you set the dumbbells down.

Check price on Amazon£201.86

Recommended reads

• Best adjustable dumbbells UK
• Bowflex SelectTech 552 review
• Strongway adjustable dumbbells review
• Full-body dumbbell workout
• Best weight bench UK