SPORTSROYALS Power Rack Review: Lat Pulldown Cage for £330

The SPORTSROYALS Power Rack is a full power cage with a plate-loaded lat pulldown and low row built in, sold on Amazon UK for £329.99 at the time of writing (with only 10 left in stock when we checked). For that money you get 50mm x 50mm uprights in 1.5mm steel, 14 J-hook heights, safety arms and rods, a pull-up frame, dip bars, a landmine and a full set of cable attachments. That is a lot of gym for the price, and for most people training at home it will do the job well.

The catch is the steel. A 50mm tube in 1.5mm wall is light-gauge compared with the 75mm, 11-gauge uprights on commercial racks, and the 1,200lb rating is the seller's static claim rather than a drop-tested number. If you are a home lifter squatting and pressing moderate weights, that matters less than you might think. If you are chasing big numbers, it matters a lot.

Who it is for

This rack makes sense if you want to squat, bench, do pull-ups and run cable work from one footprint, and your lifts sit in the range most home trainees actually reach. Think a 100kg to 150kg squat, a bench in the 80kg to 120kg range, and a lot of rows, pulldowns and accessories. The included pulley saves you the £150 or so you would otherwise spend on a bolt-on lat attachment, which is a big part of the value.

Skip it if you are a strong powerlifter, if your ceiling is low, or if you want a weight-stack cable station. A half rack takes less floor space and is easier to fit under a low garage roof, and our best power cage UK guide covers heavier-duty frames.

Check the SPORTSROYALS power rack price on Amazon£329.99

Build quality and the steel question

The frame uses 50mm x 50mm square tube with a 1.5mm wall, according to the listing, and two reinforcing tabs to brace it. That puts it squarely in the budget bracket alongside the WINNOW power cage, which uses the same 50mm, 1.5mm spec. It is thicker than the 1.2mm tubing on the cheapest racks, but it is nowhere near a commercial frame. The GYM MASTER GM3, for comparison, uses 11-gauge steel (about 3mm) and costs £799.99.

What does that mean in practice? Light-gauge tube flexes more under a heavy unrack, and the whole cage can rock if it isn't loaded or anchored. Owners of racks in this class tend to report that the frame feels steady for normal training once the bolts are tight and the storage pegs carry a few plates, with wobble showing up mostly during kipping pull-ups or when the rack sits on an uneven floor.

Then there's the 1,200lb (about 544kg) capacity. Nobody home-training needs that, and you should read it as a static load figure from the seller. It doesn't tell you how the J-hooks or safety arms cope with a loaded bar dropped from lockout. Keep your training weights well below that number and use the safeties for what they're for: catching a failed rep at the bottom, not as a dumping platform.

The weight discrepancy

The listing says two things. One feature bullet states the rack weighs 200lb, which is about 91kg. The item dimensions data on the same Amazon page gives 149.9lb, which is about 68kg. We can't tell you which is right, so we'd plan around the lower one. At 68kg this is a light cage for something with a pulley tower bolted on, which is another reason to keep plates on the storage posts and to think about floor anchoring if your floor allows it.

Size and ceiling height

At roughly 156cm long, 142cm wide and 210cm tall, it needs a decent chunk of room, and more once you account for the bar sticking out either side and space to load plates. Plan on a clear area of about 2.2m x 2m.

Height is the one most people get wrong. A 210cm frame fits under a typical UK ceiling of around 240cm, but pull-ups need space for your head above the bar. Below roughly 235cm, you'll be doing pull-ups with your neck bent or not at all. Garages with exposed joists and loft conversions are where this goes wrong, so measure to the lowest point above where the rack will stand.

The pulley system and lat pulldown

This is why most people look at this rack. It has an upper and lower pulley with bearing pulleys and an electroplated loading post, and the cable is rated to 500lb (about 227kg). Plates go on a loading pin rather than a selectorised stack.

That setup covers the big cable movements: wide and close lat pulldowns, seated rows from the low pulley, triceps pushdowns, face pulls and curls. A 2025 EMG study of seven lat pulldown variations found grip type and width made no significant difference to latissimus dorsi activation in trained men (Electromyographic analysis of lat pulldown grip variations), so the single lat bar plus the cable bar and handles is plenty. You don't need a drawer full of attachments to train your back properly.

The trade-offs of plate loading are familiar. Changing weight means sliding plates on and off, the movement is a little less smooth than a guided stack, and any plates on the pulley aren't on your barbell. If you superset squats with pulldowns, you'll need enough plates for both. Want more cable options than one high and one low pulley? Our rack attachments guide covers what bolts onto a rack like this.

See today's SPORTSROYALS power rack price

Accessories in the box

The listing includes a lat pulldown bar, cable bar, two handles, two J-hooks, two safety frames, two safety rods, a wide and narrow pull-up frame, two dip bars, a 360 degree landmine, a foot board, six band pegs and six barbell clamps (for 25mm and 50mm bars). Storage covers one barbell, six plate posts and six handle hooks.

That's a genuinely complete kit. The landmine alone opens up presses, rows and rotational work, and the band pegs let you add bands to squats and bench. Rubber pads on the safety frame and rods help protect the bar and the frame when you set a rep down.

You'll still need a barbell, plates and a bench, none of which are included.

How it compares

All prices below are what we last recorded in our own reviews.

• WINNOW power cage, around £331. Near-identical recipe: 50mm, 1.5mm steel, plate-loaded high and low pulley, landmine and dips. WINNOW gives 10 J-hook levels against 14 here and stands about 206cm tall, so it's a touch friendlier to low ceilings. Choosing between them comes down to price on the day and which height you can fit.
• SPORTNOW power cage with cable pulley, around £350. A similar budget cage with an adjustable cable system and support for both standard and Olympic plates. A reasonable alternative if it's on offer.
• GYM MASTER GM3, around £800. A different class: 11-gauge bolt-down steel, a dual cable system rated to 180kg and a bench in the box. If you lift heavy and have the budget, that's where the money goes.

For a bigger roundup, see the home gym hub.

Assembly and ownership

It ships in two boxes to cut the risk of transit damage, and Sportsroyals recommends two to three people for the build, with a printed manual and installation videos. The boxes are heavy, so lift them as a pair and keep the load close to your body (HSE manual handling guidance). The frame goes together fairly quickly; the cable routing is where you'll lose time. Check every bolt again after the first two or three weeks of training, as racks of this type tend to settle.

Cover is one year on the frame and accessories. That's short next to the multi-year frame warranties some UK strength brands offer, and for a small brand the realistic risk is replacement cables and pulleys rather than a failed frame. Generic cable ends and pulleys fit most budget racks, but it's worth knowing before you buy.

Lastly, the training case. The NHS recommends muscle-strengthening work on at least two days a week covering all the major muscle groups (NHS physical activity guidelines). A cage with a pulley lets you do exactly that at home, from squats and presses to rows and pulldowns, without a gym membership.

Recommended reads

1. WINNOW power cage review
2. GYM MASTER GM3 power rack review
3. Rack attachments: what's worth adding
4. Half rack vs power cage
5. The best power cage in the UK