By Paul Kendrick, Cardio & Endurance Editor · Updated 30 September 2026
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The Scorpion is the small, cheap Strongology air bike, and that's roughly the whole pitch. It costs around £319.99 at the time of writing (30 September 2026), weighs 26.2kg, and fits in a footprint of 111cm by 59cm. You get a 16 inch fan in a cage, moving handles, and an LCD that counts time, distance, calories and speed. You don't get a big fan, a heavy frame or a high weight limit, and those three omissions shape almost everything about who should buy it.
We think it earns its place as a budget entry point. It won't satisfy a strong, heavy rider, and it isn't trying to.
How we review
This review is based on research rather than hands-on testing. We worked from Strongology's Amazon UK listing and specifications, compared the Scorpion against its bigger sibling the Titanium and other air bikes we've covered, and read the published research on short interval training. We haven't ridden this unit, so we report specs as the manufacturer states them and say plainly where information is missing. At the time of checking, the listing was sold by a third-party seller and showed only a handful left in stock.
Buy the Scorpion if you want to find out whether fan bike intervals suit you without spending £500, and you're comfortably under the 110kg limit. It also suits a spare bedroom or a garage corner where a 134cm long, 50kg commercial-style bike would be a nuisance. At 26.2kg with transport wheels, you can roll it out for a 12 minute session and roll it back.
Skip it if you weigh close to 110kg, if you're a powerful rider who already knows air bikes, or if you want heart rate and programmes on the console. Our best air bike UK guide has picks for each of those.
Check the Strongology Scorpion price on AmazonFan size decides how hard an air bike can get. Resistance rises with fan speed, and a bigger fan moves more air per revolution, so it loads you up faster. On a 16 inch fan, a strong rider has to spin harder to hit the same resistance they'd reach easily on a 24 inch fan, and at the very top end they may find the bike runs out of bite before they run out of legs. The Assault AirBike Classic uses a 25 inch steel fan for exactly this reason.
That doesn't make the Scorpion useless. For a beginner, a lighter rider, or anyone doing 20 second efforts at their own maximum, a 16 inch fan still pushes back hard enough to leave you breathless. You simply lose headroom, and the stronger you get, the more you'll notice it.
Strongology drives the fan with a chain combined with a V-belt, and says this is smoother and quieter than chain-only designs. That's plausible; belts dampen the clatter that makes older chain bikes grating. The Titanium goes further with a dual belt system and no chain at all. So the Scorpion sits in the middle on drive noise, and you should still expect the fan itself to roar during sprints because moving air is the loud part of every air bike.
The crank is 140mm with 2 sealed cartridge bearings. For comparison, the Titanium uses a 170mm crank and 10 sealed bearings. We don't have long-term durability data on either, but fewer bearings in a cheaper machine is a fairly clear indication of where Strongology saved money.
| Resistance | Air (fan), scales with effort |
|---|---|
| Fan | 16 in, caged |
| Drive | Dual chain and V-belt |
| Crank | 140 mm, 2 sealed cartridge bearings |
| Console | LCD: time, distance, calories, speed, alarm/alert |
| Heart rate / programmes | None listed |
| Seat | Padded, adjustable hybrid seat |
| Frame | Heavy-duty steel, powder coated |
| Machine weight | 26.2 kg |
| Dimensions (L x W x H) | 111 x 59 x 121 cm |
| Maximum user weight | 110 kg |
| Extras | Transport wheels, rubber feet |
Here's our biggest reservation. Air bike sprints aren't polite: you drive the handles, pull back hard, and often come half out of the saddle. A heavier frame soaks that up, which is why the 50kg Titanium barely moves under hard efforts. At 26.2kg, the Scorpion is roughly half that, and you should expect it to feel lighter underfoot. The rubber feet help, and a firm, level floor with a mat underneath will help more.
The 110kg maximum user weight follows the same logic. It's the lowest of any bike in our air bike guide, and it rules out plenty of adults before fitness even comes into it. If you're near the limit, don't treat 110kg as a target; buy something rated well above your weight so the frame isn't working at the edge of its rating every session.
On the plus side, the powder-coated steel frame should resist sweat and garage damp better than bare paint, and the padded hybrid seat adjusts to fit different riders. Strongology doesn't publish the exact seat adjustment range, so if you're very short or very tall, check the listing's questions section before ordering.
Basic. The LCD shows time, distance, calories and speed, plus an alarm or alert function Strongology describes as a way to monitor progress. The listing mentions no heart rate receiver, no watts, no RPM readout, no preset programmes and no Bluetooth.
For most home air bike work, that's less of a problem than it sounds. The classic sessions are timed intervals, and a phone timer or watch handles those fine. Calories on a basic console are an estimate, not a measurement, so use the number to compare your own sessions rather than to count food. If you want heart rate, wear a chest strap or watch and ignore the console for that job.
What you do lose is watts, which is the most useful number on better air bikes because it lets you pace repeat sprints precisely. The Titanium shows watts; the Scorpion doesn't.
Short, hard intervals. That's what air bikes do best, and the research on cycle-based sprint work is encouraging for anyone short on time. In a 12 week trial, sedentary men who did three 20 second all-out cycle sprints per session, inside a 10 minute workout, improved peak oxygen uptake by 19%, the same gain as a group cycling steadily for 45 minutes (Gillen et al., PLoS One 2016). The trial was small (9 people did the sprints), so treat it as encouraging rather than definitive. A larger meta-analysis of 37 interval training studies found an average VO2max rise of about 0.5 litres per minute over 6 to 13 weeks (Bacon et al., PLoS One 2013).
A 16 inch fan can deliver that kind of all-out effort for most beginners. Try 8 rounds of 20 seconds hard and 40 seconds easy after a 5 minute warm-up, twice a week, and you're into the NHS guideline of 75 minutes of vigorous activity once you add a couple of brisk walks or other workouts. Our air bike workout guide and exercise bike HIIT workout have more sessions to follow.
Long, easy rides are a different story. Fan bikes are noisy and the seats aren't built for 45 minute spins. If steady cardio is what you want, a magnetic bike will serve you better; browse the exercise bikes section.
Strongology's two air bikes differ more than the price gap suggests. The Strongology Titanium costs around £500 and brings a 24 inch fan, 15 manual magnetic resistance levels on top of the air resistance, a 5kg magnetic flywheel, a 50kg frame, a 135kg user limit, and a console showing watts, RPM and pulse. The Scorpion has none of those upgrades. What it does have is a £180 or so saving, half the weight and a shorter footprint.
For someone under 90kg testing whether they'll stick with air bike training, we'd start with the Scorpion. For anyone heavier, stronger, or already sure they'll be doing this three times a week for years, the Titanium is the better buy, and the Assault AirBike Classic and Schwinn Airdyne AD8 remain the benchmarks if you can find stock.
See today's Strongology Scorpion priceYes. It uses a fan for resistance, so the harder you pedal and push the handles, the harder it pushes back, and there's no dial to set. The fan is 16 inches across, which is noticeably smaller than the 24 inch fan on the Strongology Titanium and the bigger fans on commercial bikes, so the resistance tops out lower for strong riders.
Strongology lists 110kg. That's low for an air bike, where you're often standing, yanking the handles and rocking the frame during sprints. If you're close to 110kg, or someone else in the house is heavier, look at the Titanium (135kg) instead.
It measures 111cm long, 59cm wide and 121cm tall, and weighs 26.2kg. It has transport wheels on the front, so one person can tip it and roll it into a corner between sessions. Leave room in front of the fan for airflow.
Not according to the listing. The LCD shows time, distance, calories and speed, plus an alarm or alert function. There's no mention of a heart rate receiver, watts, preset programmes or app connectivity, so wear a watch or chest strap if you want heart rate data.
Quieter than a chain-only air bike, according to Strongology, because it combines a chain with a V-belt. It's still a fan bike, though, and moving air makes noise. Expect a loud whoosh on hard intervals; no air bike is flat-friendly at full effort.
The Titanium costs around £180 more and gets you a 24 inch fan, 15 magnetic resistance levels, a 50kg frame, a 135kg user limit and a console with watts and pulse. If you're heavy, strong or planning to train hard for years, that's worth paying. If you want to try air bike training in a small room on a tight budget, the Scorpion is the cheaper way in.
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