BYKlyn Studios — Local services in New York

Overall Byklyn is a beautifully designed, welcoming studio with a wide diversity of attendees. Highly recommended!

Comparison to SoulCycle Brooklyn:

Facilities: Byklyn is beautiful. Brownstone walls with ivy all over them, a huge 20x20 open window bringing tons of fresh air, and plenty of space between the bikes.... SoulCycle is a dark candlelit room with no fresh air and bikes right up against each other.

Class: both are challenging. SoulCycle is a bit more fast paced, uses weights in every class, and a lot more choreography, while Byklyn has less choreography and no weights in most classes.

Music: Byklyn is more attuned to a wider diversity of ages. I'm in my 40s and recognized most songs from 70s 80s 90s and 2000s. I rarely know most of the songs at SoulCycle.

Attendees: SoulCycle attracts a younger crowd, many of whom are athletes or personal trainers. It's a dark room to be welcoming but I found it intimidating at first. Byklyn has a much wider diversity of ages and body types.

Teachers: SoulCycle trainers tend to be extremely impressive athletes who are on the bike with you and attempt to inspire. Byklyn trainers are good but more relatable.

Bikes: SoulCycle bikes are traditional and high quality with easy spin and weights on the back. Byklyn bikes have a 3 gear system which is useful for switching, as well as electric monitors to show you your average performance.

Vibe: SoulCycle is more of a performance style class for people aiming to be at the top of their game, the most fit you've ever been. They emphasize community and connection between riders, which is nice, but it doesn't have much of a family vibe. Byklyn is more like a family vibe. The owner Amy knows most attendees and the vibe is more at home.

Showers: SoulCycle has many well maintained and very high quality showers. Byklyn has one.

Overall Byklyn is a beautifully designed, welcoming studio with a wide diversity of attendees. Highly...

I have been taking indoor cycling classes for over 12 years now, and even taught Spinning for a number of years. I've done FlyWheel, Swerve, Peloton, SoulCycle, Monster Cycle, etc. in those years as well, and while those other places have their benefits in tapping into people's competitive nature or desire for a community (or cult?), there's something refreshingly pure about BYKlyn - at least in the handful of classes I have taken there over the past few months.

The instructors are all genuine, real people who design their classes to give you maximum sweat without gimmicks or nonsense choreography. I find myself working harder and with more resistance at BYKlyn than I ever did at SoulCycle. Also HUGELY appreciated is that they teach at SAFE speeds and encourage resistance, which isn't the case at a lot of other studios where you have to pedal over 120 bpm at low resistance (i.e. injuries waiting to happen).

They build a community feeling with riders in the simple common denominator that everyone there is looking for a fun workout that can also improve your fitness level.

I tend to prefer the classes without arms/weight, because I want as much time as possible to work on pushing my aerobic capacity, and thankfully the majority of BYKlyn's classes are no-arms/weights classes.

They are also far more affordable to buy class packages and memberships than pretty much anywhere else, so that's a huge plus!

The only thing I would wish for is showers, which they don't have so it's not realistic for me to take morning classes before work. But I guess they just don't have the space for that. But everything else that I love about this studio...

The classes and instructors are great but ultimately I decided to quit going here because their automatic system kept taking money from me, even after my account was closed. There were two significant errors:

I had an unlimited membership (almost $300 with tax) and I was getting charged like crazy for late cancel fees. I was told if I spoke to someone, I could get the fees removed and so I did in person, reached out at least three times via email … and it still wasn’t refunded. Eventually I cced everyone at the company that I knew of on a firm email explaining the situation and it was refunded. However, only after I recieved a lecturing email on how I asked for help in the wrong ways.

Today I found out that they took another $300 out of my account 5 days after my account was supposed to be paused, and one day after I told them to cancel my account indefinitely. I was absolutely shocked by this outrageous error and I emailed them, practically begging for my money back so that I can honor my monthly budget, especially in the midst of the holidays. I called the front desk to try to get answers sooner and while the person on the other end was bubbly and apologetic, they were totally cavalier about the fact that the company had literally stolen $300 out of my account. How often does this happen?! Finally, one of the leadership refunded the money - which will take a couple business days of course - but sent a cold vibe email without an apology and/or some sort of coupon for the future.

… if you have the patience and the financial buffer to WATCH your account and hunt down refunds, then this place is a viable...