Dead Air Baffle Strike Warranty | Real Customer Experience

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Over the past few years, I’ve been purchasing suppressors and I have suppressors that cover almost every caliber that I shoot consistently. At this point, I almost exclusively shoot suppressed and I guess if you only shoot suppressed, the day will come when you will inevitably damage a suppressor. That day has come for me.

On one of my outings to the range, I went to zero in my Radian Weapons Model 1 with some new to me, Gorilla Ammunition Silverback, 300 Blackout, 205gr self-defense rounds. Everything went great. The gun ran the ammo perfectly and my optic zeroed as it should. Then when I got home and it was time to put the gun away, as I moved the gun, I could hear some small particles bouncing around. When I pinpointed the noise to being inside the suppressor, I just had that “Oh Sh*t” moment because there could only be one reason for this. So, I proceeded to dismount the suppressor and as I tipped it upside down, out poured a bunch of bullet shrapnel. Yup, it was a baffle strike. If you’re unfamiliar with this, this essentially means that somewhere between the suppressor and the barrel, things weren’t aligned properly and as a bullet was fired, it essentially hit the internals of the suppressor, the baffles, and tore things apart.

This can happen because of a myriad of reasons, I haven’t determined why it happened in my situation but it is what it is. Of course, the first thing that I did was Googled “Dead Air Baffle Strike Warranty” and one of the first hits was someone from Reddit asking the same question because they also had a Dead Sair suppressor baffle strike. Well, luckily someone working from Dead Air responded to this Reddit post and said that it was covered.

So, I was feeling better and found my way over to Dead Air’s dedicated warranty claim form. This form is pretty straightforward. You fill out your contact information, your product information, what kind of issue you’re having, gun and ammo information, and upload some requested documents. Again, pretty straightforward. However, when I tried to submit my warranty form, the website gave me an error saying “You don’t have permission to access this resource.” I have no idea what that means but at that point, I tried to contact Dead Air’s customer service.

Unfortunately, the phone number that they listed on their website for the warranty department was disconnected and the general phone number just leads to a full voicemail box so that didn’t help. I filled out the website’s contact form but didn’t get a response so after a few days I emailed info@deadairsilencers.com which is what I would suggest you do if you need to get ahold of Dead Air because that’s the only means they seem to answer by.

Now, once I got ahold of customer service, the struggles weren’t over yet because the website error wasn’t just on my computer, but they had the same issues when trying to submit a warranty claim. It would seem like they’re using the same portal. So we went back and forth, with customer service sending the error to higher-ups and the IT team in an attempt to fix this. On my end, I was getting frustrated because I didn’t understand why Dead Air customer service just couldn’t manually open up a claim for me. That would be the logical approach. But I kept getting non-answers about how they’re trying to sort things out with the website issues. Well, after over 2 weeks of back and forth, of me saying to just open a manual claim, they finally did that and sent me a shipping label with an estimate of 50-60 days for repairs after arrival. So, I shipped the Nomad L off that same day with the requested documentation. Now that the suppressor was in Dead Air’s hands, all I could do was wait.

To me, Dead Air customer service kind of sucks. They didn’t try and keep in contact to let me know what was going on. It was a lot of me, actively, checking on the situation. Then when the 60-day mark came around and I didn’t hear anything from Dead Air, I had to contact them for an update. The reply that I got was that the suppressor was in the repair process but they had to wait for parts that are expected to come any day, but they don’t have an ETA for me. Then another month went by and still no communication so I had to reach out again. A week went by with no answers, so I reached out again. Two weeks went by with no answer, so I reached out again. A week after that so about 3 weeks after sending them an email and about 2 months since they told me any day now, I finally got an answer. But the answer was that it’ll take another 3-4 weeks for completion. Well, alright. Nothing I can do but wait again.

Knowing what I know about Dead Air’s customer service I made sure to ask what the return shipment process was and basically, it’s signature required by the recipient. This is good since I wouldn’t want a suppressor just sitting outside to be possibly stolen. Then just to be safe, I asked what the return address they had on file was and they gave me something completely different from what I gave them originally. So again, it was a good thing that I asked considering my experience with Dead Air customer service but not a good indication of my expectations.

Flash forward exactly 2 weeks since my last email with Dead Air, my doorbell went off and it was a signature-required package for something I was not expecting. I opened the box and there was my suppressor, again, completely unexpected. To me, you’d think that if you’re sending stuff to someone, it would be common sense to give them a heads-up. Especially, considering that you’re sending an NFA item that’s heavily regulated and has to be signed for. But luckily I was working from home that day so I was able to receive the package.

In summary, I was quoted 50-60 days for repair but it actually took 125 days or a bit over 4 months. Essentially, double the estimate.

So, I inspected the suppressor and it looked great. It actually looked better than before because it’s been completely recoated. Even when brand new, this suppressor’s coating wasn’t perfect because this one was on display in a case at my FFL so it had minor imperfections. At this point, it seemed like we were good to go. I was ready to go out and shoot again. That is until I looked at the suppressor mount which looked oddly small. That is because the suppressor was sent back to me with the standard 5/8-24 fixed mount. That’s not what I sent with the suppressor to Dead Air. I personally use the Dead Air Xeno mounting system for almost all of my suppressors so the suppressor that I sent them had the appropriate Xeno Mount attached to it so they could examine the setup that I used when the damage occurred. Well, this is now another major annoyance because I can’t attach my suppressor to anything because it doesn’t have the right mount. I’d only be able to use it if I take the Xeno brake off of whatever gun I want to mount this suppressor to then put it back on after. So it’s just a huge pain in the ass for me. Needless to say, this is just another example of Dead Air customer service to me. One step forward and two steps backward. It’s a constant cycle of back-and-forth emails that end up taking weeks to resolve because they don’t pick up the damn phone and their voicemail box is full.

In this situation though, I sent them an email about the wrong mount, and about 30 minutes later, I got an email saying that an order for a new mount was made for me. That’s great! I was getting a new mount for free but guess what? They’re shipping it to the wrong address. So again, one step forward and two steps backward. I have to contact them again to change the shipping address. They corrected the shipping address and the Xeno mount shipped. A couple of days later, I checked and tracking listed the mount as delivered but guess what? It was not delivered to me. I personally know my delivery guy and he assured me that I didn’t get a package. So, it’s very likely that the delivery address was wrong. Again, it’s back to contacting Dead Air about this. It’s been 2 weeks and they’re telling me a new one will be sent out but again, no ETA. This is a pretty frustrating situation but it is what it is. All I can do is wait and hope for the best.

I should mention that this is not the first time that I’ve had to deal with Dead Air customer service and the warranty department. The first time was when I originally bought the Nomad L. From the factory, the fixed mount that this suppressor came with had a defective coating. It wasn’t sticking right and I could literally rub the black coating off of it with my finger. I contacted Dead Air about this, they were very helpful and offered to send me a new mount. I was happy with this but then in typically Dead Air fashion, a lot of time went by with no word on shipment. I contacted them about this and it turns out that the mount was out of stock so they couldn’t ship it. At the time, I didn’t care because my suppressor was waiting in NFA jail. But then a lot more time went by, like months. So I checked the Dead Air website and the mount was actually in stock. I told Dead Air about this but it turns out, at least at the time, the web store’s inventory and warranty department’s inventory are completely independent from each other. The warranty department couldn’t send me a new mount even though it was in stock on the web store. This is of course inconvenient for the customer but it is what it is. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Then one day the mount just showed up. It took about 7 or 8 months for them to just send me a fixed mount for my suppressor. At the time, I wasn’t too upset because again, my suppressor was still in NFA jail. But taking 7 months just to send a part is pretty much as bad as waiting for an NFA item to clear Form 4. Just ridiculous.

Another occasion when I had to deal with Dead Air customer service was after placing an order on their website. For this purchase, I used my Capital One credit card which allows me to create a “virtual card” that’s linked to a real card that I own. The virtual card is made specifically for a website and cannot be used anywhere else. Well, one day I got a notification from Capital One that the virtual card that was created for Dead Air was trying to be used 4 times somewhere else. Which, again, is not possible. I knew the limitations of the virtual card so there’s no reason for me to try and use that card anywhere else but the person who stole that card number did not. It’s a good thing that Capital One is on top of its game and blocked the transactions with no loss to me. It was just extremely inconvenient because when this happens, Capital One considers the whole account as being compromised so they not only shut the virtual card down, but any real physical card associated with it. This means that I had to change all my billing info wherever I use my Capital One account. I contacted Dead Air about this and it was just a, thanks for telling us but there’s nothing we can do for you. We’ll deal with it on our end. No updates, no nothing.

At this point, it’s been about 3 weeks since I contacted Dead Air about the missing Xeno adapter and I’m back to emailing them every day about the situation with no response. I wish I could say that I’m frustrated but I’m more jaded because this is so typical of Dead Air. The lack of communication and the super slow response in any manner is just what I’ve come to expect from them. Maybe I’ll check back with you on this in about 6 months when I’ll eventually get the adapter. I personally think that Dead Air’s customer service is pretty shit and I’m kind of bummed that I invested so much money into their suppressors and accessories because every time something comes up, it takes months to get any resolution. But, that’s just my personal experience. Hopefully, it’s just me and you guys get good and fast customer care.

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How to Propagate Lemongrass from Store-Bought Stalks

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What’s going on guys? It’s Hai.

I’ve been wanting to grow some lemongrass for use as a mosquito repellant but when looking to buy some, I couldn’t find any locally and when trying to order, it was like $30 a plant so way too much for what I was wanting to spend. Then after some research, I came across a blog post detailing how you can propagate lemongrass from store-bought stalks. So, in this blog, I want to share with you my attempts at following the instructions from the blog and the results that I got. If you’re interested in reading the blog post for yourself, it’s right HERE.

First things first, we have to find some lemongrass stalks. This is easier to find at an Asian grocery store. I purchased mine from a local H Mart which came in bundles of 3 stalks. In this case, reasonably buy as much as possible. Some of the stalks won’t propagate so you just want to hedge the odds. But also remember that lemongrass grows quite quickly so you’ll be able to propagate more from just one successful plant and there are other forms that propagation for lemongrass that are much easier and almost foolproof once you just get one successful plant going. Personally, I purchased two bundles.

The blog post recommends that when purchasing the stalks, you want to look for stalks with as much of the bottoms intact as possible as the stalks with cut-off bottoms won’t propagate. I looked through a bunch of the bundles at my H Mart but most of the bottoms were pretty heavily trimmed. I kind of wanted to experiment with this and got bottoms with different lengths of cuts. To save you some time, I’m going to say that this doesn’t matter too much because I got successful propagation from 5 of these 6 stalks at the time of this video. So, having more bottom intact is probably better, but you can have success with more of it cut off. Again, I think hedging your odds by buying more stalks is going to be the best approach if you want more plants that propagate.

Next, we’re going to trim some of the stalks back to just a few inches from where they begin to split apart. This gets rid of some of the top dead foliage and I assume helps to allocate more energy for new root development. The blog recommends that you “Try to resist peeling the woody outer layers that form the stem, as new leaves will grow from within these layers.”

Next, we’re going to place the lemongrass stalks in some water. I filled a couple of vases and a mason jar with a few inches of water and just put the stalks in there.

From here, we place the container near a source of light and just wait it out. I started off by putting the plants near a window indoors but my wife got tired of looking at them pretty quickly so outside they went. I experimented by putting them in direct sunlight and in shade. I would say that they prefer to be in the shade because when in direct sunlight, the top of the leaves tends to burn. This didn’t kill the plants but I don’t think it helped them. It probably slowed the growth down but I can’t say for sure. Better to be safe and just let them grow in the shade.

While you wait, you want to change the water a couple of times a week or whenever it starts to look cloudy. I say this but I definitely forgot a few times and just let the plants sit there for like a week and sometimes longer. Again, I still had success.

Now, the blog mentions that within a week, you should see new leaves begin to grow from the top. I did not have any of this but this can definitely be due to me leaving my plants out in direct sunlight and the top of the leaves were just getting burnt.

However, my plants did show signs of new root growth pretty much after the first week. This was the case for 4 of my 6 stalks. Roots started to grow pretty quickly and consistently. However, at the time of this video, which is just a few days over 2 months since I started this process, one stalk has no signs of root growth and one stalk just started to show root growth this week. So just keep in mind that root growth can be completely sporadic. You may be discouraged and want to throw the plants away but it may just need some extra time. For reference, I purchased my stalks on May 14th and today is June 18th.

The blog recommends that you should “Wait until the roots are at least 3 inches long and the stalks have begun to divide (via offshoot stalks) before you plant them.” Honestly, I was a little impatient for this and planted my stalks pretty early. I think two of them were at about two inches and two of them were at less than an inch. What’s worse is I remember snapping one of the smaller roots off which isn’t good at all but hey, it’s working out. I would say that if you’re going to be impatient like me, after planting, you definitely want to keep the soil moist. This is going to help keep the stalks growing.

As for the actual act of planting, I wanted potted plants so I purchased some planters and some organic potting soil. If you’re eating the lemongrass that you’re growing, you’d probably want soil that’s clean in the sense that it doesn’t have a bunch of chemicals that shouldn’t be going in your body in it. I just filled the planter up with soil, placed the root a couple of inches down, and backfilled. After that, give the plat and soil a good soaking and that’s about it. Now, just water the plant, keep the soil moist, and we’re back to waiting to see if propagation is successful.

Again, I’m just over two months into this project and two of my plants are forming new leaves so I would say that this process was a success. I’m still keeping an eye out for the other two planted stalks but those were the ones with less than an inch of root growth when I planted them so things may take a bit longer. Then I have the one stalk that just started to grow roots so that won’t be planted for a while. Lastly, I have one stalk that hasn’t shown any signs of growth so this one may be a dud but I’ll still keep it in the water and we’ll see what happens.

I’m going to keep doing what I’ve already been doing and hopefully, in the future, I’ll come back with a video and show you an easier way to propagate from the mature plants that I’ve grown.

Before we end things, I want to note that I strayed a lot from the original blog referenced in this video. I did a lot of things haphazardly but hey, things worked out for me. I would definitely recommend that you read the blog and understand what the more conventional approach would look like. That approach will probably get you the best approach.

After almost exactly 3 months, the lemongrass stalk that I continued to keep in water finally sprouted new roots. So, if yours is taking a while to sprout roots and if possible, just keep the stalk in water and see what happens!

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Giant Lifting Olympic Color Bumper Plates

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What’s going on guys? It’s Hai.

I recently sold off a bunch of stuff from my home gym, including all my iron Olympic plates. For these plates, I went with cheap irons that I found on OfferUp. Well, I quickly regretted that decision because those plates were just complete crap. But luckily, I was able to sell all the plates and to replace them this time around, I knew it was time to upgrade.

Now, I personally have always wanted bumper plates. I don’t do any Olympic lifts and the most plate dropping that I do is from barbell rows and deadlifts so it’s not like I need bumper plates. However, I just personally love the look and feel of them. What’s always turned me away from buying them was the price because they are typically much more expensive. Well, after some research, I came across Giant Lifting which happens to be a local fitness equipment manufacturer. Giant offers bumper plates and after some comparisons, it turns out that Giant offered some of the cheapest bumper plates for me. Again, they are local and I could just drive to their storefront for a free pickup. Potentially saving hundreds of dollars on shipping costs.

Giant offers a few different types of plates but in terms of bumpers, they offer crumb bumpers and virgin rubber bumpers. I personally was going to buy their contrast bumpers but the day that I went to the Giant warehouse, they released a brand new set of colored virgin rubber bumpers. From my understanding, these colored bumpers are going to offer nearly identical performance to the Giant Contrast Bumper Plates. Both are the same in dimensions, both have a weight tolerance of +/- 3% of said weight, and both are facility tested with 10,000 drops at 8ft.

All that being said, when I saw the colored plates, I just had to buy them because colored bumpers are my favorite form of bumpers. Again, it’s not like the colored bumpers are better. They just offer easier identification. But to me, colored bumpers just really add a pop of perceived quality to any gym and it’s what I’ve always wanted.

Now, I want to make it clear that I just got these bumpers and have only played around with them for a bit. I haven’t done any serious lifting with them so I can’t necessarily speak on quality or use life expectancy. I can only tell you that they look and feel really good in the hand. These are some badass plates for the price.

For me personally, a concern that I have with bumper plates, in general, is that they are typically thicker than iron plates. This means that you will be able to load fewer plates onto a bar. But a nice thing about these colored bumper plates is that they’re thinner than some other bumper plates in the market. We tested the plates out in the showroom and from what I saw, you can comfortably fit 5 of these colored 45lbs bumper plates on a bar and still fit a flip collar clamp. So, if you are lifting up to around 500 lbs and maybe some small change, these bumper plates are good to go.

Something to note is that with these colored bumpers, the 10 and 15-lb plates are 5mm smaller in diameter than the 25, 35, and 45-lb plates. This is because, typically, when all bumper weight plates are made to have the same diameter, as you load up the bar, as things get heavy, and as you start dropping the plates, because the 10 and 15-lb plates are thinner, they’re going to absorb a lot of the impact force. With these 10 and 15-lb plates being slightly smaller, they absorb less impact force and should last longer.

And that’s about it for now. I’ll be using these plates every time that I lift from now on so I’ll be able to get a lot of time in with them pretty quick. The only minor complaint that I have is that Giant currently doesn’t have a matching set of change plates so I had to purchase their Grip-X Change Plates which are essentially smaller versions of their Contrast Bumper Plates. These plates don’t aesthetically match the colored plates but that’s purely a complaint on aesthetics, not function. Hopefully, there will be some matching change plates in the future but other than that, I’m pretty happy with this purchase. The plates look great and I’m already thinking of picking up more if they perform as they should along with a few other things because Giant seems to be putting out some good quality equipment for an affordable price.

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EAST OAK Smokeless Pan Stove Fire Pit 29"

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What’s going on guys? It’s Hai.

It’s still very rainy, wet, and cold here in Washington but I’m currently making plans for a fire pit area on the property. After some research, I’ve decided on the East Oak Pan Stove Fire Pit. This particular one is the Chisel Steel 29” version but there is also a 17” and 21” version. All three sizes are also available in a black finish.

If you don’t hang out outside a lot, this may not be what you’d think a fire pit would look like. You’re probably more familiar with the concrete circle or some other options. But in recent years, these newer stainless steel-style fire pits have really taken off and that’s largely because many will claim to be smokeless.

This is achieved by utilizing a double-walled design with vent holes toward the top of the inner wall. As you burn wood or whatever else, that first burn will cause some smoke to rise but some of it will travel through the gaps between the walls and escape out the small holes. This escaping smoke will get burned again, essentially eliminating it.

However, a key factor in all this is going to be how hot or big the fire is. The fire has to be pretty strong to get that second burn going. A nice thing about the East Oak design is that it features a bunch of oxygen intakes around the entire base and directly under the fire pit. All these intakes should really help to oxygenate the fire and help it get hot enough for that second burn.

That’s a pretty common design for these smokeless fire pits but an annoyance to me is that this design generally does not produce a lot of heat outwards but instead projects it upwards. This means that if you’re standing up and are close to the fire pit, then your upper body will be warm but your lower legs and feet won’t get much. So if you’re sitting down, you’re really only enjoying the ambiance of the fire, not so much the warmth. Some manufacturers have created workarounds for this like Solo Stove and their heat deflector shields but I personally think this is stupid. The heat deflector adds extra bulk, is unsightly, and costs an additional couple hundred bucks on top of an already expensive fire pit.

But times have changed and there are manufacturers claiming to make smokeless fire pits that adequately radiate heat outwards without any add-ons, one of them being East Oak. I don’t particularly understand the science behind it but this is apparently accomplished because the East Oak design features a wider circular base that gets smaller towards the top and the opening turns into a more square shape. Again, I don’t really understand how that works but it supposedly does and I’ll test that out a bit later.

In terms of assembly, this fire pit is pretty much ready to go. You have the main fire pit body, the ashtray that sits inside the fire pit, and the flame ring that sits on top. There really isn’t much to putting this fire pit together.

At this point, I’ve had a chance to use the fire pit and burn wood in it and I want to talk about how that went.

I burned a bundle of wood that I purchased from a local Safeway. It’s been sitting outside under the patio for the last couple of months and was dry. I burned the whole bundle at once just to make things faster. My 29” fire pit not only has a large opening, but it’s also deep. Allowing for a lot of wood to be burned at once. My bundle looked like nothing in there.

In terms of being smokeless, it certainly isn’t smokeless throughout the entire experience. When the fire first starts, there will still be smoke that’s blowing around and that’s not something exclusive to the East Oak but pretty much any fire pit. However, once the wood really started to burn, I did notice that there really was no trace of the smoke. This is the case even though I never witnessed any secondary burn. Maybe I didn’t have enough wood burning? I can’t really say so this will require some more testing.

In terms of East Oak advertising that this fire pit is able to radiate heat sideways, this is a hit or miss depending on how you want to look at it. I personally feel that there was no heat radiating directly to the sides of the fire pit. I can put my hands right up to the sides and basically feel no difference. The metal itself gets quite hot if you try to touch it but it weirdly does not put off any noticeable heat. The chairs that you see in the video above are less than 2 feet away from the fire pit and I was originally worried that they were too close and would get damaged by the heat but that is absolutely not a concern anymore. The chairs stayed chilled the entire time from ambient temperature, never even getting warm. However, if I were to sit at the edge of a chair and my body pokes above the top of the fire pit, then I’d feel A LOT of heat. Being about 2 feet away, the heat is almost unbearable. I would say that standing up and stepping back to 4-5 feet away, I can still feel the warmth on my torso, arms, and head but, again, nothing on my legs. I kind of want to give East Oak the benefit of the doubt and say that this fire pit may radiate more heat if more wood was burned at once, but I feel that I did put in a decent amount. If I had to burn two or three of those bundles at once just to get some lateral heat then this isn’t exactly the most efficient way of keeping warm. Take all that information as you will.

At the end of the day, how do I feel about this East Oak fire pit? As a mostly smokeless fire pit, it gets a pass because it does the job even when the secondary burn didn’t kick in and who knows? When it does things may be even better. As a fire pit that will keep you warm, well that depends on if you want to sit or stand all night. I personally bought this fire pit because it was advertised as being able to radiate heat outwards and in this case, I would say that the East Oak is a total failure. I do not recommend it if you are buying this fire pit to keep yourself warm while sitting down. It just won’t cut it. To me, the question of buying the East Oak all comes down to price. I personally bought it on sale for about $200 and that price for a 29” smokeless fire pit is crazy value. However, when not on sale this fire pit regularly sits around $400-$500. For that price, I would personally not buy this fire pit and just go with a Solo Stove Yukon which is in the same price range but the Solo Stove is better supported in the sense that more companies make accessories for it and you can do more with it.

And that’s going to be it. I’m going to continue and use my East Oak fire pit. I kind of know what it’s capable of now and what I want to use it for so I’m not too disappointed in my purchase.

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Mikolo M4 Smith Machine

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What’s going on guys? It’s Hai.

Today we’re in my home gym because I’m excited to show you the newest addition to my setup, the Mikolo M4 Smith Machine.

Now, when I was younger and much more of a gym bro, I wholeheartedly believed that you can get everything you needed to be done, in terms of fitness, in a power rack. Squat, bench, and deadlift. That’s all that I needed and even though that got me some major gains, now that I’m older, that approach just isn’t doing it for me anymore. I get bored.

So, I’ve been in the market for some sort of cable machine so that I can keep myself more stimulated with accessory lifts, to go along with the big 3 lifts that I still do. In comes the Mikolo M4 plated loaded Smith Machine with cable attachments.

Full disclosure, Mikolo Fitness contacted me and offered to send this unit out for review. I accepted and got this machine for free but that does not affect my opinions or the review of this product. Mikolo does not get to see this review prior to release and all thoughts are my own.

This entire machine came to me in 4 large boxes at about 100 lbs each. Shipping took about four days which is not too bad considering how much material had to be moved around. However, I do think that shipping can be improved because essentially every part that arrived had some sort of scratch or cosmetic damage. I personally feel that because this is gym equipment, it’s going to get damaged through use pretty quickly so I don’t really care about the scratches, but something that I do want to note is that pretty much every part that arrived has some form of rust on it. Everything that’s not power coated is rusting from the inside out and I’m assuming that this is because of the storage location where these machines are kept prior to shipment. Maybe it’s too humid. Who knows but that’s not a good look. Rust is not something I do not want to see on a high-dollar purchase and definitely not something possibly holding hundreds of pounds.

Upon first unboxing, the task of assembly is going to look pretty daunting but hey, if I can put this thing together, I’m sure you can too. The instruction manual is pretty straightforward and I would say largely easy to follow. I say largely because some of the images can get pretty busy with all the parts and it can take some time to decipher exactly which part is needed. It also doesn’t help that I had some minor hardware was missing from where they’re supposed to be but luckily there was a bag of loose spare parts that had what I needed.

With something like this, the more hands you got helping, the faster and easier it’s going to be. I feel that I could’ve gotten this entire machine assembled by myself but it definitely would’ve taken a lot more time. For reference, my brother stopped by to help and he was with me for only about an hour and a half and we got essentially 90% of the job done. When he left I was on the last two pages of the instructions and it was really just minor, simple things. I think the most time-consuming part of all of this was just looking for the part that was needed because they were just scattered throughout the boxes. The parts that needed to be assembled together were often in different boxes and often hidden under other parts. Some parts were also mislabeled. So again, looking for everything just wasted a lot of time. Something else that was a bit weird was the order of assembly. There were a few moments where we would assemble something, move forward a few steps, then all of a sudden go back to continue something we already left. All of these things made the entire assembly process a bit annoying but still very manageable.

Now, if you’re getting this machine around the same time as I do, you may notice the item title mentioning that this is the 2023 version. Again, I have the Mikolo M4. M4 stands for multi-function Smith Machine, 4th generation and I think that name is pretty fitting because this machine is absolutely multi-function. First and foremost, this is a Smith Machine. It has an Olympic-sized bar that rides on two rails. Now, I’m going to straight up say that I personally, don’t use a Smith Machine. I don’t think I’ve used one since middle school and that’s because it just didn’t fit into my free weight style of working out. Of course, you can essentially do any free-weight style barbell exercises with a Smith Machine but the two are not the same. With a Smith Machine, it’s like you’re lifting on the moon because the bar’s weight and its speed of movement are reduced quite a bit depending on the machine. The bar also always travels in a perfectly straight up-and-down direction because again, it’s guided along on both sides by the rails. This is unnatural because your body doesn’t travel perfectly up and down. Whether it’s a squat, bench, overhead press, or whatever, when you’re using free weights, you’re going to be moving slightly in all directions as your body works to balance the weight. This, in general, is better at building strength, and it promotes balance and more practical control of your body. The Smith Machine really reduces your ability to make these gains. All that being said, there is a time and place for the Smith Machine. To me, it’s much more user-friendly. People who aren’t as dedicated to lifting or maybe those who are intimidated by free weights have this option because again, it’s easier. You even have a built-in spotter so it’s much harder to hurt yourself. If you’re lifting too heavy and feel like the weight’s going to come down on you, all you have to do is flick your wrist, and the bar hooks onto one of the many safeties. As of right now, I can only think of using the Smith function as a modified leg press but I think that this is something that my wife and her sisters are really going to love.

What makes me really excited about this Mikolo Smith Machine is actually everything else. All of its other functions. With the Mikolo Smith Machine, you’ll get a multi-grip position pull-up bar, a landmine attachment, dip attachments, and even J-hooks and safeties for the outer uprights which will allow you to use this rack as a standard barbell rack if you want to use free weights. So you can get the best of both words.

But on top of all this and what really gets me going is the cable attachments. On this M4 Smith Machine, you’ll get a pulley system on both the left and right sides of the rack. My Smith Machine came packaged with various bars and attachments and this is opens me up to so many possibilities in terms of accessory lifts. I can attach this longer bar and do lat pulldowns. Which is made even easier with the included leg hold-down attachment. This is something that I don’t often see with functional trainers or rack cable systems so this inclusion is nice. With this shorter straight bar, I can sit on the floor with my feet against the footboard pads and do rows. With these grips, I can do flys. Then, of course, you are not limited to just the accessories that come with the M4, you can buy your own attachments and get even more out of this machine. I cannot tell you how many exercises that can be done with just this pully system alone. Not to mention that the pulleys are adjustable in height so you can change up positions and get even more variations in exercises.

Then just when you think that this rack already has so much, there’s more. There are little additions that help to elevate this machine even higher. Things like the band peg, so you can change the resistance in some lifts. Or the battle rope attachment to add a form of cardio. Or the plate storage pins and barbell holder. This is something that I really appreciate as someone who’s had to buy a weight tree as an add-on for my other power rack.

Overall, the setup is great, but there are a few things that I think could be better. First, from the product page, something that Mikolo seems to like to highlight is the addition of the storage hooks that are meant to be used as a way to organize and store attachments and anything else that fits. However, I think that this is a pretty lazy addition and kind of a waste of space. You have this entire back section of the rack that’s empty and all you can think of in terms of storage is four hooks. Granted this is an area where many manufacturers fall short on. They often forget this back section and leave it blank and that’s understandable in terms of cost savings but it is something that can be improved upon. I mean, if this is the route that you want to go with, can you give at least one of two more rows of hooks? This will allow users to store more accessories while adding cross-members which will make this whole thing even sturdier.

Speaking of sturdiness, the maximum capacity of the whole machine is supposedly up to 2200 lbs, and it’s constructed from 80mm x 40mm “commercial thickness steel tube”. Take that as you will. I personally don’t even have 2200lbs of weight plates so can’t test that out but I will say that I think this machine can take as much weight as a logical person would consider using with it. With the Smith function, I wouldn’t doubt being able to throw like 400 hundred pounds on there. With the cable system, most people won’t logically load more than one or two hundred pounds because that’s really heavy for most cable exercises. The biggest lifts done with a cable system are likely lat pulldowns or rows and I think this machine can handle what most people will be able to pull. The only function that is somewhat questionable for heavy weights is if you want to use this rack for free weights with a barbell. Again, the uprights are 80mm x 40mm which equates to about 3”x1.5”. This is noticeably smaller than the more standard 3”x3” steel tubing of a decent power rack. So, I don’t know if I would want to squat four, let alone five hundred pounds in this thing. I’m not going to test the limits because I have a dedicated power rack that I lift heavier in and I don’t want to possibly die doing something stupid.

Overall, this Mikolo M4 Smith Machine offers so much that, to be honest, I wish that I didn’t buy my standard cage and had just gone with a multi-function trainer like this in the first place because this machine offers unbelievable value for the money. It is one machine that fulfills so many needs and wants, all while taking up about the same amount of space as just my power rack. Again, there are a few changes that I would like to see but for the $1200-$1500 price depending on the package that you go with, I think this thing is hard to beat. For someone looking for an all-in-one weightlifting station, someone looking for a Smith Machine, a cable machine, and a barbell rack, the Mikolo M4 is something to strongly consider.

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