Buy the 5.1S if the bench has to share a room with the rest of your life and you want a wide, comfortable pad from a brand you have heard of. If you want a published, certified capacity rating before you press on it, the FLYBIRD WB5 gives you one for less.
What it is
An adjustable bench with six back positions, a deliberately wide pad, transport wheels and a design that stands upright to store. BowFlex is a mainstream consumer fitness brand, which is relevant here in the same way it was for the Body-Solid bar: you are buying a company as much as an object.
The stowable design is the real feature
Most benches in this category fold flat, which is fine until you realize a flat bench still occupies the floor. Standing upright is a genuinely different proposition — the footprint becomes roughly the size of the bench's end, and it goes against a wall.
The transport wheels matter more than they sound too. An adjustable bench is heavy and awkward to carry with one hand, and a bench that is annoying to move is a bench that stays in the middle of the room. Tilt-and-roll is the difference between storing it every session and storing it never.
For anyone training in a spare bedroom, a shared living space or a garage that also has a car in it, this is the strongest argument on the page. Our folding bench roundup covers the alternatives that fold rather than stand.
The wide pad: comfort with a caveat
A wide pad spreads your bodyweight and is simply more pleasant to lie on, especially for longer sessions and for dumbbell work where you are not braced against a bar.
The caveat is one that pressing-focused lifters know well: a wide pad can interfere with shoulder position on a heavy barbell bench, because it limits how far your shoulder blades can retract off the edges. Narrower pads exist precisely for that reason. Whether this matters to you depends entirely on whether the bench is mainly for dumbbells and general training — where wide is better — or for maximal barbell benching, where it is a real consideration.
Six back positions
Six positions covers flat, several inclines and, on this design, the seated positions that make shoulder pressing and dumbbell work comfortable. That is enough range for essentially any home program.
What matters as much as the count is how tightly the mechanism holds. As covered in bench capacity explained, adjustment mechanisms — not frames — are where benches actually wear out. A bench that is rock-solid at position one and rattly at position four has a mechanism problem, and no capacity number will warn you about it.
The missing number
The listing specification we can verify covers the six back positions, the stowable design, the wide pad and the transport wheels. It does not publish a capacity rating.
We flag this the same way we flagged it on the Body-Solid bar, and for the same reason: a published rating is a checkable claim, and this site ranks on checkable claims. For general training with dumbbells and moderate barbell work, the absence is not a practical problem from a brand at this level. If you are pressing heavy and want the number — ideally a tested one — the FLYBIRD WB5 publishes 800 lb with ASTM certification and costs less.
How it compares
| BowFlex 5.1S | FLYBIRD WB5 |
|---|
| Published capacity | Not stated | 800 lb, ASTM-certified |
| Back positions | 6 | Adjustable FID |
| Storage | Stows upright, rolls | Folds flat |
| Pad | Wide, comfort-focused | 30 in backrest |
| Best for | Shared rooms, dumbbell work | Barbell pressing, rated safety |
Who should buy it
The lifter whose bench has to disappear after every session, and whose training leans toward dumbbells, general strength work and comfort over maximal barbell pressing. For that person the stow-and-roll design is worth more than a number on a box, because a bench you actually put away is a bench you can keep in a room you also live in.
The heavy barbell presser should buy the certified bench instead. Not because the BowFlex is weak, but because on the one piece of equipment you lie underneath, a tested rating is the kind of information worth paying for — the argument we make in full in the adjustable bench roundup.
