These types of dumbbells are the most common for home and commercial gyms. This guide will help you navigate between the pros and cons of each.
hex dumbbells They are made with solid chrome plated steel pulls and welded cast iron heads with a painted finish. They are usually found in home gyms and some smaller fitness establishments.
Rubber Hex Dumbbells They are the same as the previous ones, with steel handles and iron heads, but with a rubber coating instead of paint. So even though they’re really just rubberized, we call them rubber dumbbells for simplicity.
professional style dumbbells they are found in most commercial gyms. They are made with solid steel handles and standard “pancake” style weight plates. They differ from standard adjustable dumbbells in that the handle ends are precisely length to fit an exact number of plates, are screw-in for semi-permanence, and typically have end caps to further smooth the edges.
Professional style rubber dumbbells. they are the former with rubber coating on the attached weight plates instead of paint. Again, for short, we call them rubber instead of rubber-coated. Note that regular pro-style dumbbells can also be made with just rubber caps.
All of the above types can have contoured handles instead of straight ones. Contoured handles are thicker in the center than the edges, allowing for a wider, more ergonomic grip.
COST
The relative difference in cost varies widely by weight, because pro-style dumbbells start at a higher price, but the price doesn’t go up as much as the weight goes up. Rubber hex and hex dumbbells are generally priced fairly per pound, though smaller and larger sizes may be priced adjusted for minimal retail margins or to account for skewed shipping costs.
#1: Hex
#2: Rubber Hex: 1.5 to 2 times the price of hex dumbbells.
#3 – Pro Style – 1.5-8 times the price of hex dumbbells.
#4: Rubber Pro Style – 1.5 to 11 times the price of hex dumbbells.
PROTECT THE SOIL
Rubber dumbbells are softer and do not scratch the floor. The winner here is the rubber pro style due to the smooth edges of the heads. Even rubber can be a bit rough, and the comparatively sharper edges of rubber hex dumbbells can stab a sensitive floor if you’re not careful. But that may be getting there because the edges really aren’t very sharp. Painted iron is the biggest threat to sensitive flooring, so hex dumbbells with their sharpest edges and roughest surface score last.
#1: Rubber Pro Style
#2: Rubber Hex
#3: professional style
#4: Hex
DURABILITY
Even the high quality baked finish on modern iron hex dumbbells will eventually chip when the dumbbells get hit hard. Rubber dumbbells are made to be hit. However, rubber exposed to the heat of the sun will expand as it gets hotter, and repeated exposure can cause the rubber to start cracking due to all the expansion and contraction, so if you’re in a hot climate, it would be better keep them away. Sun. Assuming you can handle that, the rubber comes out ahead.
The pro-style dumbbell plates have a flatter finish that is more resistant to chipping than the finish on hex dumbbells. If you’ve ever stacked old hex dumbbells on top of a bench press rep and got paint on your face, you know how important this is. Of course, a rubber coating will prevent this, and non-rubber professional dumbbells can be mounted with rubber caps on the ends.
Hex dumbbells are welded together, and while the welds are usually very good, you have to recognize the small risk of a bad weld, particularly for dumbbells that don’t go through quality control by a major US manufacturer. The way to break a dumbbell is to drop it from the top at an angle so that one head hits first and puts a lot of torsional stress on the handle. When a weld fails, the head usually won’t come off, but it can loosen up a bit and wobble. The risk of this isn’t really a safety issue, because it’s pretty obvious when a head is loose or has broken enough to fall off.
On pro-style dumbbells, the plates are secured in place with an Allen bolt that comes fairly tight from the factory. It’s pretty obvious when it starts to loosen after a lot of use, and it’s a simple matter of tightening it.
#1: Rubber Pro Style
#3: Rubber Hex
#4: Professional Style
#5: Hex
BETTER USE OF SPACE
The smaller hex dumbbells take up minimal space, while the larger ones have a larger diameter than professional-style dumbbells and will consume more shelf space. Pro-style dumbbells size up to a maximum diameter (the size of a 10lb plate) and keep adding more plates at the end. So for larger sizes, the pros are actually the most space conscious.
The rubber coating on the Rubber Hex Dumbbells is thick enough for the Rubber Hex Dumbbells to take up most space on a shelf in larger sizes.
The deciding factor here is going to be that pro-style dumbbells tend to roll around and are often used on racks with individual mounts for each dumbbell instead of a flat rack. This looks great and keeps them organized but takes up a lot of space. In that case, the rubber prostyle would take up the same space as the normal prostyle.
#1: Hex
#2: Rubber Hex
#3: professional style
#4: Rubber Pro Style
SMELL
Recycled rubber sucks. It varies, and it’s usually not that bad, and you may not even notice it unless you touch it, and it fades over time. However, virgin rubber, such as Troy TSD Rubber Hex Dumbbells, as well as all professional-style Troy Rubber Dumbbells, is odorless.
#1/#2: Hex, Pro Style
#3: Rubber Pro Style
#4: Rubber Hex
DO NOT TURN!
The worst that can happen is that your dumbbells roll and cause a passerby to trip and break their head on a machine. But it’s also annoying when you’re trying to prep for a heavy dumbbell workout and they keep rolling around on the uneven floor of the garage gym. Garage gyms are always sloped towards the entrance. And you want the dumbbells to stay in place on the rack so they don’t get mixed up.
As far as the pro style goes, the rubber is a bit ahead here, only because the softer rubber surface creates more stability and may not shift when regular irons do. In reality, the rubber hex is more likely to keep rolling downhill once it gets going, due to the friction keeping it from sliding and stopping, and the fact that it’s going to bounce better.
This can also affect the type of rack you get. Racks with curved mounts are made to hold a pro-style dumbbell in each mount, and they take up a considerable amount of floor space.
#1: Hex
#2: Rubber Hex
#3: Rubber Pro Style
#4: Professional Style
MAINTENANCE COST
For higher weights, maintenance for damaged hex dumbbells is considerably higher. If you’re not the only one using the equipment, you can bet people will lose weight. Clumsiness, injuries, disrespect for the team, you name it, it’s going to happen with enough use. When a dumbbell hits the floor at an angle, too much stress can be put on the end of the handle and it can bend. A hex dumbbell instantly becomes junk, and you have to buy a new one, and heavy ones aren’t cheap to ship either.
When a pro-style dumbbell is dropped and broken, you can take it apart and replace the handle or weight plates at minimal cost.
Durability is covered in an earlier category, but when considering maintenance, we need to consider the likelihood of a dumbbell breaking or getting damaged. Rubber is much less likely to break than bare iron when dropped on concrete, but it is also more expensive to replace. However, the most common damage to a dumbbell is not head splintering from being dropped on bare concrete, as most people have more common sense than that, but handle flexing due to being left on. fall bad So I give non-rubber dumbbells a higher rating considering the higher cost of replacing rubber dumbbells or rubber pro-style plates.
#1: professional style
#2: Rubber Pro Style
#3: Hex
#4: Rubber Hex
WEIGHT RANGE
Hex dumbbells start at just 1 pound, while pro-style dumbbells start at 5 pounds. But really when you’re reading an article like this to decide between these dumbbells, you probably don’t care too much about having so many dumbbells under 10 pounds. Neoprene dumbbells are popular for those sizes. So I’m going to ignore the low end and look at the high end. Prostyle dumbbells go up to 150 pounds or even more, while hex dumbbells may not exceed 100 pounds.
The popular PlateMate magnets, used to add weights in small 1.25 or 2.5 increments to dumbbells, do not stick to a rubber coating. Another method of microloading is using wrist weights, so you’re not totally out of luck, and you may even find you prefer wrist weights to magnets, but non-rubber dumbbells take the cake here for being more versatile.
Some people also like the inexpensive method of buying dumbbells in 10lb increments and using PlateMates to fill in the 5lb weight gaps, and in that case, any iron dumbbell set is an even better deal.
#1: professional style
#2: Hex
#3: Rubber Pro Style
#4: Rubber Hex
