Supernatural review — the VR fitness app that’s shaking up the metaverse | Laptop Mag
Our Verdict
Supernatural is great for adding total-body cardio — and mindful meditation — to your down time, thanks to stunning VR conditioning environments and summit-tier fitness coaches.
For
- Realistic VR environments
- Dynamic personal training
- Compatible with fitness wearables
- New workouts added regularly
Against
- Sweat accumulates hands under VR headset
- No multiplayer options (yet)
Laptop Mag Verdict
Supernatural is cracking for adding total-body cardio — and mindful meditation — to your down time, thanks to stunning VR conditioning environments and top-tier fitness coaches.
Pros
- +
Realistic VR environments
- +
Dynamic personal grooming
- +
Compatible with fettle wearables
- +
New workouts added regularly
Cons
- -
Sweat accumulates easily under VR headset
- -
No multiplayer options (yet)
Supernatural is a VR fitness app for Oculus Quest that promises to gamify your weekly exercise routine with an expansive library of cardio, boxing, meditation and recovery workouts.
Available exclusively for the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset, this app takes reward of the technology'south improved specs to drop you smack-dab in the center of the Galápagos Islands, the ruins of Machu Picchu, and even Mars (among many other picturesque environments), where you're guided through an array of fun fitness activities.
- Give your VR setup a boost with the best VR-ready laptops
- FitXR vs Supernatural: which VR fettle app is ameliorate?
Is Supernatural worth the monthly subscription? There's only one way to find out.
Supernatural pricing and availability
Supernatural is available exclusively for Meta'south Oculus Quest platform. We recommend playing the VR app on the Oculus Quest two VR headset, the latest model. It normally retails for $299 (128GB) and $399 (256GB).
Supernatural lets yous endeavor out their app for free, simply it'll price you $nineteen per calendar month ($180 per year) when the trial ends. This is most double the cost of FitXR ($ten per month), another Editor'southward Pick-winning VR app that includes many of the same fitness elements, in add-on to dynamic multiplayer action. If you don't take the cash for an Oculus Quest VR headset, the webcam-powered Kemtai Adaptive Domicile Exercise Platform likewise costs $19 per month, and all you demand to get started is your laptop.
Supernatural user interface
Setting up Supernatural is a cinch. Just download the app to your Oculus Quest headset (via your phone or the headset itself), set up a new user profile, and y'all're good to become. When you lot open up the app, Supernatural sets the footstep for your VR experience correct abroad by perching yous on height of a beautiful mountaintop environment with floating menus.
On the home screen, you'll notice four colorful, easy-to-navigate menus: New Today (showcases new workouts), For You (recommendations based on your workout history), Details (briefly describes whichever conditioning you lot select), and Performance (keeps track of leaderboards and your continued devices).
Supernatural is also compatible with the Apple tree Smart Watch Serial 2+, Habiliment Bone two.0+ devices, and any middle rate tracker that uses BLE connectivity. We weren't able to test out this characteristic, simply owning the right wearable instantly adds value to this preparation platform, allowing you keep track of personal stats at a glance. Yous can as well use Supernatural'southward complementary smartphone app to check your stats, access music playlists on Spotify, and more without even putting on the Oculus Quest headset
Role of the attraction for such VR fitness apps is the ability to work out from the comfort of your own living room, while simultaneously simulating a personal preparation session somewhere else. We suspect the visitor name comes into play hither somewhat, since the natural environments that Supernatural has created are downright superb. From meditating on a beach to boxing in the desert, it's hard to become bored with your ultra-realistic surroundings, which feel incredibly immersive. (Note: the larger your play expanse, the more expansive each surround feels.)
But that'south not all. If you lot miss the community of your local gym, Supernatural comes with its own Facebook community, a 24,000+ strong crew of pure inspiration, motivation, and ant-procrastination.
As of this writing, in that location were more than 800 classes to cull from, created in collaboration with Supernatural's professional team of athletic coaches. Like to FitXR (which only offers around 250 classes thus far) you lot can filter these classes by type, music genre, difficulty level, and duration. In curt, this app is intuitive as hell.
Prior to this review, we met up with health jitney Leanne Pedante (Supernatural's Head of Fettle) who showed usa the ropes before letting the states loose to box, bounce and meditate our way to improve wellness. And since Laptop Mag's Senior Writer Kimberly Gedeon has been playing around with Supernatural all year, she and I decided to tag-squad this review together.
All right, enough jibber-jabber. It's time to put our money where our mouths — err, eyeballs — are.
Supernatural workouts
To put Supernatural (and incidentally ourselves) through the proper paces, Kim and I tried out a variety of Box, Flow, Meditate, and Recover classes. Hither are our articulatio genus-jerk impressions:
Box
Kim — Forget the punching pocketbook and terminate screaming into your pillow. If you want to release pent-up assailment in a more than svelte manner, Supernatural's boxing modality is a highly recommended outlet. A vexatious argument was still fresh in my mind, so I harnessed that inner acrimony to smash the ever living daylights out of aerial artifacts and watched them satisfyingly explode upon bear on. Boy did that feel adept! Ameliorate a VR workout app than their face, am I right? (Editor's note: she is.)
Like to Supernatural's Menstruation conditioning (we'll talk nigh this afterward), Boxing consists of incoming orbs that invite you to deliver your all-time punches. Some of the orbs point up, prompting you to utilise uppercuts. Others signal to the side, inciting you to strike them with powerful hooks. There are likewise round orbs — sans directional indicators — that require straight-forward jabs. While I leveraged all that inner frustration to land powerful punches, I nonetheless ended up feeling a sense of peace while taking in Supernatural's scenic, 360-degree locale. Hovering over Republic of peru's historical Machu Picchu site while jamming to Panic! At the Disco would relax anyone.
In addition to those orbs, there are wayward batons that impel you lot to bob and weave every bit they fly at your face up. I tin can't quite grasp if I'1000 doing this role of the workout correct; I would have preferred a rod that ran parallel to the virtual footing and prompted me to squat. Afterward spending hours upon hours sitting in one identify for work, my derriere is in desperate demand of aid.
TJ — Kim's non wrong. If you're looking to turn the latest holiday-season statement into a tangible calorie count, look no further than Supernatural'south swell option of boxing workouts. Proper battle form is something I've been wanting to larn for a while now, and while there'southward no substitute for a good ol' fashioned punching purse over at Gleason'south, I was pleasantly surprised by how detailed Coach Doc'due south instructions were, and how his tweaks helped improve my overall class.
Throwing punches at floating orbs in the eye of nowhere is a surprisingly zen experience, past the style, and boxing workouts are inevitably a full-body affair. Subsequently just five minutes or and so, every single muscle grouping from the neck down was wide awake, and I could feel a fresh dopamine dump with each successful strike. Easily down (or upward), this was my favorite kind of course to play with throughout our testing.
Note: In the Settings menu, you can calibrate your Oculus Quest headset and then that targets, triangles and dodges are properly aligned with your summit.
Flow
Kim — Flow is the crux of the Supernatural platform and it'south often compared to an ultra-pop VR game called Vanquish Saber. Why? Menstruum arms you with wands to swat at fast-moving targets with directional indicators, which is like to Vanquish Saber's premise.
The main difference, however, is that Vanquish Saber isn't a workout app. It'due south a game that tests your focus and concentration — and information technology will dock points if you miss the incoming cubes. Flow, on the other hand, is designed to aid you lot lose calories and it won't penalize you lot for missing targets. When I expressed worry over not getting the hang of the high-intensity workouts (Flow's most difficult exercises) Jonny Ahdout, Supernatural'south Creative Leader and Marketer, assured me that "winning" isn't the goal. If you're moving and grooving, that's all that matters.
Before diving into Flow, I thought that I'd lean toward the modernistic pop tracks. I figured upbeat tunes would be the most motivating tracks, simply I was incorrect. As it turned out, Sweat Symphony is my favorite arm of the whole workout app, let alone Flow. Sweat Symphony workouts feature classical music playlists that make me feel like a badass maestro while smacking orbs abroad in the middle of some exotic, scenic landscape — it doesn't get any better than that!
TJ — While I've never tried Beat Saber myself, I know enough about the game to spot the similarities, and Flow is a lot more fun than I expected it to exist. (Hey, I'g over the age of 35 and don't like modify, dammit.) The workouts forced me to turn 360 degrees in both directions as it progressed, utilizing wide arm swings and dynamic squats to smash orbs while also staying inside the floating triangles as they approached.
1 affair I really appreciate nearly each conditioning is how the coaches lead you lot through brief warmups and cooldowns. If y'all're just flailing around with improper form, it could be easy enough for the uninitiated to sprain a musculus. This is a nice, organic style to help prevent injuries as yous torch through those calories. And equally Kim mentioned above, swinging your arms most in relative abandon is all part of the experience, and fifty-fifty when it felt like my class was garbage, I was however sweating buckets by the end of each class.
Recover
Kim — The Recover modality is what is known equally "the cooldown'' in the workout world. This is a skippable role of the workout (and I admittedly forgo it sometimes), simply you lot're encouraged to follow through with it. Why? Because after all the arm swinging, lunges and squats, you lot've likely pushed your muscles to the limit. Every bit such, yous'll want to slowly transition into a steady land of residual every bit opposed to an sharp stop. This is a moment where I really honey to take in the gorgeous scenery as my Supernatural trainer coaches me into a reduced heart rate, a cooler body temperature and regulated blood menses. This is also the moment where I get to give my body a good stretch and pat myself on the back for completing Period or Battle.
TJ — If I had the appropriate wearable, this is probably around the time that I'd check in on those stats, and I definitely capeesh the opportunity to stretch out at the cease of any vigorous conditioning; punching the daylights out of virtual bubbling takes a toll, afterwards all. Flexibility is also something I've been trying to be more vigilant about of late, and it'south easy to skip your terminate-of-workout stretches without the proper motivation. This is where Supernatural'southward coaches come up in.
As Kim mentions above, Recover allows you to appreciate those gorgeous surroundings the virtually because you're moving effectually the least. Stretching out on a mountaintop, beach, or desert haven is pretty damn cool, and Supernatural's production team has done a fantastically meticulous job of curating those environments to feel equally lifelike every bit possible
Meditate
Kim — Woosah! The Meditate modality is ideal for those moments when your mind — not your body — needs some tender honey and care. It's most benign for users who want to practice mindfulness and inner peace while sitting cantankerous-legged in a peaceful, breathtaking VR environment.
Unfortunately, I don't go to appreciate the cute surroundings much; I adopt to close my eyes while one of Supernatural's total-time coaches take me on a guided mental holiday with their meditative words. My favorite meditation is an feel titled "Gratitude." We oft accept our fortunate lives for granted; the Gratitude meditation reminds us to reflect on everything that we practise have rather than focusing on what we lack.
TJ — In the time of COVID, mindful meditation has remained an ever-elusive practice for me, and I'm always trying out new ways to settle my noggin at the end of the workday. Supernatural keeps your mental health superlative-of-mind, though, and Meditate quickly became my 2nd-favorite aspect of the app.
While Kim prefers to keep her optics airtight during mindfulness exercises, walking in the wood is ofttimes my favorite form of meditation, so taking these classes in the solitude of nature was right up my aisle. The environment allowed my mind and eyes to wander while also softly focusing on the topic at hand. It was an incredibly empowering (still calming) feel, for example, to recline in forepart of the Temple of Horus while Charabanc Dr. led me through a curt meditation on personal power.
The life of a tech journalist in NYC is an eclectic ane, and sometimes I need all the help I can get to slow my encephalon down for a hot second. Mental wellness is but as of import as physical wellness, and I dig how Supernatural lets you ease into the practice of meditation at a moment's observe.
You can work out your whole body (and brain!) in less than an hour, and I highly recommend wrapping the whole thing up with mindful meditation every bit your heart rate slows down. Woosah, indeed, Kim. Woosah, indeed.
Bottom line
Supernatural is the perfect proper name for this Oculus Quest app, as it combines a top-tier VR fitness experience with breathtaking views that are more than but an escape. Their team of coaches has created a comprehensive library of full-body workout routines, and this app handily represents the platonic blend of cut edge mobile tech and traditional fettle principles. It's a platform we'll be keeping our optics on over the adjacent few years, and every bit far equally I tin tell, this is the future of fitness, folks.
Supernatural VR was played using the Oculus Quest 2
Source: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/supernatural-review
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