What is better than the best power rack?
The best power rack with a lat pulldown attachment.
It’s a cost-effective way to add tons of training value – and only a minor price bump.
Best Power Racks with Lat Pulldown
- Best Overall: REP FITNESS PR-1100 Power Rack with Lat Pulldown
- Best Budget: Fitness Reality Squat Rack 810 XLT with Lat Pulldown
- Best Half Rack: Sunny Health & Fitness Half Rack with Lat Pulldown
- Best Premium: Rogue RML 490 Power Rack + Monster Lite Slinger Stack
- Best with Plate Storage: Valor Fitness BD-7 Power Rack with Lat Pulldown
Best Overall Power Rack with Lat Pulldown: REP FITNESS PR-1100 Power Rack + Lat Pulldown
The REP Fitness rack is the most user-friendly, affordable, high-quality rack on our list. The utility to cost ratio on this rack and its attachments are fantastic.
- Great price and value for money
- Excellent attachments as well as the lat pulldown
- Low cable for effective workout options
- Great footprint and internal space management
- Utility per dollar is the highest on the market
- Plate loaded is a little jerky
- 250lbs weight limit is good, but not amazing
The REP Fitness PR-1100 Power Rack with Lat Pulldown is a great all-rounder.
It balances up quality and affordability and offers other attachments like dip bars and a landmine attachment at a great price.
It uses a plate-loaded lat pulldown machine to offer a 250lbs weight capacity, which is pretty standard for the market.
It’s a good amount for the average novice but may limit those already with a ton of training experience.
Overall, the rack performs well by itself, the footprint is small, and the lat pulldown attachment doesn’t get in the way of the interior space of the cage.
It also has a low cable attachment for rows and other exercises, which is a nice simple addition for a ton of extra training utility.
Key Takeaway
The REP Fitness rack is just the most user-friendly, easy choice for a high-quality rack that adds training variety with a pulldown machine. The utility-to-cost ratio on this rack and its attachments are fantastic, so it’s at the top of our list.
The Rep Fitness rack by itself also took out our Best Budget Power Rack title.
Best Budget Power Rack with Lat Pulldown: Fitness Reality Squat Rack 810 XLT with Lat Pulldown
A fantastic choice for the money, opening up a huge range of training options for anyone with a tight budget. It's a good piece for any home gym and can add a ton of value without the high investment of other products.
- Better weight capacity on the Pulldown than REP fitness
- Good stabilising bar and effective total stability
- Lower price than REP and others on this list
- Lacks some of the extra attachments of the previous product
- Doesn't offer the same utility as REP
- Fixtures and machining do leave something to be desired
The Fitness Reality 810XLT Power Cage is a great choice if you’re on a budget but still want a full set of features.
This version is available stand-alone and can also be upgraded from the original XLT power cage.
The price is low, making it one of the most affordable options on the market – but it still performs well as a power cage by itself.
The plate-loaded lat pulldown is stabilized through the top bar, while the rack also includes a pull-up bar and low foam pads as standard.
The pulldown itself is well-built with a 270lbs weight capacity. This is slightly more than the REP fitness option and does offer a good range.
It’s still a relatively sub-commercial quality, but the added weight does mean more progress for stronger people.
Final Verdict
The Fitness Reality 810XLT Power Cage is a fantastic choice for the money, opening up a huge range of training options for anyone with a tight budget.
It’s a good piece for any home gym and can add a ton of value for the money without the investment of other products like the REP or Rogue choices.
Best Half Rack with Lat Pulldown: Sunny Health & Fitness Half Rack with Lat Pulldown
The Sunny Health and Fitness half rack has all the space- and cost-saving features we want to see from a product at this price.
- Great overall design and build quality relative to price
- Comprehensive feature-set with safeties, pull-up bars, and weight pegs
- One of the highest weight ratings on a cable attachment at this price range
- Lacks the premium build of the Rogue slinger
- Does limit some options relative to a full four-post power rack or cage
The Sunny Health and Fitness Half Rack is one of the best space-saving squat racks with a lat pulldown attachment.
It includes a full set of features with safety arms, a full pull-up rig setup, band pegs, and weight storage pegs as standard. The basic design and manufacture of the rack are great for the price, with an eye-catching design and strong steel tubing.
The Lat pulldown attachment is a plate-loaded system with upper and lower handle systems.
Despite the half-rack design and the smaller overall footprint, this makes it a great comprehensive choice. The weight capacity for the cable is a large 350lbs+, which makes it one of the best on the list, after the rogue rack.
The overall design is effective for everyday use and leaves plenty of internal space in the rack. You can get a ton of training options from the half rack at a good price, coming in just above the Fitness Reality rack with a ton of other training features.
This is a great, inexpensive all-rounder for your home gym if you’re tight on space and don’t need a four-post power rack’s extra training options and stability. It’s a great compromise on space, so you don’t have to compromise on quality or utility.
Final Verdict
The Sunny Health and Fitness Half Rack has all the space- and cost-saving features we want to see from a product at this price.
It compromises on size for your space and maintains the quality of features and build, making it perfect for the small home gym for big weights.
Best Premium Power Rack with Lat Pulldown: Rogue RML 490 Power Rack + Monster Lite Slinger Stack
This is the best premium product on this list and one of the best value offerings around. Boasts the best lat pulldown attachment on the market – especially if you invest the money for the weight stack.
- The RML490 is a fantastic choice for a power rack with excellent features and a strong overall design
- The slinger lat pulldown system is smooth with high-quality cables
- Lat pulldown comes in 3 resistance types to best suit your budget and needs
- Fantastic build quality and overall design, including fixtures and moving parts
- More expensive than other items on this list
- Weight stack variant incurs higher costs for the initial buy and shipping
Check out the RackCheck out the Slinger
This pairing effectively combines the RML 490 Power Rack and the slinger stack. The RML 490 monster is a fantastic power rack by itself. The Monster Lite Stinger stack is a lat pulldown attachment designed to combine with it.
We’ve discussed the Rogue RML490 Power Rack before (read our review) as one of the best functioning basic power rack designs.
It’s sturdy, stable, has a huge range of potential attachments, and performs really well up to even the heaviest weights.
The slinger is a purpose-built cable pulldown that can be loaded with weight plates, resistance bands, or a full stack of integral weights. This makes it perfect for choosing whatever suits your budget and goals.
The weight stack is the best – but most expensive – choice.
This is the most expensive power rack with lat pulldown on this list, but it offers commercial quality when choosing the weight stack function. It’s a great attachment with a super-smooth operation that offers the best experience on the market attached to one of the best power racks on the market.
Final Verdict
The Rogue RML 490 Power Rack + Monster Lite Slinger Stack is the best premium product on this list and one of the best value offerings around. It’s a great power rack with the best lat pulldown attachment on the market – especially if you invest the money for the weight stack.
It costs a lot relative to others but provides unmatched value and utility for those with a little extra cash.
Check out the RackCheck out the Slinger
Best with Plate Storage: Valor Fitness BD-7 Power Rack with Lat Pulldown
A great all-in-one power rack with a wide range of attachment options and as-standard features.
- Great value overall
- Strong feature set with weight pegs for better storage
- Full feature upper and lower cable attachment pulleys
- Pulley adjustment and handles included as-standard
- Lacks the premium quality of some items on this list
- Weight pegs are 1" and may need additional foam or attachments for optimal performance
The Valor Fitness BD-7 Power Rack with Lat Pulldown is a simple but effective power rack that offers integrated weight storage pegs for additional space-saving and stability.
This helps stabilize the lat pulldown attachment and supports the back weight of the rack, where it helps steady the feet. This is perfect for both internal and external use of the rack hooks.
This is a good feature that helps expand on the benefits of the rack, saving you money in the future against a weight stand purchase or similar. This adds to the all-important utility and value that make up the best offerings of power racks with a lat pulldown attachment.
The cost of the Valor Fitness BD-7 Power Rack with Lat Pulldown helps the other side of the value equation. It’s not just got great utility but is comparable in price to the Fitness Reality rack.
This model also includes all the great features you’d want with a lat pulldown attachment: a low cable row, an adjustable pulley extension, and a pair of handles for the lat pulldown.
It is plate-loaded, as you’d expect at this price. Our only complaint is that it doesn’t offer the same commercial-level quality as you’d expect from the Rogue rack and its integral system. This is still a great, high-value system for the price.
Valor has put together a great single-item solution to storage, barbell training, and cable exercise.
Final Verdict
The Valor Fitness BD-7 Power Rack with Lat Pulldown is a great all-in-one power rack with a wide range of attachment options and as-standard features. This is perfect if you’re short on space and want to get everything from your rack in one place.
How We Chose the Best Power Racks with Lat Pulldown
There are a lot of power racks on the market nowadays. Trust us – we know, we looked at them all to pick our best list.
Narrowing it down to only 5 was no easy feat. To help us rank the options, we used the criteria in the Buying Guide section below – including:
- Stability
- Weight Capacity
- Size & Footprint
- Ease of Assembly
- Attachments
- Price
Why You Should Trust Us
There are a lot of power racks on the market and almost as many recommendations.
At Home Gym Boss we pride ourselves on being impartial and only recommend products we would use ourselves.
Sometimes it is not possible to try all the different products, so we do our research by talking to athletes, strength coaches & personal trainers, through reading user reviews, checking product manuals, assessing overall brand quality and reputation, and checking the current prices.
Why Buy a Power Rack with Lat Pulldown
A power rack with a lat pulldown has the huge benefit of offering you more ways to train in your home gym. This lets you get better value for money when you purchase a rack that also lets you train your lats and use other cable exercises.
This is a great way to round out the training options of a power rack in particular. If you add cable resistance exercises to your free weight movements (squats, deadlifts, presses, etc.), you’re going to have a complete set of training stimuli for every muscle. That’s why the lat pulldown attachment was on our list for the best power rack attachments and accessories.
In general, Lat pulldown attachments and cable resistance are better for smaller muscles.
They offer a wide range of training options that are great for building lats, obviously, but also the rear delts, muscles of the upper back like rhomboids and lower traps, and even the adductors.
These are a huge benefit, and a power rack with a lat pulldown attachment is a complete at-home workout solution.
Power Rack with Lat Pulldown Buying Guide
Types of Lat Pulldown attachments
Stack-Type
Lat pulldown attachments that have their own weight stack usually perform better but cost more. This trade-off depends on your budget for this item and what your priorities are.
The stack design helps improve weight selection progress and doesn’t require any of your existing weights. It also has a smoother cable function because it’s designed for the constant tension of the stack itself.
Plate-Type
Plate-loaded lat pulldown attachments can be more fiddly, but they also save you a ton of money. Power racks that ship without lat pulldown weight stacks are cheaper to buy and ship, which could be hundreds of dollars of price difference.
However, plate-loaded lat pulldowns are almost universally less “commercial” quality than weight stacks.
They have jerkier movement and are less smooth due to the difference in levers design, and the cables are not designed for the exact weights being used.
This makes plate-loaded lat pulldowns a common sight on power racks and a better budget option, trading off for premium feel and performance.
What to Look for in a Power Rack-Mounted Lat Pulldown
A good power rack with lat pulldown machine needs to focus on building the pulldown into the rack’s basic functions.
A simple set of criteria makes a good product: stability, weight capacity, footprint (size), easy assembly, and bonus attachments or features.
Stabilizer
Stability and good fixtures are key to getting the best out of a lat pulldown. It has to sit well-located in the rack and not wobble during use.
Stabilizer rails for the weight are also important and should be standard-issue. The basic control over the weight should be easy to achieve, and the whole rack should remain stable to a minimum level through use.
This should also mean no changes to weight plates on plate-loaded versions. As ever, stack-loaded or integral weight pulldowns are much better in this area because they’re built around a predictable weight.
Weight Capacity
The capacity of a lat pulldown will be useful – and this applies to the capacity of a plate-loaded system as well as the total stack weight of an integral lat pulldown.
The weight capacity dictates how heavy you can go. This is a limitation to your long-term progress as you start bumping into weight capacity as you get stronger. This may not be a problem now, but a power rack should last you many years. You’ll need to account for appropriate headroom for future you and the added strength you develop.
Because of this long-term progress, lat pulldowns with better weight capacities are simply better. Of course, you can always vary the movement (e.g. single-arm pulldowns) to make it harder, but a better weight capacity simply means a better product.
Footprint
The footprint of the power rack – and then the lat pulldown’s space within it – will determine how space-efficient your product is. This means saving more space in a garage or basement gym and having more space to comfortably squat, bench press, or rack pull inside the power cage.
Some products even have outward-facing lat pulldowns. These are niche since they can’t be placed against a wall – and may reduce the stability since you can’t bolt the rack to the wall properly. This can, however, save a ton of space if it suits the layout of your home gym.
Typically, power racks with a smaller footprint are useful – but only if that leaves you with plenty of internal space for lifting in.
Ease of Assembly
Nobody wants to spend undue time and effort putting together a power rack. Easier assembly isn’t make or break, but it does add value to a power rack – especially with the lat pulldown attachment. It’s easy to lose hours or even days to poor fixtures.
Look for good fixtures, good machining, and effective instructions. These are often discussed in products’ own reviews, and simpler construction just means a better product that’s ready to go within hours of getting it.
Other Attachments
The best power rack with lat pulldown attachments has more than just pulldowns. Other attachments and features can maximize the value of this kind of purchase by radically expanding your training options. This is a huge deal if you’re getting dip bars, a pull-up bar, a landmine attachment, or others.
These are case-by-case, however. Some of them are great, some of them are just for show. The big attachments add huge value, while some are included just to say there are more attachments than a market competitor.
Make sure the attachments included are the ones you want – and will use. More attachments aren’t a benefit if it comes at the cost of better basic function. For example, a simple but well-built power rack is better than one with attachments that fails at the basics. Attachments are a bonus.
Here is a list of our favorite rack attachments.
Power Rack with Lat Pulldown FAQs
Power rack with lat pulldown vs. Lat Pulldown Machine
The main difference is cost: a dedicated lat pulldown machine is better for building a big upper back but will cost you significantly more money.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a power rack with a lat pulldown costs very little (by comparison) but does offer a wider range of training features – albeit fewer premium ones.
The real difference is in the pulldown itself and the feel of the product. A dedicated lat pulldown machine will feel better and more like a commercial gym product. The rack-mounted pulldown will feel less smooth and jerkier.
The difference can easily be hundreds of dollars, however. Many good lat pulldown machines cost more than a rack with lat pulldown attachments by themselves – despite offering a far more limited training experience.
If you have the money, get a high-quality lat pulldown. If you don’t, or don’t care that much, just get a power rack with a lat pulldown built-in.
Conclusion
The Best Power Rack with Lat Pulldown attachment is the one that matches up with your needs and budget.
It sounds cliché, but all that matters is fitting the right rack to the right home gym and budget. It can completely change your home gym setup and the possibilities for training.
Our favorite power rack with a lat pulldown is the REP fitness PR-1100. It’s a great choice that offers value and function for the average home gym, making it the best choice of all-purpose.
You can upgrade to something more premium with the Rogue RML-490 for a more commercial experience if you’ve got the cash.
On the other hand, the Fitness Reality rack can be one of the best budget options if you’re strapped for cash but still want a great home gym-free weight and cable training experience.
The key to all of these products is quality relative to price and training utility relative to dollar cost.
Be realistic with your budget and your needs, as every dollar you save here can improve something else in your home gym or simply reduce the cost of decking out your training setup!