With my expanding waistline and winter in mind i need to get some more miles in at home.

I've never had either so no experience and they seem similar money

With the turbo trainer i've got the bike so it will be more "real" but i will be banished to the garage whereas the exercise bike will probably find a home in the house as my wife will use it as well.

What do you think?????

buy some decent lights and go out riding?

turbo. exercise bikes are just wrong in every way. Huge seat wonkt pedals takes up lots of room and wont get used.

Turbo trainer every time. An exercise bike is like riding a bike. Using a turbo trainer IS riding a bike. Just make sure you use an old rear tyre you don't need anymore as you will melt the tread.

thanks jam bo i have two trout lights but with a family i can't get out more than twice a week but if i could slip off to the garage for an hour a night hopefully no one would notice

thanks, any tips on turbo trainers then, what to go for ?

Rollers.

Hadn't seen those, i guess that's as close to real as you can get?

Pricey though for 3 rollers and a couple of lengths of metal?

What's your budget? More expensive exercise bikes like Schwinn spin bikes are fairly similar to riding a proper bike but advantage of a turbo is you are riding your own bike. Don't worry about being in the garage- cooler and you can sweat and gob all over the floor if you need to.

I've got a basic Tacx Cycloforce magnetic resistance turbo which does the job. Main thing with a turbo is to have some way of measuring how hard you are working to make sure you suffer properly. Ideally power measurement but failing that get a HRM and/or put a cycle computer on the back wheel. Get a nice big fan otherwise you will overheat. Also have a radio/ipod/dvd/PC handy to play some music or videos. Check out The Sufferfest for training videos.

thanks, probably £200ish, just looking at them now on wiggle

With that budget then its got to be a turbo as even a used exercise bike at that price will be terrible.