Horizon Elite 507

For a comprehensive treadmill, I think that the Horizon Elite 507 is good value for money.

This has been compared against the Tunturi T60 and you get a similar spec and feel for far less money.

Also, you don't have the annoying tortoise and hare. Received sound advice from Gymratz and 10% off for purchasing in store.

Basically, we had a treadmill which was just under 15 years old which broke down so we decided a replacement was in order. We decided on the elite 507. I am very happy with the machine. It does everything well that you would expect in terms of speed and incline. The buttons are well laid out, and there are a variety of exercises available, (after burner, hill climb, weight loss,etc). There are also quick speed buttons i.e you press 5mph and it goes to 5mph regardless of what speed you are currently on. Oddly enough, the increments vary. 2,4,5,6,8,10,12 with no 3 or 7 which is a little annoying as 3 is pretty much a gentle walk and 7 is a reasonable jogging speed which is what I was used to on my previous machine. Also what is a little bizarre, is the fact that you can alter the speed and incline by 3 different ways, one on the dashboard, one on the side of the frame and on a handle at the front (imagine a bicycle handle then look at a photo of the machine and you will understand). Personally I think that's overkill, but I can see they wanted people to have a choice , so I guess it's nice if not a little over the top but, I've used each one on the same workout so I see what they were going for! There are 2 heart rate readers, both operate by using the metal which you place your hands/palms on and it reads your rate. One is on the side frame and the other on the front handle (bike type handle). Well, in my experience these handles are useless constantly giving reads of 70 - 80 during a walk at 0.5 mph or a fast jog at 10mph! Now I have found that it goes up the longer you hold it, but so slowly like a beat every 2 seconds that's if (and I do stress if), you held onto the bars during the entire workout it might be reasonably accurate. Now let's get to the point here. Unless you're happy to hold your arms down at an angle to grip the bike type grips, or hold them on the frame to your side rather then let your hands move with during the jog for better momentum, I think that the heart readers are useless. I haven't tried the wireless up link to the monitor, so that might be better.

I gave it 8 rather than 9 because aside from, (In my opinion), the useless heart rate readers, there is no warm up or warm down function preset, although I guess you could manually create these on one of the custom program's that you can create. So overall I would say 8.5 but you can't do that on the above but I think 8.5 is an accurate score.