Horizon Fitness Treadmill

Fantastic for the $$
This is a first day review so I’ll update later if any issues. I paid the $20 fee for room of choice delivery which I’d highly recommend as the box is ~240 lbs. Delivery to my basement was great. I was surprised by how easy it was to unbox and assemble (6 steps). It took me 20 minutes until I was plugging it in. I haven’t bought a treadmill in 12 years and didn’t know what to expect. Exceeded my expectations dramatically. The 20/60” deck is huge. I’m 6’1” and 225lbs and I have ample space to walk/jog/run. Did around 4 miles in 50 minutes after firing it up. To me this treadmill matches commercial quality I’ve seen in gyms. Super stable, great controls, and no fluff, meaning no screens or subscriptions needed. I’m stunned to get something this nice at this price point. The controls are phenomenal and easy to adjust speed and incline. I’d highly recommend this treadmill to anyone in the market. Let’s see how it holds up over time.

Poor design, lacks basic features, random resets, nonexistent customer support
The good: The treadmill is sturdy, heavy, and compact. It has a powerful motor, and good roller and belt size for people who run a lot. On paper everything looks great.The bad: Basic features are missing. You cannot add to your run duration in the middle of a workout. Let’s say you set a run for 45 minutes, and as you’re getting close to finishing, you fancy continuing for 10 more minutes to make it 55 minutes. You cannot do this. You have to wait for 45 minutes to end the workout, then re-start another workout from scratch. Run duration is also limited to 99 minutes, so again, if you want to run more, you have to stop at 99 minutes, and restart.The Start, Stop, Speed and Incline buttons in front of you are mechanical and not sealed. If water or sweat splashes on them, it will eventually leak down into the crevices and all of a sudden your workout will be paused – until it dries out. This actually happened a few times to me before I figured out what was going on.Heart rate measurement via the two handles is completely off. Not only do you have to hold on to the handles for quite some time before you see your heart rate getting measured, and watch it slowly going up, the measurements are at least 30% off. I know this since my Garmin watch was showing accurate instantaneous measurements of say 150 bpm, while the treadmill took for ever to settle on 110 bpm!Now here is the great thing when you do hold on to the metal handles/bars; there are two little plastic buttons hidden in the handles, almost impossible to see, and if you accidentally press one (very light press), the treadmill will reset and go down to near zero speed and near zero incline. These blue buttons are meant to switch between intervals in interval training, but they are very easy to press by accident as you bring your hands to hold on to the bars, or to measure your heart rate.There are at least three ways to adjust your speed and incline (see the yellow ellipses in my photo/drawing). Why do I need three ways? Why can’t Horizon use some of that valuable real estate on the panel to add basic features like adding to my run time in the middle of a session, or selecting how many miles do I want to run?Also, you can only run based on a set time – you cannot run by deciding how many miles you want to run.According to the manual you have to lube the belt every 150 miles – you do the math for your family. For a family of four that uses this machine lightly (5 miles per person per day), this means almost once a week!And how lovely the lubing mechanism is – you have to be extremely careful and watch a few YouTube videos, since invariably the first time you do it, you will mess up and the belt will no longer be centered. Instructions in the booklet cover just the bare basics, and are useless compared to videos of users online. Summary: this is a major pain.In short, this machine has extremely poor design and poor user interface written all over it. It only looks good. That’s it!The ugly: worst customer service of any company – I should say totally nonexistent. I asked them a simple question about operation of the machine 6 weeks ago; yes, 6 weeks ago! I got a form letter email reply and nothing more. I emailed them again 3 weeks ago, and the same thing. Not a word from them.Summary: Avoid, avoid, and avoid. Thankfully I purchased from amazon and was able to send it back – thank you amazon!

Pretty solid treadmill – Bluetooth, meh
I wasn’t looking for interactive one that I had to pay a subscription for. I just wanted one I could run/walk son when I couldn’t be outside – due to sunsetting earlier or weather.After a small mishap on scheduled delivery where they didn’t deliver and didn’t call to inform me that the shipment didn’t arrive to the warehouse in time, we rescheduled and the gentlemen were awesome. I got the ‘inside entryway’ option and they put it inside with no issues.I was super intimidated due to the extraordinary weight, as I am a 5’2” single female, but the hardest part of putting this together was laying it flat by myself (and not damaging it or my toes). After that assembly went very fast and smoothly.I’ve used it a few times since and have had no issues with the functionality. The ONLY issue I have is the Bluetooth connectivity. It will connect to Apple Music with no issue, but Spotify/audiobooks/ anything else, it cuts outs throughout the workout and you have to keep starting and restarting it. Overall, pretty good treadmill for what a treadmill is for.