Treadmill Review

Do you need to spend upwards of $1,000 to get a decent treadmill?

Most credible reviewers of treadmills believe that price is a good indication of a treadmill's quality, saying walkers should expect to spend at least $1,000, while runners shouldn't look at models under $2,000. However, the reality is that amid nearly $3 billion in treadmill purchases per year, most people end up buying a treadmill that costs much less than $1,000. So, there's a dichotomy between what fitness experts and reviewers recommend and what people actually buy. For that reason, we especially appreciate reviewers who make a bigger effort to cover the low end of the price spectrum as well as pie-in-the-sky $3,000 treadmills. Owner-written ratings are also useful in gauging whether users wind up happy with inexpensive treadmills -- or whether they wish they'd spent more.

To find out which treadmills are best suited to different folks, we turned to reviews by ConsumerReports.org, Runner's World magazine and TreadmillDoctor.com. These comparative reviews hold more weight with us than those from other publications who make recommendations but don't appear to conduct any product testing of their own. The reviews from ConsumerReports.org and Runner's World magazine complement each other nicely; both test a variety of treadmill brands and price ranges. Unfortunately, neither of these sources has been updated over the past year.

The reviews at TreadmillDoctor.com trump those from ConsumerReports.org and Runner's World magazine, however. Though the review write-ups themselves are very brief, TreadmillDoctor.com has the widest scope, with editors commenting about nearly every treadmill on the market. For each brand, editors include information on the company's history and reputation, component quality, overall repair history and country of manufacture. All of this is helpful in identifying the best treadmills.

Less useful are the dozens of self-described treadmill review sites that recommend one or two brands as a means of generating commission income. While these often provide some details on specs and features, they shouldn't be considered an objective source of information on performance or quality. You can generally tell a credible website from a fishy one by checking out the site's "about us" page (if there is one). We find that when a site discloses its owners and editors and describes what criteria it uses to rate treadmills, its picks hold much more water.