Reviews -- How does the Treadmill Sensei rate treadmills and Ellipticals?
Moshi Moshi!
As I've mentioned a few times now, the Treadmill Sensei gets quite a bit of reader email every day. On an average weekday I get between 20 and 30 messages in my Outlook. A question I get asked quite often is about just how I rate, review and test equipment.
To start off, unlike some other review sites, we are not sent free equipment here to review. The review site itself is just for fun and is borne of my 20+ year love of the equipment. I don't make any money off of it at this point and am not paid or influenced by any of the manufacturers or dealers. I know that a few other sites demand free equipment be sent to them in order to get reviewed.
The question that brings up is "where do you get the equipment to rate?" That's actually a very easy question to answer. I own and operate a small to mid size (depending on who you ask) repair/service facility for fitness equipment here in Southern California. Over the course of a week we get in tons of equipment (literally!) to either service, remanufacture or install. So all of the equipment I review comes from the units we're working on or have worked on in the past...which is one of the reasons the reviews are so erratic in nature. I can't really review an entire line of equipment in one sitting because chances are we don't have every single variation in our shop at one point. Now, every so often I will decide to review a piece of equipment I am intimately familiar with -- such as a Precor elliptical. I've worked on hundreds of Precor 546 units (maybe more) and know every feature and function of them by heart. I do physically get on and work out on every piece of equipment I rated and review. I sweat for my readers!
The last question is probably "how does your rating system work?" Well, I am not a scientist and I don't have a hard and fast rule for rating anything. What I do is try to take the viewpoint of a customer and take in to account their needs and desires. I'm rating treadmills and ellipticals based on how I would recommend them to my mother-in-law. What I mean by that is, if I give a treadmill 5 golden buddahs it means I would have no problems telling my wife's mother to buy it. The reason I use my mother-in-law as a guide is because (I hope she doesn't read this) she is a very difficult woman and if I told her to buy something sub par then I would hear about it forever...and I just don't need or want that kind of torture.
So if you see a treadmill rated at 1 golden buddah you know that it's not something I'd have my mother-in-law buy!
It's as simple as that. Everything is rated by my gut and how I think a piece of equipment performs based on price and features. I don't expect a $599 treadmill to feel like a $5000 treadmill and so use a bit of a sliding scale.
That's it from this end. Look for a new review later tonight and keep those reader emails coming!
-The Treadmill Sensei
http://www.treadmillsensei.com
As I've mentioned a few times now, the Treadmill Sensei gets quite a bit of reader email every day. On an average weekday I get between 20 and 30 messages in my Outlook. A question I get asked quite often is about just how I rate, review and test equipment.
To start off, unlike some other review sites, we are not sent free equipment here to review. The review site itself is just for fun and is borne of my 20+ year love of the equipment. I don't make any money off of it at this point and am not paid or influenced by any of the manufacturers or dealers. I know that a few other sites demand free equipment be sent to them in order to get reviewed.
The question that brings up is "where do you get the equipment to rate?" That's actually a very easy question to answer. I own and operate a small to mid size (depending on who you ask) repair/service facility for fitness equipment here in Southern California. Over the course of a week we get in tons of equipment (literally!) to either service, remanufacture or install. So all of the equipment I review comes from the units we're working on or have worked on in the past...which is one of the reasons the reviews are so erratic in nature. I can't really review an entire line of equipment in one sitting because chances are we don't have every single variation in our shop at one point. Now, every so often I will decide to review a piece of equipment I am intimately familiar with -- such as a Precor elliptical. I've worked on hundreds of Precor 546 units (maybe more) and know every feature and function of them by heart. I do physically get on and work out on every piece of equipment I rated and review. I sweat for my readers!
The last question is probably "how does your rating system work?" Well, I am not a scientist and I don't have a hard and fast rule for rating anything. What I do is try to take the viewpoint of a customer and take in to account their needs and desires. I'm rating treadmills and ellipticals based on how I would recommend them to my mother-in-law. What I mean by that is, if I give a treadmill 5 golden buddahs it means I would have no problems telling my wife's mother to buy it. The reason I use my mother-in-law as a guide is because (I hope she doesn't read this) she is a very difficult woman and if I told her to buy something sub par then I would hear about it forever...and I just don't need or want that kind of torture.
So if you see a treadmill rated at 1 golden buddah you know that it's not something I'd have my mother-in-law buy!
It's as simple as that. Everything is rated by my gut and how I think a piece of equipment performs based on price and features. I don't expect a $599 treadmill to feel like a $5000 treadmill and so use a bit of a sliding scale.
That's it from this end. Look for a new review later tonight and keep those reader emails coming!
-The Treadmill Sensei
http://www.treadmillsensei.com
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posted by Treadmill Sensei at
4:21 PM
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