A Complete Waste of $1300

NordicTrack Elite 13.1 Elliptical

NordicTrack Elite 13.1

After we wore out a cheap elliptical machine a couple of years ago, we dithered for a while about buying a new one. Having survived a frozen winter or two when we couldn’t get outside to exercise, we broke down and went looking. Sadly, the only consumer-grade ellipticals we could lay hands on we found at Sears – Dick’s sells the Sole brand, but has none on display – so we picked out a NordicTrack Elite 13.1 Elliptical (their model 24055.0). To be frank, it’s the worst $1300 we ever spent.

First things first: the gigantic cardboard box weighs about 250 pounds, and most of that (around 200 pounds) is one piece, the base assembly. Once you get a couple of weight-lifters to move it into place, the machine is relatively easy to set up. All you have to do is set a couple of pieces in place and tighten a few bolts. That’s the good part.

Much of my problem with the NordicTrack elliptical revolves around customer service. Within minutes of setting up the machine, we realized that the minimum resistance was considerably higher than it should be. At this point, I should state that both of us regularly exercise at a gym and are quite familiar with elliptical machines of various types, so we know how much resistance there should be. At maximum resistance on this machine – a 26 on their scale – it is almost impossible for a 200-pound man to move the pedals. Think that’s right? I don’t.

The second time a service tech inspected the elliptical, he reported his findings to the company. A few days later, we were informed by ICON Fitness that the machine “Meets manufacturing speculations [sic].” The tech left the machine disassembled; it took more than five weeks to get someone to the house to reassemble it because ICON’s tech support people were apparently on semester break from the University of Utah. A different tech reassembled the machine and, without setting foot on it (same as the first guy) informed me that the resistance is set as low as it will ever go. Neither of the techs performed any sort of measurement or test, they just took it apart and put it back together. So much for that…
The machine is iPad compliant (who cares?), meaning that it has a USB port (so you can charge your device while exercising). They boast that it will run iFit routines, assuming you want to spring for $15 a month to subscribe (fat chance). It has a few on-board routines, once of which I attempted to run one day: it started at level 9, which immediately put my heart rate over my supposed maximum (which, by the by, is programmed into the machine). Speaking of heart rates, the Elite 13.1 has a pair of sensors that are supposed to measure HR. They don’t: I once tested them by taking a measurement every fifteen seconds. Successive readings went something like 58, 163, 97, 109, 131. According to my FitBit Charge, my heart rate was more or less steady in the 130-135 range. No points for accuracy…

The machine is (supposedly) Bluetooth compliant, but only with heart rate monitors (good luck finding one of those…); making me wonder why they so prominently display the Bluetooth symbol. It is also (supposedly) wifi-enabled, but we’ve had little luck with that – it drops the wireless connection almost immediately after being turned on. That seems to be especially common if you have the onboard fan running. By the way, the fan seems to work pretty well.
As far as the preprogrammed workouts, I have to admit that I haven’t tried anything but the weight-loss routine, and I quit that almost immediately because it was going to destroy my knees. Both of us routinely use the elliptical on the manual setting only. I almost never get above resistance level 3, my wife says she runs it at level 6¹. You can also adjust the ramp incline between zero and 20 degrees; I typically run at an incline of zero to three.

A 40-minute workout on this machine, always set at incline = 0° and resistance = 1, can raise my heart rate to almost 140 BPM. By comparison, in an hour on a commercial elliptical, I have to bump the resistance to 10 and the incline to 5° to raise my heart rate above 130. ICON doesn’t seem to think that heart rate is a valid proxy for resistance, though.

The company has stopped responding to my email, so who knows what will happen next. All I can do is warn anyone who is looking for an elliptical machine that you don’t want to buy anything sold by ICON, and that includes NordicTrack, Pro-Form, Altra, Free Motion, Gold’s Gym, Weider, Weslo, HealthRider, iFit, UTS, and Lotus. You’ve been warned...

¹ This makes me wonder if the resistance problems are dependent on the user's weight, perhaps because something is misaligned.

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