How To Find The Best Treadmill For You

If you’re looking for the best treadmill you can buy with your money, here’s some reviews and ideas of what to look for when you buy a treadmill.

What To Look For In The Best Treadmill

Ideally you want a unit that has a motor with at least a 2 horsepower continuous rating. Anything less than this and you risk reliability issues and a less than smooth operation of your treadmill. If you are going to use your treadmill for running, or you weight over 180 pounds, you really need a motor of at least 2.5 horsepower.

All the best treadmills have a two-ply belt that is at least18 inches wide and 50 inches long. If the belt is too short it will force you to shorten your stride. If you have long legs you will need a longer belt – perhaps up to 60 inches.

The desk of the best treadmill are invariably at least a quarter inch thick. The thicker the deck the better they are at absorbing the impact and cushioning your feet when they strike the belt.

Look for a low starting speed – in the range of 0.1 to 0.5 miles per hour, and with a top speed of 5 miles per hour if you’re a walker and 10 or 11 miles per hour for runners.

The best treadmills also have safety keys. These are essential if you have pets of young children. The safety key means the treadmill won’t start without it, and be aware of fitness treadmills that use magnetic keys – some of these can be started with plain old fridge magnets!

OK – so that some basic criteria of what to look for, so now let’s look at what really is the best treadmill for your requirements.

Best Cheap Treadmills

In the cheap treadmill category, we have had a lot of good reports for the Golds Gym 450. It’s good enough for walking or slow jogging but if you’re a runner you will need to look at a higher grade model.

Best Treadmill For Walking

Golds Gym seems to be cleaning up with the lower range of the treadmill market, as their Maxx Crosswalk 650 is another good value for money unit in the serious walker category. It has a good sized belt (20 inches by 55), several pre set workout programs and adjustable cushioning. The only potential issue is that it only has a 1.75 horsepower motor which means it won’t fair too well for runners – but walking it will be fine.

Best Treadmills For Jogging

Here we see Gold Gym lose ground to the Sole F63. It has a 2.5 horsepower motor which means it will cope with daily use for walking and jogging with no problem. It also has a 15 percent motorized incline, a wireless heart rate monitor, audio input with speakers (so you can plug your MP3 player in) and can support up to a 375 pound person.

Best All Rounder

Sole are here again with their F80 model, which comes in at around $1500, though you may be able to get it cheaper at some online discount treadmills sites. It has a 3 horsepower motor that comes with a lifetime warranty (which also includes the deck and frame) and extra thick rollers to protect the area it stands on.

It also has a hands-free hydraulic folding system and very effective cooling fan on the console.

Best Treadmill For Heavy Duty Use

If you’re going to be subjecting your home fitness treadmill to some serious abuse, you are going to need to dig deep in your pocket to make sure you get a unit that withstand the use. The best treadmill in this category came out as the Landice L7 Cardio Trainer. Priced at $3,300 it’s not cheap by any means, but then you do get what you pay for with this model.

The Landice L7 has a 4 horsepower motor, 1 inch thick running deck and lifetime warrant on pretty much everything (motor, frame and general wear).