Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've had this a couple of months now. (update at end of review) First off, the good things: - It's pretty quiet. I work in a home office, so this isn't a huge deal for me, but it's nice. It can definitely be heard on a speaker phone, though. Nearly all the noise is from my weight on the belt (and associated sliding / friction). If I step off of the treadmill, it is VERY quiet. I don't think there is much they could do about this. - I just plugged it in and it ran. Setup was a non-issue. - Looks good. Not much to it, but what is there is unobtrusive. - The display is really nice. It is really simple and not very big. It has some steel weights in it to give it some mass and keep it from sliding around on your desk. I don't really want the display to do much, and it doesn't. - Typing and mouse use are absolutely no problem. - Writing is a bit tough and you won't write as neatly as you are used to while walking. - Going from sedentary to standing walking all day took me two weeks to get used to, but I am very happy with the change. I'm losing weight and just don't get tired on my feet anymore. Cardio fitness doesn't change, though. I don't sweat or breathe hard on this thing, so that's not a surprise. The cons: - Everyone complains that there is too much button pushing. I wholeheartedly agree. I like to walk at 1.2 mph. To start it up, you: - Press on/start - Wait for it to count down 3,2,1,go (five seconds elapsed) - It starts out at 0.4 mph every time. I find it hard to believe that anyone walks at that speed. It's more like standing for a bit and then taking a step. - Press speed up 8 times to get to 1.2 mph. - This whole sequence takes about 10 seconds (give or take). - I read about this and thought everyone was whining too much before I got this. In my job, I step away from my desk for a minute many times a day. I go through this routine all the time. It's a total waste of time. Worse, it becomes an irritation, so it feels worse than it is. I don't turn on the treadmill if I think I am going to walk on it for less than a few minutes before I get off again. Sometimes I'm wrong and end up standing still on the treadmill for half an hour because I became engrossed in my work and forget to turn it on after plans changed. - The beeping. I work at home, so I don't honestly care much about the beeping when you press buttons, but it is really unneeded. It is not a pleasant beep, for sure. Combine the mandatory beeping on button pushing with way too many button pushes and you have something that really takes away from the other good things. - You can't start it at the speed you want (see above) - It turns off after 20 seconds of inactivity. You walked into the other room to grab a pencil? Too bad, it's shutting off. Prepare for more button pushing. You were gone for 17 seconds and thought you got on in time? Wrong. It's not very responsive and will shut off in 3 seconds. It starts beeping at you telling you that you were gone too long; just press on to tell it not to turn off, right? Wrong. Give it some time to beep its disapproval at you, then slow down (slowly). Now you can start pushing buttons again. I bought this thing to make my life easier and not hack up a standard treadmill. It turns out that I should have just bought a standard treadmill and hacked it up, saving money and getting something more like I wanted. The really tragic thing about this is that the treadmill is not lacking in any mechanical or electrical way. It's just the decisions made in the programming of the display unit. Someone actually had to consciously decide to make it this way. As a person that does embedded electronics software development for a living, this is all the more frustrating. Update - 18 Feb 2014 ------------------ Lifespan commented on how to resolve some of these issues. I'm really impressed. I should have called customer service about this to see if there was something that could be done. Customer service found me! The ability to leave the treadmill running while I step away from it is a game changer for me. I work in a home office, so there is no danger of someone else walking on it while I step away. I understand in a corporate environment, this is not always the case. The beep off is nice, too. I wish it was adjustable in volume, but on / off is a huge step, and once again I'm super impressed that customer service found me. I would give it five stars, but there still 1) doesn't appear to be a mode in my model that will resume at my previous speed, and 2) the critical features are in engineering mode. Having said that, it's still a huge improvement from my initial review. Lifespan seems to be taking these usability issues seriously, and that is a great sign for future customers. Customer service gets five stars from me for not only finding me without me taking reasonable steps to get help, but presenting it in a professional and helpful way! The engineering mode is referenced in the manual. I don't have my manual anymore, and several of the manuals I found online are missing the engineering mode page. I did find one that had the page intact. Slight inconvenience, but not a big deal. This is a warning to the people like me that toss out manuals! This manual had the keys to me getting what I wanted out of the treadmill. Update - 18 Feb 2014 ------------------ I've used the treadmill for a few weeks with the engineering mode changes mentioned in the comment from Lifespan customer support. It's been a real transformation! I turn it on in the morning and turn it off at lunch time, then turn it on after lunch, turning it off at the end of the day. Now short periods where I get off the treadmill don't cause big breaks later. It's working just as I had imagined - I'm really happy. To those that have never used a treadmill much, make sure you lubricate it. You are buying a treadmill that is really likely to be used all day, so you will need to lubricate it once a week, not once a year, as is normal for a home treadmill. It's not too difficult -- Turn the back belt tension screws out exactly 10 turns. The belt will be loose, and you can pull it up. Then spray a light amount evenly across the belt width. Then turn the tension screws back in exactly 10 turns. It's worth a small amount of time paying attention to how much you screw the tension screws out and it, because if you don't screw them back in to the same place, you will have to adjust the left / right belt tracking again. That will take longer than paying attention to the amount you turn the screws in and out. Update - 9 July 2014 ----------------- Some things I have noticed that probably aren't very important: - The big plastic cover on the front has really weak attachments. I've managed to break all the plastic ears off that attach it in what I would think is not unfair handling. Fortunately, it doesn't matter a lot, as gravity keeps in place. - In the case of a power outage, the control panel gets into a strange state. The lighting goes dim and when on/start is pushed, it looks like it is trying to start up, but is low on power (it looks that way, but I have no idea what is technically happening). It requires a power on/off to get it working again. That requires crawling under the desk, which isn't a huge deal, but shouldn't be needed. - The step counter doesn't count very high. It has four digits and it doesn't "roll over" at 9999 steps. It acts like it thinks it has five digits and now you only see every 10 steps. That is, unless you have power outage and it requires a resets where the step counter resets and is counting by individual steps...