Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a very effective little machine that is priced right. It has one flaw which brings it down one star, however; I will elaborate this defect at the end. And it's not the fact that the hydraulic piston heats up while you exercise, as so many others have already noted. My laser thermometer tells me the temperature goes up to about 200 degrees F after a 30 minute workout. Because the hydraulic fluid heats up as you use it, I have to turn up the "tension" one notch or so about every five to seven minutes to keep a consistent work effort. I start off with an initial setting of 4 and then end up at around 10 or 11 after 30 minutes of work. After a few months of use I ended up having to set the back end on the first step of my stairs in order to get a challenging enough workout. Otherwise, even at its highest setting I wouldn't get a challenging enough workout to build up a good sweat. Now I use six one inch hardwood boards to prop up the back end (I also have them stacked against the front of a sofa so they don't move around) so that I don't have to set up the machine at the foot of my stairs every time I want to use it. Using the boards like I do you can adjust the height up and down for varying degrees of increased effort. This is really a lightweight machine, so I have to modify the environment to make it work. I imagine that a much heavier individual (I weigh 144 lbs) might tear it apart after no more than a year. But for the money it's still a good buy even if you had to replace it after a year's heavy use. You get what you pay for, as the saying goes. The bad part: the cable that connects the simple little computer via an EXTREMELY thin/flimsy wire to the sensor hidden in the rail under the seat broke after only 10 months of use and approximately 62,000 reps. (I keep track of the reps by placing a small mark on the machine every time it turns over at 10,000 reps...if I hit a million reps, maybe I'll buy myself a nice gaming laptop one day...I'm up to 112,000 reps after 14 months...so maybe a few more years...haha). Said wire is about the thinnest gauge possible, and on top of that the plastic sheathing for the copper wires is very stiff, cheap, plastic. I wrote the company complaining about it and they sent me a new one but not until I paid $7. I suppose it's not much, but the point is that it didn't last a year, and on top of that the wire is very clearly cheaply made. They could have spent another 2 cents per unit to put in a thicker-gauged, more flexible, wire. after I replaced the wire I covered the portion that rubs against the frame with about 6 inches of 1/4 inch drip hose to protect it. I have attached two photos. One showing my setup with the one inch boards, and the other one showing where the cheap/stiff wire can break with use, and how I protected it with 1/4 inch hose.