Thinking about buying a treadmill anytime soon? If so, you aren’t alone. Millions of people are flocking to purchase their own home gym equipment. Treadmills have been leading the pack for a long time as one of the preferred ways to get cardiovascular exercise into your daily life. Previously, you had to spend a lot of money for even some of the cheapest treadmills. Nowadays, prices have come down considerably. In fact, you can find budget-friendly treadmills scattered across the marketplace. That being said, you will need to make some sacrifices when it comes to features and performance in some cases. Below, we will be going over what you should expect when buying a budget-friendly treadmill.
What to Expect:
1. No Connected Device Integration
For one, you shouldn’t be expecting to have the same experience as the higher-end models in the marketplace. These inexpensive treadmill models are touting connected device features that can allow you to take part in live or on-demand classes with other fitness enthusiasts. While it would be excellent to be able to get these features packed into your treadmill, if you are willing to sacrifice them, you can find a lot of high-quality treadmills in your respective price range. While there are a few treadmills that may be within your price range that do include these features, you will still have to pay at the lower end of the high-end pricing tier to get them.
2. No Integrated Display
A lot of the budget-friendly treadmills do have some type of display, but it will typically be a basic LCD display. You shouldn’t expect to get a fully integrated display capable of showing media content or anything like that. While this does depend on your definition of budget-friendly, it’s important to note that you will likely have to sacrifice display integration. That being said, this shouldn’t be considered a huge loss for most people. After all, you will be able to use your own smartphone or tablet if you want to consume media while you are using the treadmill. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a deal-breaker by any means.
3. Fewer Features
You should be expecting to get a lot of fewer features in the treadmills that you are considering. However, a lot of the features you will find baked into the higher tier of the marketplace are by no means must-have. A lot of the features are quality-of-life features that aren’t going to negatively impact your experience too much if you never had them to begin with. Some of the features you may have to sacrifice are built-in workout programs, horsepower, touchscreen controls, and Wi-Fi compatibility.
As you can see, there are plenty of things that you will have to sacrifice if you want to shop at the lower end of the price spectrum within the treadmill space. However, you can find a lot of high-quality treadmills that have just about everything that you would actually need to get effective workouts from them. Therefore, you should be able to find a budget-friendly treadmill that suits your specific use-case very well without much effort.