Merit Fitness 715T Plus Treadmill

I use a treadmill for weight loss. Over the last year I have lost a lot of weight and attribute a lot of my success to the treadmill. It was the one exercise I was able to stick with. When my treadmill broke I was in a bit of a panic. I did not have a thousand dollars to spend on a new one and yet I knew if I did not replace it quickly, I may fall back into my old habits and use it as an excuse to stop exercising.I was so pleased to find this low priced treadmill here on Amazon. With my Prime membership it was free shipping! I was like others who worried that the quality would be bad on such a low cost machine. The reviews on here really helped me and so I hope mine will help others who are trying to decide whether this is for them.The unit was fairly easy to put together but it all does depend on your own comfort level with assembling things. I made the mistake of going ahead on my own where it seemed obvious and then had to go back and unscrew a couple of things, but not bad overall.The unit is very sturdy! It is a bit more narrow than my old treadmill but honestly, it did not matter once I started using this I did not notice. If you are a real athlete that runs marathons then yes, maybe you would want a larger machine but for the average user I think this is perfect.Just a couple of things I wish would have been in the reviews so I am listing them here. I still think I would have purchased the machine since it was so cheap, but it may be helpful for others.My old machine had a slide lever that you could move up or down to increase or decrease your speed. That made it nice to be able to increase your speed in small increments. This machine you have a button for slower and one for faster. Each time you hit the button it jumps in increments such as, from 4.0 miles an hour to 4.5 miles per hour. There is no in between. You can't run 4.3 miles an hour. To some this may not seem like a big deal. To me, it is a big jump and I miss the ability to fine tune my speed. I have a friend who shopped for treadmills recently and told me even the expensive ones seemed to be like this now so there may no longer be ones out there that let you go in small increments.The other issue is that your time and your distance are on the same LED display. You have to hit the Start button to toggle between them. This does take some getting used to. I liked having them separate on my old machine. It helped me develop goals. I could look and see that I was approaching a mile and was doing it faster than before so I would increase my speed to try and beat my old record.Still, these are small things when you consider the low cost of the machine. If I had a thousand to spend then yes I might be more picky about the features. I don't use the thumb reader for heart rate, I have a belt I wear around my waist with a watch readout for that. To me, the fact that you are supposed to stand still for the reading makes the point moot. I want to know my heart rate while I am actually running.Very happy overall and would recommend this unit highly, especially if you are on a budget!

I got this treadmill when they were selling it for $280 one day, then the next day it jumped to $350, so sweet! I 9 times out of 10, prefer to go outside to get my runs in. But with new baby addition and sometimes bad weather, I'm not always feeling hardcore enough to deal with the cold and rain, sometimes I want to be a creature of comfort.I didn't want to drop a lot of dough, did my research, and found this one. I primarily went on fellow reviewers of amazon and other sites to make my decision and so far I'm pretty glad. I'll break it downPROS---------Came in really fast if you have prime (two days)Looks pretty sharp surprisingly for the priceAfter some tweaking and tightening the belt runs smoothDigital display of time, distance, calories, speedNot terrible on the noise, pretty quiet for the most partSet up wasn't hard at all, one person, 45 minutes or lessPretty light, not crazy light like they advertise, but decent and easy to movePrice!!3 incline choicesCONS---------Came in fast was 'cause of Prime was a pro right? Well maybe too fast, 'cause the box was shot to heck, and there was a few dents already!!!!It makes an irritating beeping noise when turning onYou better be someone that can book it, 'cause once you past 2.0mph this thing is flying, almost maybe too fastThumb press heart rate monitor is not accurate. I have a Polar Wearlink with my Nike+ GPS and it was showing me around 140bpm while the Treadmill was saying 60bpm, lol, if you trusted the treadmill to get to your zone you'll probably have a heart attackI don't know if there's a setting to change, but when doing a manual type run, it shuts down after an hour. Granted an hour is plenty, but some runs I do are over 6-7 milesNOTE TO CERTAIN ELECTRIC OUTLETS!!! ---> I had brought this thing upstairs, took an hour to put it together, everything looked great, plugged it in.... the room it was in shorted out.... lights out.... Flipped the breaker back, tried 4 more outlets, same result! I found some information online that certain treadmills need to be attached a certain way in some homes. So I had to buy a heavy duty "diagnostic" Type surge protector (even though I have a newer home that is supposed to be one giant surge protector all over) plugged the treadmill to that, plugged the surge into an outlet that previously shorted out, then wallah, it worked.I was about to be soooooo bummed and peeved if I had to figure out a way to get an electrician or someone with the treadmill company to come out and fix a brand new treadmill and / or break it all back down to return it.Special notes: When it comes in, there's a wire string coming out of one of the arms, that string is attached to the cord that supplies power to the motor and attaches to the head console. Don't do what I did and yank that string through the arm hole and loose the cord, and have to get pliers to fish it out. Pretty much without this cord, the treadmill won't run, and it can't be attached outside the arm, it has to be in. Once you get the treadmill you'll see what I'm talking about.Note to AMAZON: I love you guys, I love prime, I buy wayyyyyy too much products on here, tell this company they need to figure out something with their packaging, look at previous reviews, this is a trend, the box is coming in like crap!!!