Ellipticals Run Ovals Around Treadmills

(Consumer Reports) - The Low-Impact Machines Are Gaining in Popularity; 4 Test Well for Home Use

Giving the top-selling treadmill a run for its money, elliptical exercisers seem to be gaining in popularity: Ellipticals are among the most widely used machines in health clubs, and the number of participants in elliptical exercise rose from 2.4 million in 1997 to 6.2 million in 2000, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

Elliptical exercisers are the marriage of a stair climber and a cross-country-ski machine. Your feet, on pedals, move in flattened circles. Your arms, hands grasping handlebars, move back and forth. The machine resists the motion of your arms and legs with a flywheel that is braked in one of two ways. On most machines designed for home use, a band around the flywheel's rim provides resistance. Most health-club ellipticals have magnetic resistance, which makes pedaling feel smoother. All in all, elliptical exercise is a good concept:

• The oval-shaped pedaling motion doesn't pound the joints the way running on a treadmill can. People older than 55 and those with knee problems are among the most devoted users.

• Ellipticals provide a weight-bearing workout, which helps protect bones against osteoporosis, unlike pedaling an exercise bike, swimming or using a rowing machine.

• Unlike most treadmills and exercise bikes, a typical elliptical has movable handlebars that add an upper-body workout.

• Ellipticals are easy to master.

• In our tests, ellipticals rivaled treadmills in the number of calories burned with the same perceived effort.

Although home machines don't match the bigger, smoother (and far more expensive) health-club models, the four ellipticals we recently tested proved quite capable of providing a good workout to someone who's moderately fit. Beginning exercisers may have to pedal slowly on these machines to avoid overexertion. And very fit users may find the maximum resistance on some too easy to provide an aerobic benefit. We based our scores on ease of use, ergonomics, exercise factors and durability, as judged by our engineers.

The top pick among our four test machines was the Reebok Elliptical Crosstrainer 6808 ($500), a fixed-incline model that scored the highest among the group in ergonomics. Its pedals hold the user's feet securely, and we found it easy to mount and dismount. Its main flaw was an annoying tendency to sway and twist during vigorous exercise -- enough at times to interfere with its operation if we pushed too hard on its handlebars.

Another very good machine, the NordicTrack VGR990, has more features than the Reebok (including smooth-pedaling magnetic resistance), but at $1,000 it costs twice as much. We were impressed by the ease with which its electronic controls adjusted resistance and incline. Yet the NordicTrack's pedals are too narrow, and you can't get on it from behind. (You have to step over it, as if mounting a bicycle.)

The other two models we tested -- the ProForm 695E ($500) and the fixed-incline FitnessQuest Eclipse 5000 ($600) -- scored slightly lower. Despite high marks for ease of use (we liked its preset programs and electronic control for resistance), the FitnessQuest proved somewhat unstable, at times "walking" across a hard-surface floor during vigorous exercise. The ProForm features manual incline and resistance adjustments, but -- as with the FitnessQuest -- its monitor is placed too close to the exerciser for easy viewing.

Meanwhile, quality control fell short in all the ellipticals, with each developing one or two minor glitches. These included clunking pedals in the ProForm, a broken pulley on the NordicTrack, a scraping pedal linkage in the Reebok and squeaking noises in the FitnessQuest.