Nautilus E514 Elliptical Trainer

Nautilus E514 Elliptical Trainer
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Find the Bestsellers I ordered this product from Amazon last November. It's been an overall bad experience so far.

First of all, when the unit arrived at my house, the box looked like it had been dropped from an airplane. It was covered with black grime and there were several holes. I should have refused shipment at that time, but I was excited to start my exercise program and did not want to wait another 2 weeks. So I did a quick inspection and since most of the parts were metal I figured it was OK and accepted the box.

This turned out to be a bad decision as even though most of the parts were metal, there were some plastic parts and they had been damaged (strictly cosmetic). I figured I could easily call Nautilus and have them replaced, so I started assembling the machine. Unfortunately Nautilus refused to supply a replacement part and told me I should send the machine back to Amazon. Obviously this was not happening after I had already assembled the machine.

The assembly took about 2.5 hours (and I am fairly mechanically inclined.) Some of the parts did not go together easily.

The electronic display looks nice, but has some minor design flaws. The worst one of these in my opinion is the heart rate monitor. It takes about 20-30 seconds to get anywhere near an accurate reading. No matter what my heart rate is when I grip the handlebars the monitor always starts at 72, then goes to 80, then 100, then 120, then small increments until it eventually gets to where my heart rate actually is. I would think it would be easy to get a fairly close estimate after the first few beats. I guess I could use the heart rate strap, but it does not look very comfortable.

Also, the workouts are divided into 40 segments. For some reason the unit is unable to divide the time properly unless the workout is a multiple of 10 minutes. So you wind up getting extra intervals at the end of the workout. Also, the workout routinely tells you to increase or decrease your stride, which I find odd for a machine that has a fixed stride. I guess the workout texts were just copied from another machine.

Overall the machine does not feel very solid, I am 280 lbs and the machine sometimes sways from side to side while I am working out. Also, Nautilus did not include a tube of grease with the machine, and now it is starting to make a grinding noise on one side, so I am going to have to stop using it until I can get grease from the manufacturer. Maybe my expectations were too high for a product priced at $650, but I would be surprised if this product lasts until the warranty is up.

Update 2/4/10 - The right 'pedal' has started to come apart, I am going to have to call Nautilus customer service tomorrow. Will report my experience here. Downgraded rating to one star pending speedy and successful resolution. In Stock. Nautilus E514 Elliptical Trainer on deal today and Free Shipping!