General Information

These are built by Aerobics Inc. They have been building treadmills since the late 60's and have quite a tradition of making a spartan, high quality treadmill. The new lineup from Pacemaster is a much fresher approach and the results are good. Our hesitation would be what the competition has done while they were restructuring the business and models. Many companies like Precor have become very aggressive in pricing while many of the more economical brands like NordicTrack are offering similar quality products for hundreds less.

Quality / Philosophy

They have always trusted putting quality into the treadmill rather than trying to hit a lower selling price and that has served them well but with the influx of lower-priced, imported units Pacemaster has it hands full. Additionally, other competitors like Precor that used to be higher priced alternatives are now lower priced very aggressive competitors.

Outlook

From our perspective it is up in the air. It is hard to imagine that a consumer would buy a ProTouch VR model for $2499 when you could arguably get a equal or better Precor 9.27 for $1999. Then you have NordicTrack with more features, albeit a somewhat lesser quality tread for $1499. We just don't know how they are going to weather the continued recession.