Poor quality along with poor customer service make for an experience that will curl your hair. I suppose that is an added bonus for buying this Proform. Not only will it curl your hair but it will also upset your stomach, raise your blood pressure, and make you wish that you catch a fatal disease so you can avoid the pain associated with being an owner of such an awful treadmill. If you want to avoid the drama, simply don't buy this machine. If you own it, burn it!
General Information
These products are produced by Icon Health and Fitness. They are the largest retail fitness company. This is one of the original Icon brands and can be found in most mass merchants. They typically range between $500 and $1,500 and have short warranties for the most part although they have excellent warranties on the high end. We have seen a shift in regard to that on mainly motors in some units. The gee-whiz factor is high on these machines because they are packed with features but those have tended to be glitch prone. Except for the higher priced units with a selling price of $1000 or more, we wouldn?t recommend these for runners, but the quality of the machine is so much better than the ones produced just a few years ago, most people who are walkers or casual users will be satisfied with the new Proforms.
Quality / Philosophy
Proform is produced by Icon, a company with thousands of employees and large resources. Put simply, their machines have the best design in the business. Icon has a long, storied history that provides an example of how the big keep getting bigger. Icon used to be the mass-market darling because of their cheap prices but they used to have quality to match. These days they put quality into the machines and pack them with features. Icon also has the worst customer service in the business but we rate the machines by the individual machine quality, not the quality of their service. Proform is still saddled with many models from their past but the quality has rapidly improved, especially with their machines in the $1000 and up range.
Outlook
Icon is the largest fitness equipment producer in the world with over $1 billion in sales. If the fitness industry were a solar system, Icon is so powerful that they would be the Sun. In terms of stability they are the best, but overall their customer service isn?t up to the standards of any of the lower volume producers. Although you get a value price for the product, you also get value service so keep this in mind when buying their machines- apparently they price their machines so low in comparison to other companies that they don?t have money left for service. Due to the sheer number of units they produce, we pick up support in many cases where this factory leaves off.
