New Features on Precor Treadmill

Companies have to keep up with technology, and the world of home fitness equipment is no exception.

On new Precor treadmills and ellipticals, you can clip in your iPad or tablet so it’s right in front of you and within reach. There are also easy-to-use features on the console, complete with pre-programmed workouts.

Watch Craig & Hut’s video review:

 

Hut: All right, this is Hut Allred from New Wave Fitness here with Craig Lewin from Busy Body and Fitness Headquarters.

Craig: Hello.

Hut: Hello. Today we are talking about a treadmill. Last month we went over the Octane updates. The new and improved Octane. Now, Precor has got to do the same.

Craig: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing watching the vendors change things up. It’s fun, not just for the people out there buying the stuff, but it’s also fun for the people who are growing up in these stores, coming in here every day and making the world a better place. It’s so great when we get new product in. It just livens things up and makes it a lot of fun.

Hut: It’s time for updates. We’ve had the same consoles and formats for a little bit.

Craig: We are all ready, and Precor was ready. But, Precor always makes sure before they release the products that they are really top notch. They make sure that everything is so dialed in. They could have released stuff like this a year ago, but with their testing that they do, they really go above and beyond with everything and make sure that it’s perfect so that when they release it, we all go, “Wow, this is incredible.” They’ve done that.

Hut: With technology, they have to have it working efficiently.

Craig: They have to make sure because there’s a lot of things that are changing nowadays. The connectivity of the iPads is a big deal. That was one of the big things that they did. You notice, I just went ahead and just mounted the iPad up here. This is really cool. You can put an iPad in here if you want to. You can dock it. You can dock it sideways. You can dock it up and down, which is really easy. You just have these little clips that hold it in place. So, they’ve done a really good job with that, which is cool.

The other thing which is nice is it’s very user-friendly. They’ve made it so simple. Everything’s got little touch-sensitive buttons that are heat-sensitive. It’s really cool. When you go here, the first thing you could do if you want is that the machine recommends a program for you to do for the day. It’s random, it’s kind of cool.

Hut: That is great.

Craig: So, right now it suggests to work on glute toner. If I hit the “go” button, boom, it just takes you right to that glute toner program. So, that’s kind of a fun [indiscernible 02:03].

Hut: Yeah, the navigation looks really efficient.

Craig: So, what’s really cool about this machine here is that you’ve got workouts here, and all you have to—it’s very simple, it’s all touch—is hit the workouts button and then it will literally take you through and say, “What do you want to do?” Do you want to do “be fit”, “lose weight”, “push performance”, “get toned”? If I put my finger over these buttons here—”lose weight”, “push performance”, “get toned”, like I said, “go the distance”, “fitness test”—so, let’s just say I pick one like “go the distance”. I hit open, and then it asks me what I want to do. One mile, 5k, 10k…so, it’s really cool how they’ve done all of that.

So, I’m going to choose to do, let’s say, a 5k. Hit the start button, and away it goes. Now, I’m going to hit “stop” or pull the emergency cord out so you don’t fall off the back of the treadmill because you’re balancing on the treadmill in the video tape, right? So, that’s really cool.

The other thing is, you see here it says “suggested workout aerobic”, if I just hit the “go” button, that’s where you’re going to have the customization where it automatically tells you, “I want to do this type of a program.” It’s a random thing that Precor automatically does. So, when you get on, if you want to do something different, just hit the “go” button and it will take you through the program. So, that makes it really simple.

You could hit the quick start which is always easy as well. The biggest thing is that everything looks so nice, it’s really easy to use. This right here is your iPad. So, you can take this and you can pick whatever you want on your iPad, and you can turn it. See how these move, I think that’s the coolest thing. It doesn’t have to be and iPad. It can be some of those little Nooks, or things like that. So, you can make it as big or as small as you want to make it.

Hut: Awesome.

Craig: So, they’ve made that really easy too. So, just a gorgeous console. Precor did a ton of testing, and this is one thing they do with random people that they grab, the public. They ask them to come to their place in Seattle and get on the machines. They don’t tell them anything about it. They say, “Hey, just get on and go. Just try it. Hit the “start” button. Do whatever you want to do and navigate through the console. Tell us what you think.” They got such amazing feedback saying how easy it was for them to use it. That was something on the older ones that it was still good, but they knew that they needed to make it a little bit better. They didn’t make it a little better, they made it a lot better. It’s really simple.

Hut: How many program options do you have?

Craig: You’ve got 22 programs on this machine, so there’s a lot of programs. They’ve got them set up in different categories, which is really cool for you. Like heart rate categories, or fitness test categories. So, that makes it really easy. The other thing too is that’s not including if you wanted to do user programs as well. So, you’ve got four different user profiles, like you had one…

Hut: So, you have 22 plus four.

Craig: Actually, more than that because you have four user profiles and they have, I believe, four saved custom programs within each user setting, which adds another 16.

Hut: Oh, wow.

Craig: So, you’ve got a lot of variation on the treadmill that you can go in. They’ve also made it really easy. So, when people say, “How do I create my own program? Do I have to go in and pick each segment? How does that work?” They’ve made it very simple. All you do is you do the program you want to do or you do a quick start, incline it, decline it, speed it up, slow it down, right? At the end it will ask you if you want to save it. That has made it so user-friendly.

Hut: Which is way easier than the old way.

Craig: Yeah, it makes it a lot simpler. So, that was their big upgrade with the console. It looks amazing. You guys will have to come in and try it out just to see how beautiful it is. It’s tough to show it justice on the camera. It’s really amazing.

All of their little contact buttons are easy to use, easy to navigate through. For instance, this says calories. You’ve burned four calories. But, when I hit the button, it then changes it to calories per minute. If I hit the button again, it says calories per hour. If I hit it again, it tells me Mets and the Watts.

Hut: So, you’ve all of that information at your fingertips.

Craig: Same thing with the heart rate. Current heart rate, I hit the button again and it says average heart rate, I hit the button again and it says maximum heart rate. It allows you to customize it really easily. The rest of the stuff is what Precor has been good at for a long time. It’s there bread and butter which is heavy duty treadmill, incredibly quiet. They’ve got some of the softest suspension in the industry.

So, all the stuff that’s down here they’ve really been good at with their deck and their rollers and their frame. That stuff hasn’t changed because they hit it out of the park with that already. Their big update was from the neck up. It’s exciting to see what they’ve done. It’s really cool.

One last thing I want to tell, which I really love—because this has only been on their commercial stuff. I know I just got real excited about buttons, but if you take these toggle switches, all you have to do is hold it up like this or hold it down and it’s amazing how fast it gets right to that elevation or the speed. The same thing with the speed. I just hold this toggle button up or I hold the toggle button down and it takes me right to that speed.

That ease of use is unbelievable and it’s only something that we have seen on their mega high end product. I’m talking eight, nine, ten thousand dollar units that we have. They brought it into the home version. That’s my favorite part of the entire machine.

Hut: That’s great. That allows you to make some quick adjustments with your program.

Craig: You know how people are doing interval training a lot and they say, “Well, I need it to get to this speed quicker, and this to be quicker, and I don’t want to have to push a bunch of buttons.”

Hut: That allows you to do that.

Craig: It’s just really user friendly. The goal for us is to keep your face from planting into the deck. We would like that not to happen. With those buttons you don’t have to worry about, “Oh, what am I doing?” So, it just makes it really easy.

Hut: That’s great. That’s the updated Precor console. So, if you want to come and try it out, come into our stores, the Busy Body location. We’re here in Plan, back at Plano.

Craig: Back at Plano, yeah. We’ve been circling around all the stores. We kind of made a full circle.

Hut: And we haven’t reached half of them. We like to show you all different locations, but definitely come to any of those. Check out this Precor. I think it’s a great treadmill, and a great update to the console.

Craig: It’s exciting. One last thing to know is that they have done those same updates on all of their ellipticals as well, which is kind of cool. So, customers come in look at the treads, the ellipticals, and see the updates they’ve done. They’ll be pretty excited about it.

Hut: Great. Well, that’s the Precor. I guess we’ll see you next month.

Craig: Yeah, we’ll do it.

Hut: Alright. Well, y’all have a great month and we’ll talk to y’all next month.

Craig: Thanks, Hutalicious.

Hut: Thank you, baby.