Precor Technology: Home Fitness Equipment Review #04

What will they think of next? A monitor/screen attachment is an option for Precor fitness equipment. You can plug in your own media, your iPod–listen to your own music, watch TV or your own videos or movies–or connect the machine to cable.

Watch the video below as Hut Allred of New Wave Fitness and Craig Lewin from Busy Body show you some of the super-cool features that Precor has to offer!

Hut: I’m here again with Craig Lewin. I’m Hut Allred with New Wave Fitness. We’re at Busy Body and we’re going to bring to you some more in-home fitness equipment to help you achieve your goals.

Today we’re going to talk about some technology that you can add to any of your Precor fitness equipment—treadmills, ellipticals and bikes. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what we have in store for our viewers today?

Craig: Absolutely. Here’s the big thing: We get bored. People get on the machines and they need entertainment, they need things to take their mind away from it. What’s great about these units is if you get into some of the commercial style Precor models they actually give us the option of adding entertainment to it.

When you purchase it, you can customize it with a screen that’s built into it that will let you hook up you iPod, listen to all your music on there, watch all your television programs on there you want to, watch any iPod videos you have downloaded right on the screen. That’s a big thing. When you’re on a treadmill, let’s say for 30 or 45 minutes, and you want to watch your favorite show, to have it built right into it is huge.

Hut: It allows you to move your equipment anywhere you want without worrying about having a T.V. on the wall or hooking up to that. It just makes it a lot more efficient.

Craig: Yes, I think that’s a big thing, too. Like you said, a lot of times people are trying to design the room and they think, “I have to have the T.V. in there,” and all that and sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way. Here, you’ve got it built right into it. If you have cable, you can, literally, run a co-ax cable right into the back. It’s very simple.

Or, like I said, if you don’t even want to mess with the cable part and you just want to hook up your iPod and watch videos off that, you can do that, so that’s a great feature as well.

Hut: Great. Why don’t you come on over here, Tim, who’s behind the camera there, and let’s look at it and see what it has in store for us.

Craig: This is really cool. Precor is, obviously, our leading manufacturer for treadmills, ellipticals, and exercise bikes. They just do an amazing job. What’s great with this screen is it’s so innovative. Never did I think in all the years that we would be selling equipment like this. It just looks so unbelievable. What’s amazing about this is all I did was hit “Start” on our manual mode and I’m going to lower the screen down and we’ve got cable hooked right up.

It’s really easy. You can plug your headphones in right down here and there you’ve got our new Gold Medalist Volleyball player, Misty May-Treanor, who’s showing off her skills. It’s pretty amazing. The screen quality is unbelievable, too. A lot of people ask that as well, like, “Yes, but is the quality good?” Look how crystal clear this is.

Hut: It’s crystal clear. It’s amazing.

Craig: That makes a huge difference.

Hut: There’s a little glare right now because we’re in the window but it’s awesome.

Craig: Isn’t that cool? The other thing, too, here is that when you’re using this screen another great thing, talking about technology, is that you can see here it has the total distance, your calories, your time, your pace. But watch this. If I just hit this button right here, it’s going to drop down and it’s going to say not just distance but how much distance is maybe remaining within the program.

If I hit calories, it will say, well, there’s my calories but that’s how many calories per minute, per hour. It’s amazing. Then you can just hit the screen again and it will come right back up or time remaining is an hour but time elapsed is one minute. Maybe you want to see the segment time of the program you’re doing. Here’s your heartrate—average heartrate, maximum heartrate. Obviously, we don’t have a chest strap hooked up right now.

Hut: So that’s all built into the screen so you’re watching T.V. and you’re able to navigate through and see where you are in your cardio program and get the data that you need to make sure you’re on target with your plan. It’s awesome.

Craig: Yes. It’s really simple. The other thing is if you need to change the channel, this is so easy. T.V. channels and boom! You can see there are a bunch of channels listed and you can literally just walk up to it and say, “Yeah, I want to do that channel. Great,” hit the “Go” button and it’ll change to that channel for you automatically.

Hut: It’s so easy to navigate through.

Craig: It’s really simple. Speed adjustments are easy on this treadmill too. Speeding up is here so you just push a little button here. Inclining is here. What’s neat about this treadmill, too, is you can actually take it and decline on the treadmill.

Hut: Wow! You’re working opposing muscle groups.

Craig: Yes. You can go downhill too. I know the focus for today isn’t so much about the machine but more the technology but still the quality of it is really phenomenal. What’s great is even with Precor, with this touchscreen that they call it. This is called a TRM (for treadmill) 885. It’s their absolute top of the line for treadmill.

When you hit “Stop,” it’s going to say “Workout paused.” If I hit “Finish”—it’s all touchscreen—it’s going to give me a full workout completion and tell me my distance, my miles, my averages. It’s amazing.

Hut: You can track all that, plug it in and just review it as you move forward with your goals?

Craig: Yes, it’s really cool. Here’s the other neat thing, too. At the beginning here, if I click “Workouts,” look at all these workouts.

Hut: Wow!

Craig: These are all for weight-loss, fat-burning workouts, et cetera. I can take this here and I can just scan down to look at more. Look at this! Let’s just say we did a Be Fit, there’s all this different stuff. I can hit “Get Toned” and there’s Glute Toner, Glute Toner Plus, Leg Sculptor, Test Your Fitness. Look at this! If I wanted to do the Air Force cardio program that they do, I put in my age, weight, tell them I’m male and away it goes. It’s literally going to take you through the exact same test that you get in the military.

Hut: That is great. That’s so important making it that easy and multiple tests because it allows you to track how you’re improving, which keeps you on target with your program.

Craig: I think what’s important is just variety, too.

Hut: It’s key.

Craig: That’s a huge thing. I’m going to hit “Stop” so our film man here doesn’t fall off. Tim, if you can come over here for a second, just to show your viewers really quickly that if they want they can get that option on any of their higher end machines. Here’s an AMT, which we’ll talk about in the future, but you can do the same thing. You can put that screen on this unit. Pretty cool.

Hut: That is great.

Craig: And you can do it on the recumbent bike as well. So the recumbent bike, the upright, you can do it on all that stuff. Pretty amazing.

Hut: Great. That’s pretty nice if you’re getting bored and you want to add a little technology. If you’re the type of folk who’s looking for that, that’s a great accessory to add. We appreciate you watching this month. We look forward to bringing you some more equipment next month. Come on it and test out some of this equipment. It really is something that can add a lot of value to your workout program making it a lot more efficient.

Craig: Absolutely.

Hut: Good stuff, Craig.

Craig: Thanks, man.