Review by Mr. A. Hutton:

i ordered on wednesday night and it arrived friday morning.took 2 of us about half hour to put together,with no probs!it is a very sturdy piece of kit and very smooth and quietish(just a slight drone from the belt on the flywheel),but can easily still hear the tv.

i used it for about 10 mins and i am very impressed,no jarring on your joints and i would say probably the best exercise equipment i have used(and i have had a few)

i really like the fact it has adjustable handle height as i am only 5ft 1,and i can use it very comfortably.

looking forward to using properly tomorrow.i defo recommend this,well worth the money,

Review by Bryan Foss:

Seems quite substantial to start, but even with limited use the friction belt has worn through and I’ve no idea how to buy another or to physically replace it (as the lower end of the friction belt is inside the pedal casings). Not happy that it hasn’t lasted long.

Review by Lynne Macdonald:

Hi,

I bought this item last month. I was looking for a quick workout that would help me manage my weight and tone me up. I am really happy with this purchase.

The machine is really sturdy and the movement is really smooth. There is various programs you can do and also the user profile is good. This allows you to put your height, age and weight in and then each tim you go on you can see how many cals youve burnt off, how far you would have gone etc.

I think this is a sound puchase at a fair price!

Review by Hampstead Mackem:

nice heavyweight machine at a decent price on Amazon. Good aerobic workout even if your knees are shot like mine. You’ll need an ipod / TV tho because it’s very boring.

Review by J. Blythe:

Well, I have to say that I think the other people who have reviewed this are being a little unfair with their stars!!! I had reviewed this on other sites before coming here and everyone is giving it 4 or 5 stars.

I wont deny that it took me and the missus 1.5hrs to put together, but all went smooth and I didnt think it was particularly difficult. If you’ve ever put flat-pack furniture together, then this is no different. But two people is a big help in a couple of situations.

After trying it out, I was well chuffed (although shattered after 15mins). The movement quality is fantastic, very sturdy and very smooth. Even better than I had expected. I do quite a bit of cycling and I must say that the cycling motion feels a little weird – but hey, you cant have everything. All in all, I would recommend this, I have seen a lot worse for a lot more cash and I have yet to see anything better.

Review by wolfcub:

This product is an excellent buy at the price and I am exceedingly pleased at my purchase. I bought this over an year ago and have used it consistently since then. It is very well made and lets you get on with your exercise.

Pros:

* Very sturdy in my experience. Once put together properly, the equipment is rock solid. The equipment parts are heavy for a reason; you’ll appreciate the sturdiness once you start using it. The handlebar movement was smooth and fluid, and more importantly, has continued to remain so.

* Quite feature rich as detailed above. Seat can be adjusted for height and reach. Footplate can be fixed in one of two positions. Resistance levels can be adjusted. Hand pulse sensors to monitor heart rate. Recovery mode to indicate how well your heart rate recovers in a 60-second period at end of exercising.

* LCD control at the front is really well laid out. The screen is split into a top and bottom section. The bottom section shows rpm, time, distance, calories and pulse. It shows a running count of time, distance and calories which ticks over at 99, unless you’re using it a target mode where it counts down to zero from the target. The top section cycles through each of rpm, time, distance etc at 10-15 sec intervals. The LCD panel probably was the single biggest factor in motivating me to keep working out – the fact that I can visually see how much effort I’ve put in.

* Silent! If put together properly, it works without creaks and aches. After several months of use, it did start creaking once, but application of oil at the creaking joints and it has stayed silent since.

* Quite compact for a crosstrainer. The base of the crosstrainer bars jut out a bit during use, but not by much. For a person like me who doesn’t have too much space to spare, it’s an ideal buy.

* It’s easy to move around on a flat surface. The rubber treads are excellent in this regard. I’ve never had the trainer move when exercising, yet the rubber treads really do make it easy to move the trainer around. They don’t leave any marks on the floor either.

Cons:

* Can be difficult to put together. It is the toughest piece of equipment I’ve assembled; it took me around 2 hours to do it. I don’t recollect the total number of parts involved, but there were quite a lot. Some of the parts are quite heavy and assembling them without a second person around can be a thrilling experience. The instructions I seem to remember being a bit cryptic. I finally relied on the engineering-style machine drawing showing the parts fitting together as that seemed easier to follow.

* Disassembling it for any reason is even harder. I tried it once and I failed. I’ve since decided that I’m not disassembling it when I move house as I’m not willing to spend the time and effort it’d take to disassemble and then assemble it again.

Review by I. Cameron:

Online reviews give this “budget” level trainer top scores, and while I’d have liked to do the same it did have a couple of shortcomings.

But firstly the good stuff:

For non-commercial kit it feels very robust, and with a bit of care and maintenance (all machines need this) it’s likely to provide good service for years.

The display is clear and easy to use with some good basic features as standard. While more programmes can be plugged in, in my experience these tend to be more entertaining than effective so I’m more than happy with the stock ones.

The heart rate feature works well, although you need to swap your grip to the centre console, which is a little inconvenient. It would have been better to have the sensors in the main grips. However for me this was a minor gripe as I’ve ordered the wireless chest monitor anyway – they’re far more accurate than ANY hand sensors.

The folding action is a great feature when it’s not in use, although this did contribute to a problem below…

The pedalling action and resistance are very comfortable and smooth, and supposedly silent, although mine almost immediately developed both a “squeak” and a “clank”… and so on to the bad stuff…

I traced these noises to two suferficial and easily rectified problems. So easy in fact they should really have been done in the factory…

1) The rear axle bearings weren’t sufficiently greased, and the “dry” action was causing the squeak. This was easily sorted using the tools and grease provided (other bearings need to be greased during assembly but the rear axles are pre-assembled). A generous dose of grease and the squeak was gone, but this was something that should definitely have been addressed in the factory.

2) The folding feature means the pedals clip on and off the rear axles. As they’re not permanently fixed this allows for some sideways movement hence the clanking. Again this was easily sorted with a couple of small squares of carpet gripper, but is something that again should have been adressed in the design/manufacture.

So with 5 minutes of minor effort and a bit of common sense everything is now A+ and I’m enjoying my workouts. It’s a shame these minor niggles weren’t sorted by the manufacturer and while I’m pretty handy with a spanner it’s this sort of thing that can lead customers to send things back.

Nevertheless it definitely deserves 4 stars, and I’d have loved to give it 5.

Review by Mr. A. J. Sinclair:

Bought this on my family’s recommendation.

Great for easy training which is ideal for me at 63yo.

Less hassle on the joints as you might get from a treadmill.(as my family told me)

Suspect my daughter wanted me to buy it as she takes it to the limit and says the trainer is harder than the ones at the gym. Can’t vouch for this as I only use it for daily light routine work outs.

Easy to put together. Easier with 2 people although I did it alone.

If you opt for the cheap delivery(very quick from sweatband) you can open the box and transfer all the parts individually to the chosen room.

Only tip I can leave is this. If you find a self tapping screw is getting too tight then unscrew and clean any plastic from the thread. Repeat this until the screw is fully tightened in place. This is because the head might round off(if it’s too tight) and the driver will be useless if you have to loosen the part to grease etc.

Altogether a great sturdy bit of equipment.

The other reviews cover the rest.

I looked everywhere at reveiws and this came tops. 95% in one reveiw.

I’m really happy with my purchase.

Review by Lyndy:

I decided to buy this cross trainer because it is a Which? Best Buy. I wish I’d read the other Amazon reviews first as there is a recurring problem with this piece of kit in which the drive belt becomes detached. In my case this happened after a couple of minutes of use. I took a day off work, spent two hours putting it together and another hour dismantling it again, all for 2 minutes of exercise.

This is a known problem that has been happening for at least a year which suggests that York have a pretty poor quality control process which they are making no effort to improve.

The whole sorry episode was made more annoying by the problem I had with the delivery company HNDS, who have to be the most useless and unreliable delivery company on the face of the planet. Every time I phoned them I was kept on hold for ages and when I finally got through I was told I had to ring a different number because it was a ‘special’ delivery. I never managed to speak to anybody on this second number as it was never answered. In the end if I wanted to contact HNDS I went via Amazon who, to their credit, were very efficent.

After the bad experience with York I decided to go for a Tunturi cross trainer. However HDNS, true to form, managed to screw that up as well as they failed to deliver on 3 separate occasions.

Review by K. Macleod:

Decided on the York X302 as it seemed like a quality product and also decent value for money. A best buy rating from Which, and some nice design features helped swing the decision.

The order was placed, waited a couple of weeks for delivery, took a couple of hours to assemble, and then -

Less than 30 seconds use, a strange noise, and it ground to a halt. After a quick inspection, it was aparent that the drive belt had gone over a pulley, then shredded and was now jammed.

Several swear words, and an hour to dismantle, and it was back in the box to return to Amazon.

As can be seen from previous reviews this is not an isolated incident – although I do seem to currently hold the record for the shortest time from start exercising to equipment failure. The fact that the problem appears common surely speaks volumes about York’s quality control. Any manufacturer that fails to rectify such a fundimental flaw and instead continues to sell this rubbish, is not worth spending money on.

I urge Amazon to withdraw this product from sale immediately as there is obviously a major design or production fault.

I will now be spending my cash on an elliptical trainer from a different manufacturer.

It should be noted that Amazon handled my complaint sympatheticaly and swiftly. They were most apologetic that I had experienced the same problem as others buying this piece of equipment, and agreed to act to remove the item from sale. That said, as I write this review the York X302 is still availible on Amazon. DO NOT BUY IT!!!

Review by Mr. W. G. Mcconnell Mcconnell:

Contrary to what I was informed the ‘Cross-Trainer’ was delivered just inside the front door. I had to carry it upstairs, not something I would recommend doing on ones own!

Assembly was straight-forward and easy to follow. Apart from the occasional squeak the Proform is a pleasure to use.