Reviewlicious

This weekend I eventually got the courage to assemble our Nortictrack Audiostrider 990 Elliptical Trainer. I have been procrastinating from the day I ordered it because I knew it will be one big job, as it was. This model came up in my research as being one of the Elliptical Trainers with the best reviews for a home Elliptical Trainer.

Assembly:

I have assembled many products in my life, but this one from the start I was not looking forward to. The first hurdle was to get the crank itself out of the box and into our lounge. The assembly is a 2 person job in any event, but you need 2 strong people for it. Once we got all the components in the lounge where we assembled, we thought we are half way there – but little did we know.

Five minutes into assembly we ran into our most challenging task. The power ramp has a shaft that you have to grease and insert at the bottom of the power ramp. Now I have to explain, that in the beginning of the assembly instructions they tell you that you will need 2 of your own tools in addition to their ellen keys – a rubber hammer and a screwdriver. Yes, a hammer. Nowhere in the instructions do they ever tell you where to use the hammer, but getting the greased shaft into the power ramp clearly called for it. The great challenge was once we greased it and hammered it in; it would simply get stuck 80% into the power ramp. If we hammer even more we would pop out the component on the other side.

I think it took us about an hour to get this little greased shaft in. A very simple little component that made life real difficult for a while. The rest of the assembly was not too difficult. One other little snag was how they reference the screws washers and bolts. If you look at the diagram you will see for example you need crew # 116. Then you have to look on the bolts and screws reference page that will tell you that screw #116, is known as a 6mm crew. Then when you look in the bolts and screw package, find the 16mm screw. The numbers they tell you in the diagram like “#116″ is not written on the package itself, so you need to double reference to get the correct screws and bolts. But once you get the hang of it, it is not too bad.

The upper body cover needs 5 screws of which 2 goes directly into the metal. It was impossible to get the little screws into the metal without stripping the screws. We got the ones into the plastic, but in now way could we get the screws in the metal. I think if I drill the hole a little bigger it would work, but decided not to for now.

Quality:

When we went to Sears the first time to look at this Elliptical Trainer the floor model was squeaking very much. I thought it was because people are on and off of them all day so we decided to go to a different Sears to look at one. At the other Sears we found one that were smooth and quite, thus we agreed to buy.

After assembly the elliptical is smooth and quite. I will really only get a good workout on it today, but on my test run, I have no complaints. Having said that, I do want you to be aware of 2 other things I ran into which did not impress me too much.

When we unboxed the Elliptical Trainer, I looked at the construction and welding. Joints are not welded very smoothly. I noticed some joints will be welded, then not, then welding continued again. I am sure it is welded enough to withstand the weight of most adults, but when you pay this money and hear the great reviews, I at least expected to see nice welding done. As a side note, as most of our products we have in our home today, this product too is “Made in China”.

When I opened the box initially I noticed the plastic cover that is under the power ramp, did not close properly. It was of such a nature that I had to unscrew the molded plastic, re-align it and screw it back together. This was a plastic cover I was not suppose to have had to open, but it was obvious on the eye that it did not “click” together as it should have. I was not impressed that I had to rectify this before even starting to assemble the elliptical, but it was not too bad to fix.

Electricity Use and Money Savings:

Let’s look at the electricity use of the AudioStrider 990. It has a Ghost Load of 10 Watts. This means that even just having it plugged into the socket, it will draw 10 Watts. While working out on it, the power it drew increased to 16 Watts. What does this mean in Dollars and Cents?

At 9.99c per kWh as your electricity rate, if this unit were running on standby 24×7x365, it will cost you $8.55 per year, simply for being on standby. If you will disconnect it during times you do not use it or use a Bye Bye Standby Energy Savings Kit, assuming you work out for 2 hours a day (365 day a year), it will reduce your energy cost from $8.55 to $1.14 per year. That is a 87% reduction in energy cost.

As with every review I take the savings from every device and see how much it will add up to if you invest the savings in a conservative 1.75% savings account over 18-years. I call it your children’s little College Fund. If you invest the savings of $.7.41 per year for 18-years @ 1.75% interest it will add up to a $155.27 contribution towards your little College Fund.

The other savings component that is applicable here is if you had a Health Club Membership. Since it is reasonable to use the same elliptical for 6-years we will buy 3 Elliptical Trainers in 18-years. Using a 3% inflation variable, we will buy our first one for $1000 today (2009); second one for $1195 in 2015; third one at $1425 in 2021. This is a total hardware expense of $3620 over 18-years.

Since we no longer have a Health Club Membership of let’s say $30/month, let’s look at the savings. If you invest $30/month into a conservative 1.75% per year (0.145%/month) savings account, over 18-years (216 months) it would have grown to $7603. This $7603 is simply your Health Club savings. Deduct your investment into your 3 Elliptical Trainers over the 18-years and you have a gross savings of $3983 that you can put tight into your College Fund.