Horizon Fitness T101 Treadmill

C. Tarver on Sun, 24th Jan 2010 3:19 am 



Good Value, Excellent Machine
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought this unit just before Christmas, after several months of research. It has all the “must have” requirements. It was delivered promptly and packaged well. It is a solid, durable unit with a good warranty. I love the machine. I am not a heavy runner, mostly interval training. Use 3-5 times a week. The machine is v. quiet, and while it doesn’t have a million programs, it has what I need and the bells and whistles – fan, book holder, mp3, etc. The only complaint I’d have is that you can’t adjust the fan to blow directly on you. The blades for the fan exhaust are fixed. V. Minor. Speakers work well on the MP3. It’s a great machine for the price point.

Fit Nana on Sun, 24th Jan 2010 8:41 am 



STAY AWAY!
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
This is my fourth treadmill and my first experience with Horizon. I purchased the T101 November 27th, and it did not work when it was put together. I called Horizon and the lady ordered parts that took about a week to arrive. The tech could not fix it because they sent the wrong parts, and he ordered the correct ones. After two weeks I called to see where they were and was told no parts had been ordered. The tech said he did order them. Stan from Horizon said he was sorry and reordered the parts which should have arrived on January 7th. It is now the 12th and they aren’t here. The tech said they cannot find them either, and he was unable to get anyone at Horizon. I’ve left messages for two days with Horizon to please call me back and have gotten no response. Meanwhile I’ve had a treadmill for almost 7 weeks that I cannot use, and they will not extend my warranty. The store manager at Dunhams has been very understanding. Even though they usually have a 30 day return on this item, he is willing to take it back until January 30th. I don’t want to do that, as it will cost me to pay someone to return something I got on sale and cannot replace for that price. I just wish they’d repair it.

Update. It is now January 20. The parts arrived and the tech put them in on Saturday. He couldn’t calibrate it as Horizon wasn’t open. We were told to call on Monday. After leaving a message on their machine (you can’t reach a human), we got a return call yesterday. They emailed three sets of directions for several machines–none of which were our model, and the console didn’t match. Another message was left to call us back. I finally got through to a person today, and she walked us through the directions. No luck. The console will not communicate with the motor to run the belt. New parts will be ordered and should be here in two weeks!!!!!! This is unbelievable.

M. Caballero on Sun, 24th Jan 2010 1:12 pm 



Faboulus Treadmill
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This Treadmill is just excellent I did received it about two weeks ago; the machine is quite and very good quality as well the price. Also, Amzon’s custmore service is excellent the first time I got the machine was defective, contacted them and they replaced the treadmill in a timely manner, very quick service!!!. I would recommend this treadmill it’s very good quality, quiet and it has capability for a mp3 which is a plus.

David Roberts on Sun, 24th Jan 2010 4:16 pm 



Quality Construction
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Received this treadmill 2 days ago. Very easy to assemble. Quality construction. Very quiet motor. Heavy, but easy to roll to desired location. Will append review after using it for awhile.

Silver - Rockies on Sun, 24th Jan 2010 7:13 pm 



Great Value
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I was very pleased with my purchase. I had researched treadmills quite a bit before deciding on the Horizon T101. Most of my research stated that this was a good value for the price point and I would have to agree. The unit is sturdy, smooth and quiet. I weigh 230 lbs and the T101 didn’t have any issues. You will need 2 people to move the box. Assembling it was straight forward, 3 basic steps took about an 45 minutes to an hour. Now let see how it does over the long haul. I’ll amend my review should any issues arise.

Urutoraman on Mon, 25th Jan 2010 12:33 am 



Best Bang for your money
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’d been researching on doing a treadmill purchase for over a month and decided to go with a NordicTrack T5 Zi because of the delivery and assembly convenience from a local store. What a big mistake, the delivery company for the local store failed on the first attempt and the customer service insulted me on the second attempt. I asked for a refund…

My second choice was always a Horizon Fitness treadmill. After reading the reviews about the quality and service of Horizon Fitness, we decided to go with the T101, which is the basic model for 2010. Amazon had this with Free Super Saver shipping, a saving of over a hundred bucks.

Got it today delivered by CEVA on time and in perfect condition packaging. It was very well packaged and really heavy. Assembly was incredible easy, in fact easier than an elliptical machine I got 3 years ago. Quality is excellent, it has 4 points screws on the arms instead of the 2 from NordicTrack, this one feels really sturdy. In fact it looks higher in quality and the belt doesn’t have the gap area on the sides like all the other ICON fitness machines at the same price range.

Tested it for a couple of minutes, it have the same feel as a gym treadmill. For now I am really happy. Only time will tell.

Karen Best on Mon, 25th Jan 2010 10:50 am 



Great value for the price
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I researched the hell out of treadmill before buying this one looking at costco, sams club, amazon, sears, etc and reading product reviews all over the internet. What sold me on this the most was the east of assembly and the sturdyness. My husband is 6′-2 and 300lbs. This has a 300lb deck and we have had no problems. Also what this offered over other models in the same class was 2″ more of deck, a beafier motor and longer warrranty…all big pluses when you live in a rural area. A pleasant surprise on this model that wasnt listed was a cooling fan feature with three settings to at least move the air around your face when you get that heart pumping and a little sweat rolling down.

This is a fold up model, but I would like it more if folded up a full 90 degrees, but even at an angle, this has one of the highest angles that I’ve seen, folding at about at 65-70 degree angle…very much out of the way.

The thing is loaded with features, one which is nice is a VERY slow speed….1/2 mph…which for my extended family, is what my sneior father recovering from his second round of CHF needs. He know he needs to walk and has tried other friends treadmills, but they don’t go slow enough…usually only .7 of .8 mph. The .5 mph in his exhaustive, delicate state is perfect to start and move him up to .7 and .8 mph for 5-6 minutes. Doesn’t sound like much, but when your old and recovering, its alot. He’s already seen an improvement in his endurance. On the other end of the spectrum, I like to move that incline all the way up to 10% and move out at 3 mph for 20 minutes (this is when the fan feels really nice, as does being able to plug in your ipod or mp3 player) and then back down to 2-3% grade for 10-15 minute cool down. Even my daughter is liking a treadmill.

I took us about 35-40 minutes to assemble…including unpacking from the box.

Delivery was great, though, because I am rural, I package actually arrived in Reno from the shipper within a few days, but then I had to way 3 weeks for the “truck” to have “a load” to head out into the rural areas for a delivery run. But when it did arrive, the driver moved it right into the garage for us (which sits 150 feet from the street). So 5 stars for the driver.

I can’t really find anything that this treadmill doesn’t do. I tend to buy things that fall somewhere in the middle when it comes to customer reviews, but a few things…like appliances, TVs and this treadmill, I wanted to get as much bang for my buck as I could. Yes, I would love to have the money to buy a Solei or other high end model, but for my family needs, my budget, the durability that it must stand up to, I am extremely pleased.


cobra4prez on Mon, 25th Jan 2010 2:27 pm 



Great value for the price. Very stable
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I did a fair amount of research online before deciding on the T101. Since I was going to be keeping the treadmill in our upstairs bedroom I wanted to make sure the machine was stable and quiet. I was pleasantly surprised when I got this thing up and running and haven’t had any problems in the first 45 days. Installation was easy but it did require two people due to the weight of the parts. The machine itself works great and continues to impress me given the price tag.

Chuck on Tue, 26th Jan 2010 3:37 am 



Decent Initial Impression
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I have not had this treadmill for long so I cannot yet comment on its durability and long term reliability, but I am happy to report it does function properly unlike the two unlucky customers who have given it negative reviews so far.

Delivery: it was delivered by a company called Pilot (with whom you would schedule the delivery date when finalizing the purchse on Amazon). According to their tracking report, the treadmill actually arrived at my local station/office/warehouse 10 days prior to the scheduled delivery date, but it was delivered on the scheduled date and within the 3-hour window given nonetheless. The delivery guy told me he could only bring it as far as the driveway, even though I wanted it in the back of the house so I could put it in my walk-out basement. Luckily I have a dolley of my own, otherwise the 200lb box might be a little hard to manuver for one person on the lawn. (3 stars)

Assembly: not overly difficult as it only requires aligning and screwing in (by an Allen wrench) 12 bolts. I did it all by myself. But a problem came up when I got to installing the display/contral panel (which is the entire large black plastic piece on top of the treadmill you see in the photos), I found it impossible to thread in any of the 4 bolts into 4 pre-welded nuts. The nuts are welded on an opposite side of a hollow metal tube from entrance holes for bolts, and as it turns out, the nuts are welded on crooked, and not aligned properly with the bolt-entrance holes, making it impossible to thread in the bolts. Luckily, again, I had a little Dremel polisher tool, and I used it to enlarge/elongate the holes quite a bit before I could thread the bolts and finally install the panel. What should have been a 30-minute process ended up dragging on for an hour and a half. I read one of the reviews for another Horizon treadmill (not this model) and found that someone else had to do the same thing during assembly. (1 Star)

Operation: very user-friendly with large button and displays, not one of those things that you need to read the manual first just to operate. It has one of the better cushioning systems I have jogged on (for a budget model, that is), a safety clip (so the belt stops if you fall down), heart rate monitor, incline (up to 10%) and speed (up to 10MPH) changes, a variable speed fan, a line-in/speaker system (“iPod hook-up”), a bottle of lubrication oil included. So far so good, at least what you would expect for its price. No complaints whatsoever. (5 stars)

As I said, I have only had it for a little while, and given my experience so far, I can only give it 4 stars due to the poorly conceived assembly procedure. I will update on the long term issues (if any) in the future.

Thomas K. Dolan on Tue, 26th Jan 2010 3:41 am 



Horizon T101
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
This Horizon Fitness T101 is terrible! It worked for 10 minutes and then never worked again. Horizon customer service is really bad be prepared to wait 3 days for a call back! Do not buy one!!!!!!!!!!!

HM on Tue, 26th Jan 2010 11:24 am 



So far, so good
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
After researching more than I planned to and more than I would have liked to, I finally came back to where I started at with the Horizon T101. They happen to sell it at a local (& small) sports store where I felt comfortable with the salespeople who actually wanted to help me & with treadmills that were actually able to be used. (At the large chain stores I went to, no sales people were anywhere around and the safety keys were all removed from the treadmills rendering them useless. Hence, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the prospect of giving them my money.)

Anyway, I have read a lot in the past few days about you can’t get a quality treadmill for under X amount of money or by buying anything from X brand. Thing is, I definitely don’t have $1500-$2000 to spend on a treadmill. I wasn’t even comfortable with the idea of spending $1000. I wanted something between $400-$700 MAX. And I didn’t want it to shake, I wanted it to have incline, and tell me how far I’d “traveled” and how many calories I’d burnt, and I wanted to be able to jog on it (5-6 MPH for me.) I thought these were fairly simple demands considering treadmills aren’t exactly new technology. I don’t even need it to support a large amount of weight. Just me, at 150 lbs and hopefully soon weighing less.

So I finally decided I would try the one I liked the most instead of trying to find the one the treadmill reviewers liked the most. I did ultimately decide against Icon made products because I did not like the consoles as much and I feared the fancier electronic stuff meant less quality in the places where it matters most. I also read way too much about subpar quality in the past (although it has perhaps increased recently, shown by their imrpoved warranties) that I could not possibly buy one without fearing it’s impending doom. This brought me back to Horizon treadmills, which I liked the look of the most from the beginning. As a bonus and possible deciding factor, the nice people at Play it again Sports where the T101 is carried in my area assured me they are licensed to fix Horizon products. So if it breaks, I don’t even have to call Horizon. I just go see them and they come fix it.

I bit the bullet and let them swipe my card. Opted out of having them deliver and assemble it. It would have been nice, but I didn’t want to spend any more money if I didn’t have to. It is quite heavy and it was difficult to get it out of the car and inside. Putting it together was much easier, although my boyfriend got aggravated a couple times because you have to hold parts just right for all the holes to line up (which all of ours did). Really though all you do is attach the supporting bars and then fit the console in between the support beams on top. After assembly, I hopped on to begin burning calories asap. I jogged some at 5.8 mph and 2% incline, I jogged much slower at a 5% incline, I walked quickly all the way up at a 10% incline, and I sped walk a lot around 4 mph at 3% incline. I was at it for around 45 minutes and it felt very stable and good under my feet. I realize this is not at all showing if it’s durable yet or not, but my first impressions are that I am quite pleased and excited to get fit for bikini season. I am glad that I did not spend less and that I did not spend more. I like the console and the overall appearance of this treadmill as well. It does not look or feel cheap or flimsy.

The only problem I’m having right now is it is quite large and doesn’t fold up completely vertically. I already knew this but it’s still a little bit of a problem for me. It’s more or less in the middle of my living room right now as there’s not really anywhere else to put it without completely rearranging. My recent weight gain over a tough fall semester followed by the holidays however is more of an issue to me so I am willing to deal with an intruding treadmill. Also one may wish to beware that after assembled it probably cannot move through doorways. It is 33″ in width and 40″ deep while folded. Finally, the 2 wheels are useless. I have yet to figure out how to tilt it back (towards me, when I’m holding onto the handles of the treadmill while folded) and get it onto the wheels. Thus, it is quite difficult to move around. Luckily my floor is tiled; I don’t think I COULD move it on carpet, especially not thick carpet.

In essence, I would highly recommend this treadmill if you are looking for qualities similar to what I was looking for. A fairly basic, safe-feeling, folding treadmill with automatic incline that can easily support an average weight for walking and jogging. It has a lifetime frame and motor warranty which makes me feel like it will be durable over the long haul. Definitely GO to the stores and test them out and see what you feel comfortable on & won’t mind looking at in your home. I would also try to find out if there are people who can service a Horizon treadmill near you, if that will ease your mind as it did mine. I am happy with my purchase, which was a large purchase for me, and I will update this review should anything go wrong. Happy treading!

True disciple on Tue, 26th Jan 2010 3:45 pm 



Great Treadmill
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This treadmill is a great treadmill for the price. I highly recommend it. I was looking for a treadmill with a wide and long belt, and this one, 55 x 20, gives me a lot of space to walk and run. The treadmill has 10 buttons each for the speed and incline: 1, 2, 3…10, so you can just press the button to get to desired speed or incline, and not to have press the up or down arrow a hundred times. It also has a up and down arrow button, too, on the side so you can adjust by .1 the speed or the incline. The treadmill has a fan with 3 modes, fan 1, fan 2, and fan 3, so if you feel yourself getting hot during the walk, you can blast up the fan and it’ll cool you down. The treadmill, like others, allows you to read your heart rate. And you can check calories burnt, distance, and time, like others. After you’re done with it, you can fold it up. It’s really good. I have no complaints with it.

For $600, it’s a great buy.

Harland Elldrege on Tue, 9th Aug 2011 3:08 pm 



This is so true! I really don’t fully understand a lot in relation to physical fitness nevertheless this specific article truly is awesome. Thanks a lot!

Tell us what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!