The Tunturi T20 Treadmill Review — A decent treadmill…at half the price

Ohiyo Gozaimasu!

I regret to inform you, my loyal readers, that tonight’s review will be an unfortunately short one. We have family in town and Mrs. Sensei is making me close the DOJO early to spend time with them. At least I’ll get to gloat to her Uncle Chris a bit more about his poor choice in treadmill purchase. Now, on with the review!

Earlier today the DOJO received in a batch of Tuntui T20 Folding Treadmills for repair. The units were all damaged in shipping but the sales company would still like to be able to sell them as remanufactured units instead of consigning them to the treadmill graveyard. That’s where the masters of the DOJO come in. We’re treadmill buddhists — we believe that every treadmill will be reincarnated after death and gain new life once more. Luckily, the damage wasn’t too extensive and we’ll be able to turn the Tunturi T20 units around in a few days.

In my 20 years of service I’ve worked on a lot of Tunturi machines. The T20 itself is the bottom unit in the Tunturi T line of treadmills. Tunturi, a Finnish based company, once produced their units in Europe, but I believe they have switched most of their manufacturing over to Asia to save money. From what I’ve heard they produce the parts in Finland and construct the units in Asia.

Just so you don’t think I have a thing against Europeans in general or Tunturi in specific, I am going to start with the good things.

Tuntui makes very solid, very reliable, very basic machines. They don’t do much, but what they do they do well. When you get on a Tunturi T20 treadmill (or any of its bigger brothers) you’ll find yourself on a sturdy machine with very few maintenance problems at all. You also get a pretty decent warranty on the Tunturi T20 treadmill — 5 years for parts and 1 year for labor. Not bad at all. Finally, the speed and incline contols on the hand grips are great. The Tunturi T20 Treadmill lets you adjust your speed and incline with the touch of a button and without making you reach for the console itself. Nice touch. The machine also has a good sized 2.5 horsepower motor and hefty 3 inch rollers.

The downside to this machine is you don’t get much at all for the high cost of the machine.It has a basic 54×20 inch deck and is only rated for users up to 300 pounds. Nothing really stands out and, unfortunately, for a nearly $1800 machine it needs something to make it stand apart from the crowd. There are just no outstanding features that scream out to a user to buy it. Even the treadmill and console designs are very rudimentary and almost feel like prototype designs more than completed ones. Overall the Tunturi T20 Treadmill is a very basic and very boring treadmill at too high of a price point to be worth even considering.

If you’re an accountant in need of a boring, unthreatening treadmill and a lot of money to waste, then the Tunturi T20 treadmill is probably just what the doctor ordered. However, if you’re looking to get the most treadmill bang for your dollar, you’re going to want to look elsewhere.

For being very drab and unexciting, the Treadmill Sensei gives the Tunturi T20 Treadmill 2.5 Golden Buddahs out of 5.

-The Treadmill Sensei
http://www.treadmillsensei.com