The Vision T9200 (Simple) Treadmill Review — What were the consumer reporters thinking?

Ohiyo!

The Treadmill Sensei tends to disagree a lot with other review sites and (especially) review magazines. A lot of it has to do with their practices (accepting bribes in the form of equipment or parts, or reviewing units with little or no actual contact with the machines). There is a certain consumer reporting magazine out there who publishes a new treadmill/elliptical review article every other year or so that is riddled with inaccuracies and poor recommendations. Today I’d like to disagree very publically with one of the reviews they ran last year and the year before. That review was on the Vision T9200 Simple Treadmill.

Vision Fitness, the manufacturer of the T9200 treadmill, is a good company which has been around since the early 1990s. They started off as part of a company which built outdoor bicycles. They began making treadmills and ellipticals in the late 1990s and have been one of the upper-mid range companies ever since. For perspective, they are on par with Sole, Smooth and Spirit, and do well in the $1200-$2000 range for treadmills and ellipticals. As a complete aside, they are in the same corner of Wisconsin which Horizon and Matrix occupy.

Unfortunately, with the production of the Vision T9200 Simple treadmill a couple of years ago, Vision has its first real let-down.

Vision markets the T9200 Simple Treadmill as something for people who just want a basic treadmill unit. What that means is they have produced a treadmill with absolutely no bells and whistles and nothing to make it stand out from the crowd. In fact, with a shorter belt, no programs, lack of heart rate monitoring and control, and a smallish motor, the T9200 specs out quite a bit under everything else in its $1300 price range.

The Vision T9200 Simple Treadmills are well enough built they just can’t hold up to anything else in the market. If you want something in this price range I’d suggest checking out something by Smooth or even Horizon. For being a bit of a let down by a good company, the Treadmill Sensei gives the Vision T9200 Simple Treadmill 2 out of 5 golden buddahs.

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