An Honest Review of the Peloton Tread

I have had my Peloton Tread one year now, so it is time to give an honest review of it: what I love about it, what I wish I would have known before purchasing it, and other brands I considered.

Prior to purchasing the Peloton Tread, I spent a lot of time researching different treadmills, asking my Instagram followers for recommendations, talking to friends, and also going to Dick’s Sporting Goods to talk to someone (unbiased to any one brand) and try running on some treadmills.

After much deliberation, I ultimately chose the Peloton Tread for a variety of reasons. A big influence was that when I polled my Instagram followers, Peloton was the most-recommended treadmill. In addition, no one had issues with it. Those are two big selling points in my book. There were a lot of nice features on the Peloton Tread, and it was also in my budget. (Side note: if I had an unlimited budget, I would have purchased a Woodway treadmill.)

Overall, I am incredibly happy with my decision as it has been a great machine over the past year. I haven’t had any issues with it, I enjoy running on it, and I love the aesthetics of how streamlined and minimal it looks.

I use my treadmill two to three times a week during the winter and about once a week during the summer months. Living in Minnesota makes running outdoors fast in the winter challenging since the ground is often covered in snow and/or ice. And if the ground isn’t slippery, is often below zero with the windchill. Those temps make breathing difficult and my muscles do not work well in those temperatures when running fast, so these are the conditions that often drive me to the treadmill in the winter.

Now let’s review what I like and don’t like about the Peloton Tread.

Things I Love About the Peloton Tread:

Belt
I’ve run on quite a few treadmills over the years, and the Peloton feels just as good as any commercial model I’ve run on. The belt feels smooth while running on it with no hitches or lags when changing speeds. The motor helps the belt speed up and slow down smoothly and quickly, which was an important feature for me. The machine will go up to 12.5 mph and even at these faster paces, it feels smooth and doesn’t shake very much.

The belt space to run on is ample: front to back as well as side to side with the belt being 59 inches long and 20 inches wide. I love that there is no “guard” on the front of the treadmill because sometimes I do end up running too far forward and kicking the front plastic piece on other treadmills I’ve run on.

Speed/Incline Dial
A big “must” for me in a treadmill was that I needed to be able to change the speed of the treadmill easily and quickly. I primarily use the treadmill for interval workouts so I am changing the speed from a tempo or fast interval pace, down to a recovery pace that is two or three minutes slower, and back up again. Ideally, I like to minimize the “down” time as the belt changes to the speed, so having a machine that changed speeds quickly was important to me.

For changing the speed on the Peloton treadmill, there is a dial on the right handrail that you roll forward to increase the speed and roll back towards you to decrease the speed. The dial rolls smoothly and quickly and within a second, I can change the speed up or down. There is also a button you can press in the middle of the dial that can be used to increase the speed by 0.1 mile per hour. This is an ingenious innovation, and I absolutely love this feature.

There is also a dial on the left handrail that changes the incline of the treadmill. The treadmill goes up to a 12.5% incline, and you can also push a button in the middle of the dial to change the incline by 1%.

Durability
When I asked my followers for treadmill recommendations–if I remember correctly, I don’t think anyone told me of any issues they had with their Peloton machine. This gave me a lot of confidence when buying one myself, and I, too, have not had any issues in the past 12 months of owning it.

The treadmill also feels very durable to run on. I do not notice any bounce in the machine when running on it. My treadmill is in our garage on top of a thick rubber flooring that we purchased from a gym that was renovating their space. I’ve run at 5:00 min/mi pace, and even at that pace, the machine does not shake very much.

Screen
The huge screen is really nice to watch the Peloton classes on or your streaming services: Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ along with several other options. It is a touch screen and has a very user-friendly set-up. I also really like that it requires a passcode in order to use the treadmill, so my kids can’t go and start the treadmill on their own.

Other Noteables About the Peloton Tread:

Tread vs Tread+
I did opt to purchase the Tread with the regular belt versus the Tread+ with the cushioned, slatted belt. The Tread+ was outside my budget at almost $6000. I wanted to stay around $3000 for my treadmill, and the Tread did fit that. In addition, the Tread+ was going to take longer to get to me. When I was interested in purchasing a treadmill in November 2023, the Tread+ wasn’t going to start shipping until January or February of 2024, and it was slated to take 4-6 weeks to actually get to you. I didn’t want to wait that long for a treadmill since winter was already upon us in Minnesota.

I did end up running on my friend’s Tread+ and honestly, I didn’t think it was worth twice the cost of the regular Tread. If something costs twice as much, it has to have several other features to make it worth. The Tread+ does offer an even bigger screen (The Tread has an ample sized screen in my opinion.), a larger footprint and running space (not important to me), and the cushioned belt. However, I didn’t think the cushioned belt was that much nicer. Plus, the Tread+ was very loud! (The Tread feels like your average loud-ness of other treadmills I’ve used.) So all-in-all, I didn’t think the Tread+ was worth the additional cost, but I have heard a lot of Tread+ users do love their machine.

Classes/Monthly Subscription
I know a lot of people love Peloton for all the different classes they offer and the virtual community that can be built. Maybe surprisingly, I actually don’t take any of the classes. I did try out the monthly subscription when I first bought the treadmill (You get 30 days free.), but I found I would rather watch a show or movie than take a class.

I currently don’t pay for the monthly subscription. I wasn’t using the treadmill during the summer months to justify paying the cost of the subscription: $44/month. I can still use the machine without a subscription–I just have a big blank screen to stare at which is kind of a bummer.

Even though I don’t use the classes, I don’t feel like it was a waste to buy the machine. I still think it is a durable, reliable machine despite not using this feature. And whether or not this makes it worth you to is dependent upon what you value in a treadmill and how much you would use it.

One Thing I Don’t Love about the Peloton Tread:

The one “con” to the machine isn’t a true con but rather a word of caution and something I wish I would have known about before purchasing the treadmill. I didn’t realized that if you want to watch your streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, plus several other ones), you do have to purchase the Peloton All-Access Membership each month in order to do so. This means you do have to pay the $44 monthly fee for the Peloton classes to then be able to access streaming services. I don’t think this would have lead me to purchase a different treadmill, but I kind of wish I would have understood this prior.

I did consider many other treadmill brands including: SOLE, NordicTrack, and ProForm. I also looked at the Landice, Bowflex, Assult, and Woodway treadmills. I really considered purchasing a NordicTrack as that is what I had back in Alaska, but I had too many people tell me about issues they had with their NordicTrack: break-downs shortly after purchasing, problems with customer service, a hard time getting parts, or getting their machine serviced. I just felt like it was too risky to take that chance even though I love how bouncy their treadmills are.

Overall, I am super happy with my purchase, and I do feel like it is one of the best treadmills out there. I would highly recommend it to an avid runner who wants a reliable machine and will be putting a lot of miles on it.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave anything in the comments below.