Review on Fitness Treadmill For Recovery Walking With Full-Length Handrails, Cushioned Deck, And Heart-Rate Monitoring - EXERPEUTIC TF2000 by Flavio Iyer

I'm 61years old and trying to get back into exercising. I'm pretty out of shape, so I need to start slowly. Also, I'm allergic to sunlight (yup, that's a thing--I get hives on exposed skin when I'm in the sun). On top of that, I'm prone to grabbing any excuse to avoid exercising, so any sort of bad weather (too hot, too cold, too wet, etc. etc. etc.) gives me a reason not to go for a walk outside. I do like the feeling of walking though, so a treadmill seemed like the best way to go. But I've owned two others in the past and didn't like either one. Both ran faster than I wanted or needed. They both had a tiny incline even when they were supposedly "flat." And both were just *so* noisy.This machine has none of those flaws. It will let me walk at a comfortable pace (I'm starting at about 2.2 mph), while still having plenty of room for growth as I get stronger. It has adjustable feet on the bottom, so it was easy to level it perfectly. It's not totally quiet, but it is much less noisy than the other machines were. My family can't even hear that I'm using it upstairs while they're downstairs. It's also built like a tank and seems likely to last for a long, long time. I like that it's an American product. Hopefully, a fellow citizen somewhere took home a paycheck this week in part because I bought American. While I don't need the side rails right now because I don't have balance issues, looking to the future, they're something that may make sense. If I ever do need this therapeutically, I'm sure the fact that the side rails run the full length of the bed will be very helpful. Another feature that I think might be helpful in the future is that the tread itself is printed with a white dash along one edge. It makes it easy to see that it's moving, which I imagine would be helpful to anyone who has stability issues. Assembly was straightforward. Probably the biggest problem was that I wanted it upstairs and it's heavy. But it was delivered in two boxes, and we were able to unpack components from the larger box too, so that reduced the weight. Still, we needed one of our sons to help us carry the main part upstairs.Now for the things I might change. I do wish that I could adjust the height of the side rails because they're at an awkward height for me. I suspect that wouldn't be a problem if I were taller. (I'm 5'4", and I just feel like my arms and shoulders aren't quite comfortably relaxed when I hold on to the side rails, but we're planning to add spacers to increase the height by an inch or so, which I think will help.) The other thing I would like is if there was a convenient place to rest a tablet or book. There really isn't. There are two areas on either side of the panel to hold a water bottle I guess, but they're quite angled and not very deep. I haven't tried to set a water bottle in them yet, so I can't really say whether they work well. What I do know is that there's absolutely nowhere to place my Kindle. However, I bought a clear acrylic accessory (from a different vendor on ebay) that hangs over the instrument panel and still lets me view the panel. We had to modify the accessory a bit because it's designed to hang from the top of an instrument panel that's flat along the top edge. The top of the panel on this machine has a slight curve, so we added supports inside of the top edge of the accessory so it couldn't shift along the panel. (Bolting it to the panel to keep it steady isn't an option because you still need to be able to access the start/stop/speed controls.) That works perfectly, and lets me lift the whole thing out of the way so I can access the controls as needed. It's also possible to purchase tablet accessories that clamp on from other vendors. One version has a gooseneck. There's a cross bar below the control panel that would work perfectly as a place to clamp a support like that, but the reviews for the gooseneck accessory weren't very good (apparently it breaks easily) and it was much more expensive than the clear acrylic thing I bought instead.Anyway. It would be nice if the side rail height could be adjusted and if the treadmill vendor offered a way to support a book or tablet that was either built into the treadmill control panel or that could be purchased separately and was already designed to work with the current design of the instrument panel. I'm happy with the workaround we came up with, but I recognize that many people don't have the tools that it takes to modify things the way we do.TL;DR I'm very happy with this machine--especially after making a couple of easy modifications. It's perfect for me.