Bowflex - Treadmill 22 - Black

Best Buy delivered the treadmill six weeks after it was purchased. Then I had to wait another eight days to have it assembled. All in all it appears to have been worth the wait. The Bowflex T22 is amazing. It worked me hard. The set-up was easy with “Max” talking me through it. There were also helpful videos. The only issue I have is setting up the entertainment part (Hulu, Netflix, etc).

I’ve had the unit for 4 weeks and attempt to use it daily. I assembled the tread myself, it was pretty easy to assemble (solo, no second person). There was a problem with the instructions calling for 8 “d” screws when only 4 were supplied so I had to run to Ace Hardware to buy screws. The screen is nice, I wasn’t expecting ultra high def. This screen is responsive to the touch and its size is great. Would be totally awesome if I could have raise it up higher, more eye level, but you have to look down to see the competitors screens so I was happy with this Bowflex setup. I like the size of the deck, it is long and wide, very nice. Power is ample, incline and pace adjustments can be reached easily and at the right speed, meaning the tread is responsive during workouts. I like being able to do the same function several ways: on the screen, preset buttons on the console, the hand grips, the side rails… All very nice. The tilting-up deck is dope. The tread is heavy but actually quite easy to move around the room when the deck is tilted up. The software is intuitive enough . . . problems are that the pay wall is very aggressive, you cannot log in to the streaming service apps without paying for JRNY, it’s almost not usable unless you pay for the JRNY membership (work that into your budget when looking at treads), most of the competitors are probably the same way, the issue here is that JRNY is a Bowflex homegrown solution. iFit has a massive following as does Peloton, I don’t think JRNY is on that level (yet). I felt that between me using the tread and my kids using the tread, we often had to log in to our accounts with username and password, rather than just selecting our profiles and getting our workouts started. That’s frustrating. The software has never gone more than two days without needing to be rebooted. This is frustrating because you can’t plan on just jumping on and working out, you’re usually waiting for a reboot or an update before you can get started. My tread was in the corner of my room. There are power buttons and volume buttons and a few other buttons mounted on the screen, that are needed because they serve a vital purpose, but they are on the back of the screen. You can’t see what those buttons do unless you get off of the tread and walk around to the back of the screen to see. I often had to wedge my head between the screen and a wall so I could see which buttons I was pushing. Syncing my Bluetooth headphones to the tread’s software was usually annoying enough for me to just give up and use my iPhone. There were a couple of times when I get settled for an hour long walk and I get my show going on the screen and I’m walking along and when going for my water bottle I accidentally knocked the emergency stop plug and it’s an end-all shut down, stops the tread as it should but also stopped the program I was working on and stopped the show I was watching so to get started again, you got to go through the menus and start from scratch and that takes too long. That safety plug coming unwedged should just pause the belt. Lots of great things about the tread and few things that were annoying, but what ended the relationship with Bowflex was the day that I go for a workout . . Bowflex started the process with a software update. The screen froze four times during the update before finishing. Once the update was finished, the preset speed controls on the console no longer worked, the fan no longer worked, and +/- speed control buttons on the side rail no longer worked. I called Bowflex support, waited an hour, hung up. The next day, called Bowflex support again, waited 46 minutes a support rep answered, nice enough guy but knew NOTHING about the Bowflex T22. He discredited the idea that the firmware update broke this functionality. Suggested it’s a wiring/cabling problem. Per his advice, I took the treadmill apart and made sure that none of the wires were crimped, broken, unplugged… they were all fine, reassembled the tread and the functionality still didn’t work. That was a lot of work exuded to troubleshoot this issue. You’ll notice that Bowflex is closed when you need them the most, don’t let that anger you, they didn’t come across as very helpful anyway so being closed isn’t really a hindrance. While I did lose some feature/functionality following a frimware update, the treadmill was still usable because there are mutiple ways to accomplish each task. I wasn't excited about having this new tread but explaining this, this, that, and this do not work anymore even though the unit is "new." Called Best Buy and told them to come and get it. They did. I do not recommend this product. It’s still in the beta stage of development. I did a lot of research and was also considering Peloton and NordicTrack…. I’m going to try something else. If I’m going to pay $3000 or $4,000 for a tread, it better work, I have zero tolerance for shenanigans. Read the reviews on the Bowflex web site those are helpful.

Your goals are only as real as the time & energy you Invest; and that includes the price you pay for the equipment! Yes, after the free trial there is a fee for the subscription; but it’s minimal compared to what most gym memberships cost. The videos are great. As far as the machine itself, 100% I would buy it again. It’s heavy, but My 17 year old and I built it ourselves and it wasn’t that hard (just follow the instructions to the T.it has multiple users, Bluetooth connects to my phone easily and the strides are beyond smooth. My 17year old is a runner and it does great helping him build speed and endurance. I’m working on losing my 19 Covid lbs and the run /walk transitions are super smooth. I Love this Machine. The subscription is the only reason I didn’t give it a 5… it’s worth it, but still

Overall, I'm really happy with this treadmill. It's very comfortable to walk/run on, even on extended uses, and is very well built. I'm having the same problem that others have mentioned with the speed controls on the right handlebar. It seems to not be responding, and than all of a sudden you're really moving, which doesn't seem real safe. I'm really hoping this can be addressed somehow. I also am disappointed that the JRNY subscription is in my opinion, expensive. I'd like to see other subscription services added, such as Discovery+, and maybe even the ability to sign in using our satellite or cable provider info to watch live TV, to give us more options besides Netflix & Hulu only. I'm also agreeing with others that the videos from around the world are really blurry, and it's very noticeable on the large screen. Hopefully Bowflex (Nautilus) will address this as well. So, not to seem so negative about this treadmill, I want to say that if you're in the market for a very well-built, gym-quality treadmill, this thing checks every one of those boxes. If these other things I mentioned happen to become reality, my opinion of this treadmill will be even better

The treadmill is soft on your joints and the workouts were fun. If you don’t want to listen to the trainer just take a walk and watch Netflix or listen to the music channels. Cool piece of workout tech to help you forget you are working out.

Everything was going great until my treadmill stop working because of a system failure! I have only had this for one month and it’s already broke. I called bowflex and they are sending me a new part to replace but it’s going to take up to 8 weeks to get….really……I’m sorry but when you pay this much for a machine that you use every day they should have replacement parts on hand. At least customer support is great to work with and easy to contact. But now I’m SOL!

So far so good with this new treadmill. I originally had the newest Nordic track treadmill .. and after a couple of months the belt just stopped working for no reason when I went to use it one day.. I ended up getting this treadmill as a replacement .. only thing I don’t like is how you have to have the JRNY app in order to even use the treadmill at all ..there should be an option to use it without the app.

Really good treadmill. I wish the login was easier than typing a login screen for different users. This is built really well like an old Chevy, “like a rock”. It is rather large, but the build quality warrants the size. I hope time and durability matches the first couple weeks of ownership.