AFG Sport 5.5AE Elliptical, Gray

It's a great elliptical! I've been using it for a month now. It's VERY heavy but therefore stable, and it's great for a daily workout. You can't adjust the stride length, and it has I think just couple of different programs (i've been using interval and weight loss) with 10 difficulty levels, but that works just fine for me. Plus it's quiet. You definitely need a mat underneath, the thicker the better, just to protect the floor.

Very happy with this elliptical--nice and smooth. Assembly took maybe an hour and a half--glad I didn't pay for expert assembly, well within my comfort range to do myself! Do wish the programs worked on Kindle and not just on Ipads but for my purpose that's not a big deal. I just wanted something to give me some cardio and burn off some calories.

The wait was worth it. The set up was done in 1 hour by my husband. It’s not big and bulky and it’s not loud at all. I wish the fan was a little stronger. And I wish the app to track your exercise was iphone capable it only works on a tablet.

Easy to assemble, but once assembled the power never came on. I tried everything externally, only to investigate and find that the internal power wire was damaged and broken. I tried reaching customer service/tech support through phone calls, emails and online submission forms. Twice I called, was on hold for 30 minutes, and then hung up on because "call volume was too high so I need to call back later." No replies received from my emails with pictures, and no call back from my online submission (where they claim they will call you within 24 hours). Extremely frustrated that I spent the $ and then the few hours putting the machine together, only to find out it's damaged and to not be able to get any support from the company.

Pretty sure I received a counterfeit product after 2 years of light use it's falling apart.

Use it everyday on my workouts. Definitely NOT a clothes hanger. I put it together myself. Took hours but got it done. Love it!!!

Didn’t work. They won’t help me

Bought it for my wife and she likes it alot. Easy to build and no issues with it. Arrived sooner than expected. Satisfied with it

Packaging and unpacking:This is a large item. Expect delivery to be carried out by a freight company that will require you to schedule a delivery window requiring you to be home that will likely be inconvenient and 4 hours long. Thankfully, I am fairly confident the vast majority of recipients will only have to do this once as the elliptical is protected for transit very well and is unlikely to arrive damaged. It's really annoying when large item deliveries end up going wrong when you uncart the product - so this is a good thing. It's packaged somewhat like other large appliances in a strapped together drop-on box with a reinforced bottom platform. There is a LOT of packing material, but MOST of it is all recyclable and I managed to stuff almost all of it into the clear recyclable "protective" bags that the bigger parts came wrapped in for collection. The only major exception is a thick plywood mini frame that covers and reinforces the top which is going to be a pain to dispose of since the city will not pick something like that up and I will have to get out the circular saw to chop it into little bits to slowly dispose of in my trash.The process of unpacking, moving the pieces to where the elliptical would be assembled, and breaking down and removing all of the packaging took at least an entire hour.Assembly:I consider myself a pretty adept assembler of all things so your mileage may vary compared to my experience with the assembly of the elliptical. If you are put off by things like assembling IKEA furniture, doing a seasonal tire change or anything of that nature you can count on this taking a bit longer but in general at least from my point of view assembly is fairly straight forward and I wasn't faced with anything completely nonsensical during the process. There are a few points where it doesn't spell every detail out and leaves some very small steps up to common sense, but I felt it was fine. It took me approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes to fully assemble the machine by myself without any assistance and using the (crappy) tools that come with the machine. It mainly goes together with two hex wrenches which are included, and I get that these are really supposed to be single use tools, but they started rounding out and causing me issues near the end of the assembly before I even got a chance to get through it all. It wouldn't have killed AFG to include hardware that was even a fraction better than the bottom of the barrel stuff here that won't even last an hour of hand tightening fasteners. Overall I give assembly a pass for fairly clear instructions and straight forward and intuitiveness.Quality of the mechanical portions of the machine:Good, overall. It is by in large mostly metal and heavy duty. Finishes on the metal parts is pretty good and the machine is attractive enough to a casual observer. There are some small issues with certain welds that I saw where whoever (or whatever) was doing the welding kind of stopped short of finishing the job leaving some open gaps between two parts that really should have ended up seamless. Still, none of the welds look like they'll crack any time soon and I think it will hold together perfectly fine. The mechanism itself, while in use, is kind noisy in a weird way I didn't expect but at the same time it didn't exactly sound like something was obviously wrong with it. Movement of the pedals and arms is smooth but not professional equipment smooth, I would describe the movement as feeling basically acceptable. Nothing really surprising to me given the price point of the machine.Quality of the electronic portions of the machine:Pretty bad. I have to say that the control panel on this machine is a pretty big let down for me. It comes across as old fashioned and low tech, even for a machine that is not supposed to be feature packed it just looks and feels totally cheap and archaic to me. The speaker in the panel is, to be blunt, awful. Even when it is just bleeping and blooping as you press buttons on the machine it crackles and pops every time. I could not even begin to imagine suffering through actually attempting to use the speaker to play music while working out. The fact that this machine, here in 2017, offers only wired 3.5mm input and headphone jacks and no bluetooth at all (which is something that can be added EXTREMELY cheaply these days) just comes across to me as the wrong kind of thing to cut off the feature sheet. STILL given how bad the speaker is, you are 100% going to be using your headphones or speakers connected directly to your phone or tablet either with a wire or wirelessly and bypassing the machine anyway. Features wise and menu system wise, we're looking at basically something you might have gotten used to in a gym 10+ years ago. Nothing ground breaking, certainly nothing special. The heart rate monitor, does in fact work pretty well though. It picks up on a heartbeat pretty quickly and automatically and seems generally accurate enough to me. One last thing. The built in fan, it works, it's nice that it's there but it is not nearly powerful enough to make much of a difference in comfort while working out and the air it has been blowing out towards me at least up to this point is actually rather smelly in a plastic kind of way. Not really recommending the fan either.My take overall:Buy the machine if it meets your price point for a very basic fundamentalist machine that is generally made well. Don't buy the machine if you're into gadgets or had planned to make use of the built in speaker system. You might be asking yourself, why 4 stars after I made it sound so... not awesome? Well... it is priced really fairly. To really get much better on the things I listed as cons you are probably looking at spending a pretty good chunk of money more.

I have always been a treadmill person, but I have been wanting to try an elliptical since it's supposed to be much better for your back and joints. This elliptical is really large and sturdy. I was able to build it without needing a lot of help, it took about an hour to do. You will likely only need a second person to hold the display on the top while you put the screw in.Mine came missing the cord for the audio input but since I have the matching treadmill, I am able to swap these back and forth. There is a toll-free number to call if the same happens to you.The electronics are very basic but surprisingly the sound isn't as bad as I had expected it to be. There is no real bass to the music, but it goes loud enough for me to enjoy my playlist. The display shows either speed/time/calories or level/distance/heart rate depending on how you turn the knob.There is a built-in fan that does help me stay a bit cooler during a workout. There is a spot for your tablet, magazine or phone at the top of the display. I really would have liked there to be a place to leave my water bottle. It gets frustrating to have to stop to reach over to the floor just to take a drink. I have taken away one star just for that reason. It's easy to just not drink while using this, but it's not a great practice. The foot pedals are very large and there is no fear of your feet slipping while you're exercising. I found that the movements were smooth and easy, and I can really feel the workout toning my whole body, but especially my hamstrings and quads.While this machine is large, it is easily moved around by picking up the stabilizer bar at the very back of the foot pedals. I was able to lift it and move it across my basement rec room without a lot of difficulties.This came by transport truck. We had to be creative with scheduling the delivery and my neighbour was able to help me get the heavy box into my basement entry. Make sure you have help, the box really could have used 3 people to handle it.Overall, this is a really great elliptical. The electronics are basic, but there is less fussing to do with them, and it's easy just to jump on and get exercising. The elliptical gives me a great cardio workout without damaging my joints or hurting my muscles. I was never much of an athlete but this year I have started running and I appreciate having more than one piece of exercise equipment that is enjoyable to use, and it has been helping me achieve my goals.

This is my second elliptical. The first was in the $250 range. This is much bigger and much sturdier.Setting up was easy, instructions very clear and simple, did not require any special tools. Took about and hour and a half in total.Be prepared for a very big crate! It's HUGE! I had to take it apart in my entry and move the pieces individually to the basement. Now that it's set up I don't think it's ever going to leave this house! But that's fine, I'm really happy with it. It's very smooth, easy to use and very sturdy. Because I have small feet I've found that some ellipticals are awkward, but this one feels very comfortable. One member of my family is over 200 lbs and feels very sturdy on this, much more so than our $250 machine.