When I was looking to buy an elliptical for at home, I considered what my favorite ellipticals to use at the gym were. I didn't like the standard track-based ones because the foot tilting felt unnatural, and I also liked having an incline. My favorites were the ones where the feet were suspended from above, and one of those was an ascent trainer which helped me to decide that was what I wanted.%0A%0AFrom a usage standpoint the machine is exactly what I wanted. My only real disappointment was that the plastic feet on the A30 model are more uncomfortable than I was expecting, you won't want to use this without shoes on. You can also hear your noise from your shoes hitting the plastic feet if you happen to lift the foot that is rising as you go around. I might put some rubber inserts onto the feet in the future. I wasn't interested in the A50 which has rubber feet because I don't think the solid state resistance was worth the extra cost for the machine and constant electricity use required to power the electromagnet.%0A%0AAs far as initial setup goes, I made some mistakes there but not all of it was my fault. I used the free delivery because I was looking forward to assembling it myself. What I did not realize is that you are not supposed to open the box until you've moved it to where you want to assemble the unit. My intention was to unbox the machine and carry the pieces to the basement where I was actually going to assemble it. Once I had moved the arms, top, and miscellanous boxes downstairs I was surprised that the front and back were already connected together as one large piece so I pulled out the assembly guide to confirm. That's when I found they tell you at the very beginning of the assembly instructions not to open the box until you've moved it where you want - which I could not have known without opening the box to read those instructions telling me not to do that. At this point there was no safe way for me to safely repack the box so I got help to move the base. Assembly of the unit went well, that was fairly easy and took me roughly 2 hours to do by myself. The final problem I ran into, the first few times I used it I noticed that the incline feature didn't work at all and the console display for it did not match the manual at all. There was no mention of incline on screen. I bought the basic XR console. The troubleshooting section of the manual did not mention this either. I eventually figured out that the console I received was probably opened in the past - the warning stickers were already applied and the console had been set up for a bike. I put the console into service mode and switched it to A30 and after that the incline feature worked perfectly.%0A%0AIn summary, I'm pleased with the machine and it seems very durable. I think it will last a long time. In actual motion it's extremely quiet, only adjusting incline and resistance make noise while things are moving. I don't think my comments about the hard plastic feet are going to matter to most people.
