Best Budget Ellipticals
You can get a high-intensity, low-impact workout with an elliptical machine that costs $1,000 or less
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If you’re looking for a way to get a great cardio workout without the impact of running, an elliptical machine might be an appealing option.
They have a few potential advantages over treadmills. For one, the ellipticals in CR’s ratings are generally narrower than our treadmills by at least a foot. (They also tend to be shorter in terms of length, though only by a few inches.) For another, ellipticals tend to be less expensive than treadmills.
CR members can read on for reviews of three of our top-rated ellipticals for $1,000 or less and access our full ratings of more than 20 ellipticals.
Great Budget Ellipticals From CR’s Tests
How We Chose the Best Budget Ellipticals
For this guide, we chose only ellipticals that scored at least 4 out of 5 on our exercise range test, in which we enlist panelists with a variety of fitness levels to assess how easy they find pedaling at a variety of the machine’s resistance levels. That’s important because you want to make sure you buy a machine that can challenge you at your current fitness level and that will continue to do so as your fitness improves.
A Note About Monthly Charges
As is the case with treadmills and exercise bikes, some companies that sell elliptical machines require or at least heavily encourage you to subscribe to their exercise services to access all of the elliptical’s features. These services allow you to connect your machine via Bluetooth to the exercise service’s app, which will automatically control the resistance of your machine in sync with whatever is happening in the workout. This appears to be less common for ellipticals than it is with treadmills and stationary bikes, at least for now, but it’s not unheard of.
The monthly costs for these exercise subscriptions can significantly add to the lifetime cost of your machine by locking you into a recurring charge. That’s why our top picks in this article don’t include ellipticals that are meant to work exclusively with one subscription service. We didn’t include Echelon’s Ellipse EL-5, for example, which performed well in our tests and otherwise met our criteria, because it can only be used in conjunction with apps available to Echelon Fitpass ($11.99 per month) or Premier members ($39.99 per month).
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