NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill review: A heavy duty fitness investment

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The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill represents a big investment in your fitness – both in the asking price and the amount of space you'll need in your home. If you can meet both requirements, you end up with an incredibly solid treadmill with a lot of inbuilt smarts.

Design: Seriously big, seriously heavy

Image: Supplied

Chances are you've probably run on a treadmill in a gym before, or at least seen one before you considering purchasing for your home. What you might not appreciate is just how much space a heavy-duty unit like the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill will actually take up.

The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill measures in at 177cm tall and 98cm wide, but also 206cm long when fully assembled. As numbers, those seem interesting, but it's when you've actually got it installed in your home that you realise how much of a space investment this is going to be.

If there's just one tip I pass through to prospective NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill buyers, it's to measure your intended exercise area carefully, especially if it's living indoors and not in a home gym or garage environment.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill is big and imposing, but you'd expect that for a device that costs as much as it does.

The benefit of all that size is that it has a generously long treadmill, which allows for runners of just about any height and stride length to exercise on it. Still, it's big, and while it does fold up for slightly less impact on your living space, it still takes up roughly the same amount of room as a fridge.

It's also quite heavy, and while it does have small wheels to help with positioning, the entire unit has a mass of 140kg. No, you're not meant to use it as a weights workout in itself, but if you do have to shift it around, it would be wise to have a friend or two on hand to assist.

The front of the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill houses its controls, mixed between physical buttons and a 10 inch touchscreen display. To the left of the display are controls for adjusting the incline on the fly from -3% decline up to 15% incline, while the right hand side houses speed control buttons. There's also a separate set of speed and stop controls underneath the display and the embedded fans. Finally, there's a kill switch key, so if you did want to securely lock down use of your treadmill or shut it off quickly in an emergency, it's possible to do so.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

By default, the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill comes in a semi-assembled state. For the purposes of this review NordicTrack provided me with in-home installation, but it's not the default and you'll either have to get handy with the Allen keys and screwdrivers, or pay someone to assemble it.

From my observations of the install process it's not too tricky a task if you're au fait with, say, putting together an IKEA bookshelf. Although your average IKEA bookshelf typically doesn't weigh 140kg. It would be smart to install it in or near the spot you intend to use it in.

Again, remember, it's big and heavy.

Performance: You sweat out what you put in

Image: Supplied

Out of the box and assembled, the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill can run simple laps of a 400 metre course at set speeds between 2km and 22km per hour, which is functional but not that exciting. You wouldn't agree with its asking price just for that kind of simple running detail, nor should you.

Its particular selling point is the incorporation of the iFit platform, a subscription fitness service that works with the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill to deliver interactive fitness coaching over the internet.

The iFit platform actually goes wider than just running on a treadmill, so a subscription can cover a much broader base of fitness goals, but for the purposes of this review, I've simply used it for running and walking fitness. For what it's worth, when you set up your profile on the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill's 10 inch display, you set fitness goals and let it know what other kinds of equipment you have.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

Once I'd set up my profile and goals, iFit selected a range of pre-recorded workouts shot across the planet for me to engage with. These stream from iFit's servers to the treadmill's display, with pre-selected speeds and incline/declines relative to where it is you're meant to be running.

iFit has a wide variety of trainers on board for just about any fitness goal I could imagine; in my case I was (and still am) looking to lose a little weight and improve my overall fitness. As such, I've done a lot of running around South America so far, following a trainer offering tips on best technique and commentary on the landscapes I'm looking at.

Just like any other fitness video product, you may attach well to some trainers, and not so well to others, but there's a lot to pick from here. It's worthwhile making sure you're in decent Wi-Fi range of your home router, because there's little more jarring than having a training session pause due to buffering issues.

iFit also offers live streamed classes, but for Australian users there's a slight catch.

The company is US-based and does not work on a 24/7 basis, so the most likely time to catch classes is going to be early morning or mid-to-late evening. That may work for your needs, but equally the noise of a workout at 11pm at night might not sit well with your family or housemates.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

It also means there's really not much in terms of workouts in the middle of the day if you prefer a live trainer. In any case there's no camera or microphone on the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill, so you're still just watching a video workout tuned to the speed of your treadmill.

One minor criticism here – and one that may not matter to those who can meet the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill's price point – is that you only get a 30-day personal subscription to iFit with the treadmill. A year's personal subscription runs about $249, with family options also available. Given the investment you're making in the NordicTrack system, a longer bundled subscription would be nice, because if you just want to try iFit you can do that for 30 days anyway. It's the standard subscription freebie, nothing more or less.

Alongside its trainers, the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill also allows you to set your own running routes, based on pretty much anywhere on the planet that Google Maps has data. You pull up a Google Maps destination, set your start and end point, and it'll manage not only working out distance and the street view images to display as you go, but also relative inclines and declines along your journey.

There's a certain inevitable "slideshow" feel to running this way, but it does mean that during pandemic lockdown I've been able to run through the streets of Leytonstone in London without being mugged, or through Ueno Park in Tokyo without being hit by the muggy summer heat, to name just a few. It's significantly more compelling to have something interesting to look at and think about while you're pounding virtual pavement this way.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

It also meant that I could more directly compare the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill to my regular, pre-treadmill running pattern.

It turns out that I was preparing for this review for several months before it came in for testing, because I've been jogging and walking a regular 5km route in my local area for some months. I'm very familiar with that run and my expected times. Because of the Google Maps integration, I could map out my standard run precisely on the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill.

It's an interesting comparison too, because the stresses are different. Obviously I could go running in the worst weather on the treadmill in situations where I couldn't possibly do so outside. I also managed to avoid pollutants and didn't have to dodge cars on the way when crossing roads.

At the same time, while the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill tries to match inclines, it can't quite match the feel of hitting the real road, or the visual variety you get in a real world run.

What genuinely surprised me here was how much actual help with that run the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill provided. To be specific, I've gotten a lot better and faster at that run on the treadmill over the same distance since I've started using it. While that's partly a matter of access to running during lockdowns and bad weather, it's also a matter of beating my own mental walls, which is markedly easier on a treadmill.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

Most runners would be aware of the mental wall you start to hit during any run, and how it can nag you into slowing down or feeling worse during exercise. The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill does not do away with the wall.

However, it's rather like a Terminator, in that it's just an unfeeling machine that will not slow down or rest until you have exercised.

Running is different when the ground beneath you is moving as distinct from you moving along the ground. There's more impetus to keep going, and that's precisely what I've done. As a result, my personal bests (such as they are, I'm still a weak and feeble tech writer) have improved markedly. That's precisely what more premium-grade fitness equipment like this should do.

The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill is a heavy-duty machine, and it definitely manages to feel like "proper" gym equipment, although that's not always a plus.

The 10 inch display is very clearly running on top of Android, and it's not always super responsive to touch. That's more problematic if you need to adjust onscreen elements on the fly while running a higher speeds, because it's notably harder to do. Likewise, the physical buttons on the sides and bottom of the display need a fairly hefty thump to activate. You're not going to switch them by accident for sure.

Image: Alex Kidman/Finder

Speaking of thumping, while NordicTrack does note that it features dampening elements to minimise running noise, you're still going to hear it, and anyone running on it while they're exercising. That's especially true if, like me, you have it installed on hardwood floors. Carpet may well be a tad less noisy.

The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill also incorporates an EKG Pulse monitor in the front grips. Like every grip based heart rate monitor I've ever tried in a real gym, they're a tad hit and miss (honestly mostly miss), with variable heart rate readings during my exercise sessions. Running a side-by-side comparison with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 showed the wearable giving consistent and believable results where the EKG sensors jumped around considerably.

The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill does support Bluetooth-based heart rate straps if you want a more accurate reading feeding into your iFit stats, or of course you could opt for a dedicated fitness wearable or smartwatch for independent tracking. You can't incorporate that data into iFit, however.

Should you buy the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill?

The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill is a serious piece of kit. Its $3,999 asking price and large size will keep it out of reach of many fitness enthusiasts straight away for practical and financial reasons. It's big, and while it does its best to keep noise low, there's really no way to entirely dampen the sound of human beings running full tilt within any enclosed space.

However, if you're looking for a serious investment in your fitness and running is a key plank to approach, it's a very well engineered machine. The iFit platform is very flexible with a vast library of available workouts to both guide you through proper form and keep you engaged with exercising. It doesn't hurt to have workouts shot in some pretty spectacular locations as well.

Image: Supplied

Pricing and availability

Price

The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill retails in Australia for $3,999 outright. The iFit platform sells annual or monthly subscrptions for individual users or as a five person family subscription for an additional fee.

Where to buy

How we tested

The NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill was tested using a machine supplied by NordicTrack for review over a three week running period. I ran numerous manual routes, Google Maps routes and iFit workouts as part of the testing process, as did others in my household. Collectively, we racked up over 100km of testing on the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 Treadmill.

Specifications

Images: Alex Kidman