Horizon HT5.0 Peak Fitness Elliptical Stepper Review

Manufactured by Johnson Fitness & Wellness, the Horizon brand has been around since 1998 manufacturing a whole range of cardio machines, with the current catalogue covering treadmills, rowing machines, exercise bikes, and, of course, elliptical trainers. We took a look at the Horizon HT5.0 Peak to see how it performs and what you get for your hard-earned money when shopping in this price bracket of the current range.

Assembly is the first order of business of course, and here it’s an absolute must to have two people involved for the first stage which involves tipping the machine into an upright position once the base has been attached. After that, there’s very little to do here apart from attaching a few more components such as the computer, footplates & handles, and you’re done. The biggest challenge here is getting the box into the room you want to build it in. It’s always nice to have an easy assembly and the HT5.0 Peak definitely scores well here.

Once built, this is actually a relatively compact machine. With a footprint of 118cm x 71cm (46.5″ x 28”) it takes up a lot less space than most, conventional elliptical trainers which makes this a space-friendly model, especially when we’re talking about a machine positioned at this price point. It’s common for trainers at this price to be gym-machine large but that’s not the case here which is bound to appeal to a lot of potential users.

The action on the HT5.0 Peak is smooth and uniform throughout the cycle and the ergonomics are good. It’s easy to get a good workout position and as a result, it’s possible to push yourself hard while staying comfortable. The moving arms have one main grip position, though it’s possible to argue there are two due to the shape of the grips and there is a set of fixed handles to hold onto where the hand-pulse sensors are located. It’s a little unfortunate that this is the only way to measure heart rate on this machine. There is no wireless heart rate receiver which is a surprise and this, in turn, means that it’s not possible to measure your heart rate at the same time as getting a full-body workout. To be fair it’s easy enough to get around this by means of a heart rate monitor watch, which a lot of people buying this model will already have, but still. Without a separate watch, it’s an either-or situation here. Either you hold the fixed pulse sensors and stop moving your upper body to get your pulse reading, or you use the moving arms to get an upper body workout and don’t get a heart rate measurement. Given this model is promoted as a speciality HIIT workout machine, this is disappointing. That aside, the overall construction here is rock solid it has to be said. Even once in full flow and pushing hard in a training session, the machine sits tight and there’s no unwanted movement. This is certainly not a lightweight machine, this is a well constructed, good-quality piece of kit.

The HT5.0 Peak isn’t your everyday elliptical, but rather much more a cross between an elliptical trainer and a stepper. The motion is still elliptical but it’s designed to make you feel like you’re hiking up a hill, and it does this with aplomb. Due to this, the 12-inch stride is actually measured vertically rather than horizontally so regardless of your height, it’s easy to get comfortable and get a full stride as you work out. We’ve got some pretty tall testers in the team and everyone regardless of height found this model to be essentially a near-perfect fit, which is quite an achievement on an elliptical!

The console features a 5.5″ LCD display which does a perfectly good job of displaying training data including calories, distance, heart rate, resistance level, RPM, and time with some of the data duplicated on the main screen, and the three separate small LCD screens that provide larger characters for easier viewing. There’s also a 400 meters (¼ mile) track display and 5 onboard programs in total divided into manual, weight loss, target distance, target calorie, and a 20-minute HIIT workout program called Sprint 8. This last program is very much what this machine is all about and is claimed, with all the usual caveats to burn up to 27% body fat in 8 weeks. After a warm-up phase, the Sprint 8 workout leads you through 8 rounds of HIIT featuring 30-second bursts that are performed at maximum effort and intensity followed by 90-second active recovery periods and then a cooldown. It’s really very much a guided HIIT session and works really well. We didn’t undertake to do the whole 8-week program here so can’t confirm the claim but this workout is seriously intense and we can say with confidence that it will produce results given how hard it makes you work. On the surface the console is basic and has a fairly basic range of functions, but what is there works, and works really well. If you follow the guidance and perform three 20-minute workouts per week you’re going to see results fairly quickly which is of course what this model is all about.

Other features include a tablet holder, USB charging port, speaker for music and a 3.5mm audio input jack if you prefer to use headphones.