Hasta La Ideas

Perhaps the biggest problem for those who own treadmills is discipline. How long will you regularly use it, before it becomes a place to hang clothes? The second problem is how much space they take up.

A Chinese company called King Smith Fitness makes a treadmill that folds away for storage. Their X21, which runs $1,000, collapses down to a thickness of just 8.9″ (226mm).

However, if user reviews are anything to go by, this product does highlight the danger of purchasing expensive tech objects from companies with poor or nonexistent customer support. Somehow, we as a society have grown comfortable ordering $1,000 objects from companies we’ve never heard of, with the naïve expectation that we will receive what we paid for. About 13% of reviewers on Amazon gave the X21 one star, reporting that the unit stopped working, from its first few minutes of use up to about 8 months. The 1-year warranty stipulates defective units must be shipped back to the manufacturer, in its original packaging, at user cost ($280).

The design is neat.

Buyer beware.