The Tread represents a serious chunk of change: $4,763 for the machine and a year’s membership (plus any sales tax). That figure breaks down like so: $3,995 for the treadmill itself, $300 for delivery and installation, and $39 a month for the membership—with the first month’s bill due when you receive your Tread.

If you want to do the bootcamp or strength-training classes, you’ll also need a mat, a few dumbbells, and resistance bands. Some workouts use heart-rate training, for which you should use a chest strap. Peloton sells all of those accessories, though you can buy yours elsewhere. Our testers used two pairs of Peloton dumbbells ($45 to $95) that the company lent us—they worked fine—but the Peloton mat ($60) was too short and not padded enough. The chest strap of the Peloton heart-rate monitor ($50), which comes in one size, was too long for me. (The set of three resistance bands costs $70.)

Even if you don’t pay for Peloton’s programming, you still get a pretty good treadmill—although an expensive one, given that you can find a decent home treadmill for less than $1,000. But the only things that change on the screen during a “Just Run” workout are the timer and heart rate (if you’re wearing a chest strap), which appear in the upper left of the screen. It’s too tempting to stare at the seconds ticking by—resulting in a crick in your neck and weird changes to your running form.

The Tread could replace a membership at a luxury chain such as Equinox Fitness Clubs, or classes at a cardio-strength-HIIT and treadmill-only boutique studio. In most cases, it would, by our calculations, take at least a year, if not closer to two, to break even. (See chart below; we also compared the cost with NordicTrack’s most popular home-use treadmill, the Commercial 2950.)

Can you save money by ditching your gym and buying the Tread? It depends …

Another concern is the Tread’s warranty: five years for the frame and one year for components, electronics, and labor. By comparison, NordicTrack gives a 10-year warranty on its treadmills’ frames, plus two years on parts and electronics and one year of labor. (For an additional $325, you can extend Peloton’s warranty to 39 months—which we strongly recommend to protect your investment.) What’s more, early owners in the Peloton Tread Facebook group have reported such problems as intense belt vibration, malfunctioning safety keys that won’t allow the belt motor to start, the display shaking noticeably, and video-streaming or software-update failures. That said, plenty of other users report being completely happy with their Treads.

Owners also report mixed experiences with the Peloton’s delivery teams. A company rep told us that Peloton employees make 70 percent of Tread deliveries, and most Tread buyers say that they’re well-trained and helpful. In areas farther from Peloton’s warehouses, or areas where demand is high, the company outsources delivery and installation to a firm called XPO. Owners in the Tread Facebook group have had both exceptionally good and horrible experiences dealing with XPO—and some of the early mechanical complaints could well be related to techs not installing or assembling the machine properly. By all accounts, Peloton customer service is quick to offer delivery refunds to those customers (tip: use the online chat function rather than calling).

In my own testing, the Tread crept forward about 10 inches on my hardwood floors during workouts. Peloton warns against placing an equipment mat underneath the Tread, for fear it could get bunched up by the incline mechanism, though low-pile wall-to-wall carpeting is okay. (The company is currently reevaluating its guidelines.) One of our taller users also noticed that the screen, which you can tilt into a more ergonomically appropriate position, drooped during his workout; Peloton PR dispatched a technician to fix the problem.

Some Tread owners have complained on Facebook that the safety key (below the red button) wasn’t making contact within the console, which kept the Tread from starting. Photo: Sarah Kobos

The Tread crept so far forward on my hardwood floors that it left rubbery marks on a nearby desk. Photo: Sarah Kobos

Some Tread owners have complained on Facebook that the safety key (below the red button) wasn’t making contact within the console, which kept the Tread from starting. Photo: Sarah Kobos

The Tread crept so far forward on my hardwood floors that it left rubbery marks on a nearby desk. Photo: Sarah Kobos 1 of 2

As we’ve already mentioned, the Tread is large. Per Peloton’s recommendations, you’ll need, at minimum, a floor space measuring 12 feet, 7 inches by nearly 6 feet, plus a ceiling at least 8 feet high (more, if you’re taller than 6 feet). These guidelines are similar to NordicTrack’s, for instance, but you can’t fold up the Tread’s platform when you’re not using it—you can do so with many other machines’.

Another concern we have about the Tread relates to privacy. You can set your profile to “private,” so that only members you approve can see your stats, and you don’t have to enter your age, weight, or gender anywhere. Still, the machine captures a ton of fitness data. Though the company states that it keeps that information secure, no one can predict how successful it will be at doing so, or what may happen in the future.

In terms of the workout experience, several testers were surprised that you have to manually adjust the speed and incline during Tread programming—many treadmills will auto-adjust to match their programming. I also found that although the belt is quicker than most to speed up, it was slower than most to come to a halt when I hit the Stop button or pulled the safety key.

Even if you don’t pay for Peloton’s programming, you still get a pretty good treadmill—although an expensive one.

One of the hallmarks of Peloton is the leaderboard, which provides a competitive aspect that’s supremely motivating—and yet potentially harmful. You may find yourself pushing harder, but also short-shrifting your recovery periods so you don’t lose your rank. Further, it’s not ideal to work hard on every workout, particularly if you’re tempted to exercise many times per week by the mere presence of that $4,000 machine. You risk overtraining, sabotaging those benefits that you’re working (too) hard for.

Peloton doesn’t let you pause any classes (live or prerecorded)—your metrics stop recording as soon as you step off the belt. It makes sense from a leaderboard-fairness perspective to prohibit pausing—otherwise, people could recover during a break and come back harder and faster. But one of the presumed benefits of exercising at home is being able to take a break to deal with a crying baby, a ringing phone, or a knock at the door.

We had only a few quibbles with the class instruction itself. Oddly, the instructors don’t mirror the user when talking about the tread controls, meaning they point to their own right when IDing the speed dial—which is the incline dial from the user’s perspective. Though most Tread users will know which is which, someone new might crank up the speed, instead of the incline.

Because of noise from the motor and users’ footfalls, our testers sometimes had trouble hearing the instructors’ cues. Peloton recently began adding closed-captioning, which helps. Still, I preferred to improve sound clarity by wearing Bluetooth headphones.