I have dealt with my fair share of junk in my time, poorly thought out and ill designed etc.
After having read the reviews for this, I approached it with a lot of trepidation especially as I had been considering one from Makro for nearly the same price including VAT and that was a flimsy, skinny looking thing and so that was about as much as I expected. To be honest, I went for this as it qualified for Amazon Prime although it didn't have too many reviews.
Firstly, delivery was mighty fast, about 48 hours from click to door-bell which is not at all bad considering I am in Northern Ireland. My big concerns were about connectors that didn't work and and a mysterious 'belt' that kept slipping off. I don't know about any belt, I assume it lives inside the scooter-like bit of the machine and the connectors and connections all work perfectly. Mind you, I paid extra attention to them in case they proved to be problematic! As a graduate in Aeronautical Engineering, I like to think I have an eye for design and I can honestly say this is a very high quality product for the money. It is over-engineered if anything which goes some way to explaining its 33+ Kilo weight. All the connectors slot into place securely and correctly and the end of the assembly process gave me a great feeling of satisfaction.
The only fiddly bit was mounting the vertical cross bar and that needed another pair of hands to hold the vertical piece as a sensor and the tension cable both need to be connected at the same time but the whole thing can be built single-handedly if required with a bit of ingenuity.
Once up and running, there is a bit of side to side movement but absolutely nothing out of the norm or to worry about. The tension adjustment is disappointing as I honestly can't tell much of a difference between 1 and any other setting including 8. Maybe I missed out something somewhere but this gives a fantastic workout nonetheless. Another drawback is the basic nature of the display. If it had proper inputs to take in weight and height to give out more accurate calorie counting, it would be good BUT, this is one of those machines which is conservative in its calorie estimate which can only be a good thing for people like me who are looking to lose weight.
Just an update: I have discovered that the tension selector actually works very well, it's just that the way it does it is subtle. If you are exercising on level 2 say, and you turn it up to 8, it will kill you stone dead in a minute or less. So very, very good indeed and very impressive!