Sole F83 Treadmill - Outdoor running is great for the cardiovascular system and it is great for the spirit too. You can tell as you watch a runner fly past that with every step he has taken, he has left his daily worries farther behind.

That zone that runners find when they hit their stride is one of the reasons that treadmills are so popular today. Sadly, as good as it is for your heart, running outdoors is hell on the joints as many runners have found to their cost.

Whether it is a foot, knee or a hip injury or some other impact or stress related syndrome, many runners find that for medical reasons they must seek an alternative to pounding the pavement. Though missing the pretty scenery (or the urban landscape) treadmills do offer that combination of physical exertion and mental ‘zoning out’, so enjoyed by outdoor runners and they make a good substitute either in cold weather or when the runner is forced to find a lower impact alternative.

The Sole Fitness F83 is a good, solid machine with a larger running track than the F80, a reinforced frame and a heavier flywheel to increase the power of the motor output. It comes with a wireless heart monitor which Sole Fitness say has an accuracy of 99.9% and which sends information about the user’s heart rate direct to the console where it is used to automatically adjust incline and speed to keep the user within his optimal heart rate training zone.

There are ten programmes altogether. Six are preset, two are user defined and two are hart rate driven. The red LED display on the console tracks speed, incline, time, distance, calories, pulse and pace and there is a quarter mile track and a peak and valley graph for visualizing performance during the different programs.

The console has built-in speakers and port to hook up an iPod or MP3 player however, these are functional rather than fabulous. This can also be said of the cooling fans and the unimpressive performance of both speakers and fans is one of those niggly things that is mentioned fairly regularly even amongst those buyers who are 100% happy with their purchase of the F83.

The Sole F series are all folding treadmills and the folding operation is hydraulically assisted making it very easy to operate. Considering the size of these machines and their weight – the F83 weighs 260 lbs - once they are in position you really do not want to be moving them around too much so the option of folding the deck up out the way is very handy indeed. The installation of the F83 is relatively straight forward. You do want to set it up in the room where it is going to stay because even with its own wheels the F83 is not easy to move and as one buyer mentioned, once put together the F83 is too wide to get through a standard door, even after removing the door frame.

One thing we really like about this machine is its outstanding warranty: Lifetime on deck, frame and motor, five years on electronics, rollers and belt and two years in-house service on labor.

One slight word of caution however, having trawled through many reviews and having found most people to be very happy with their purchase of the F83 treadmill, there have been one or two occasions where when something went wrong it went very wrong indeed. Much seems to depend on the availability of an experienced service technician in your area.