FRONTIER Olympus Max EXTENDABLE Long Stride Cross Trainer, German Quality, 3YR WARRANTY

The item was delivered one day early, no warning! As it says on the instructions to the delivery man that there will be someone to help carry the package, not getting in touch with us to expect the parcel is poor. Especially as our phone number was printed in big, fat font on the delivery label!!The product was well packed and every thing to the last screw was there. However the diagrams listing the parts and screws were not very accurate and relied a bit too much on one's imagination. The actual instructions for building the Xtrainer were OK.The product is good and solid.The user manual is absolutely useless and this is a great shame. This machine has a lot of unexplained functionality and the poor manual means that one would really need to struggle through very poor instructions to make full use of it. In the days of modern publishing technology there is no excuse for this. There is however an explanation: Cheap costs saving. This is disappointing.Once a better manual will be made available I will increase my rating.

Firstly the delivery - Sensational Bargains went out of their way to get the cross trainer to us ahead of time as we weren’t going to be at home on the scheduled days. No extra charge for this and they kept us informed as to when it would be delivered - excellent service.Assembly - It’s a large heavy item (no getting away from that) but assembly presented no problems and the instructions were clear and concise. This took about 90 minutes to put together.Quality and use - this is a well-made piece of engineering (robust and should last for years). It’s what you would expect from the Germans and it works extremely well. The adjustable stride length is a must if more than one of you will be using the trainer. I am tall hence longer stride length and the Mrs is shorter so needs the shorter setting. Most other trainers have no adjustment which makes it uncomfortable if your stride doesn’t match the machine. The larger flywheel (probably the largest on a home machine) makes for extremely smooth operation. In use it’s comparable to the gym trainers though obviously smaller with all the features one would expect.The Instructions - a previous reviewer said the instructions are poor but this is certainly no longer the case. It may be that these have been rewritten but the copy we had was easy to understand and covered 99% of the user functions.Criticism - we had only one small niggle. The specs say that there is Radio receiver for chest belt pulse sensor built in (chest belt not included) - unfortunately no mention of this in the instruction manual. We tried it with my Sunto belt which works with the gym machines but no luck. The good news is that Sensational Bargains sells a heart belt that is compatible and I suspect the machine work with other makes but it would be a case of trial and error. I think the company have only just got these in but if you call them they will ship one out to you (cost was about £35). I couldn’t see them advertised on Amazon.The hand sensors for the machine are ok but I found the readings erratic as it’s difficult to keep a good contact with the metal handgrips. Using the chest sensor you simply type in your sex and age – the machine calculates your optimum heart rate and bleeps when you are in the required range – it adjusts the resistance to keep the heart rate in the target zone.All in all a good, well made piece of kit – highly recommended.

I have had no issue with the cross trainer and have been very pleased with it until it started to loosen up on the main column resulting in a crack in the casing!I have written at least four times and left two voiocemails with the company but they seem to be ignoring me.This is very disappointing as I read other reviews which claim they are interested in providing good after sales service.Based on my experience I could not recommend Fitness2you.It is after all common courtesy to reply.

The Frontier Olympus Max was a fair old chunk of change at £800, so although the reviews weren't many, they were unanimous in their praise for this X-Trainer. We had just the one day when we could accept delivery. Contacting Sensational Bargains could not have been easier, they returned my emails promptly and were really accommodating as far as helping ensure the delivery arrived on the day we needed. (this wasn't an express delivery, just date specific, I would imagine express deliveries would incur a surcharge)The packaging was good although when the courier arrived the box was upside down with the 'this way up' arrow pointing down, not really an issue due to the good packaging materials inside the box.With the help of my wife, we assembled the X-Trainer in about an hour. The instructions are easy enough to follow. Strange to find a made in Taiwan sticker however on a part of a German engineered machine, maybe some components are cheaper from there?Using the machine is really satisfying, the heavy fly-wheel gives a great smooth action and the pre-programs are great. I'm about 5'10" and my wife is only about 5' tall, the adjustable stride is a must, it suits the whole family. The only problem so far is, every time I want to use it, my daughter and her fiancé seemed to have popped round and are hogging the machine. Highly recommend this piece of kit

It has been about two weeks since I ordered this and still can not use it. Something is wrong with it, it makes a scraping sound, still not exactly sure whites the cause. So emails, phone calls back and forth trying to figure it out. Why isn't the quality of the product proportionate with the amount of money they charged me? I am so disappointed!