The Cardio Twister ® is a fitness machine that uses the concept of the elliptical trainer to provide a complete workout at home. Combine cardio and toning the abdominal muscles, buttocks and legs with this ultra-compact device. This combination of cardio and waist rotation tones muscles and burns fat. Includes an instructional DVD to guide you through your workouts and a food guide.
The Cardio Twister is a home workout device sold online and through home shopping shows. Different brands market it but overall the prices and quality are similar.
Using this machine regularly with a diet would promote weight loss in overweight people who do not exercise physical. This product seems to be a good way to get in shape for those who don't want to go to the gym and those who don't want to spend crazy amounts of money on their fitness equipment.
However, it doesn't. The Cardio Twister has not been shown to be more effective than a treadmill, elliptical trainer or any other type of cardio equipment. As is often the case, we advise you not to start buying a home exercise machine until you are aware of the benefits (or not) that it can bring you. And that's what we'll see right away.
The Cardio Twister is a stepper inspired by the elliptical trainer, but much more compact with a movable arc-shaped handlebar.
The main specificity of the Cardio Twister therefore lies in this horizontal bar with a curved handlebar to position the arms which turns from left to right, allowing you to work the abdominal belt at the same time as you pedal. The package also includes a DVD with a fitness plan and diet plan.
For Tristar branded product, a 60 day warranty on this product for manufacturing defects, but most manufacturers do not even offer any. The prices that can be found on the web are relatively attractive, especially if you come across such a large promotional offer during this holiday season.
Allow an hour to assemble the set, not that the assembly is very complicated, but the screws are very poorly cut so you waste a lot of time installing them because they do not screw easily. Operation is simple, as all you need to do is pedal and rotate your torso. The manufacturer says that you will get very good results with sessions of 10-15 min / day.
Certainly the Cardio Twister is compact and for people resuming physical activity wanting to practice at do, here, it seems quite suitable. You need to increase your heart rate, is easy to use, and the video workouts provide a reasonable warm-up along with a fairly good workout and even some stretches at the end. But the machine is produced from poor quality materials and the design is obviously flawed. We liked the idea of the machine and for the first few days it worked it was fun, but the frustration of constantly replacing the chain, and its breaking after 3 weeks finally convinced us. Here is another device which promises mountains and wonders and which will end up in the landfill.
Durability
The first impression is that the product is very fragile, one has the impression that it could break minute to minute. And this impression is confirmed with use.
The device moves dangerously, and after a few uses, a heavy sound appears, it squeaks and moans, the whole thing is extremely noisy. Not to mention the safety concerns when a bolt breaks in full swing and you can fall. In fact, in many cases, users encounter problems with parts and welds that come loose, give way or break (chain, handles, central mast, bolts). On our side, the chain was constantly coming out of its housing and after three weeks of use, it broke (our tester was a 60 kg woman). We have attempted to contact customer service on numerous occasions by email and phone but we were not given a solution.
We are surprised how a company like this can still be in business with the way that they manage the after-sales service.
Efficiency
It is difficult to judge the performance of the device as the weakness of the design is disabling to have a prolonged use. As we said above, the quality differs depending on the brand, but the whole is generally too fragile, regardless of the manufacturer. Although it promises to work overall, this device focuses more on the legs and buttocks area. The abs, even if they work lightly, are not strained enough to see the effects. In addition, the resistance is insufficient to make the body work enough, and there is no difference between fast and slow adjustments, so it is difficult if not impossible to increase the intensity of the workout.
And the device is so low-end that the setting keeps changing on its own during exercise. The DVD provides fairly clear instructions (with training sessions, warm-ups) and a food guide "accompanies" you (but only in English on our trial version, to see if this is the case for all brands). We also strongly suspect that the meter was purposely designed to boost stats.