Schwinn 460 Variable Stride Elliptical Trainer Review

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The Schwinn 460 Variable Stride Elliptical combines V-Stride technology with a variety of workout programs, to cater for a variety of user heights.

In this review we take a closer look at the design features, workout programs, and customer ratings to help you decide if this is the best elliptical trainer for your own home workouts.

Design features

One of the most important features to check when buying any new elliptical trainer is the stride length. Without a suitable stride length, you might find your running stride is restricted and you can’t get the most out of your workouts.

Fortunately, the Schwinn 460 has been designed with V-Stride technology, which automatically adjusts the stride length to fit your natural running stride and workout rate. This helps to make it suitable for a broader range of users, as well as using more muscles than conventional ellipticals.

Whether you are looking to improve your overall fitness, lose weight, or tone up, it’s often important to keep track of your current heart rate.

Studies have shown that specific heart rate ranges are better suited to specific goals, such as 60% to 80% of your maximum heart rate being considered the optimal range for fat loss.

The Schwinn 460 actually provides you with a heart rate transmitter chest strap specifically for this reason. When wrapped around your chest, the display console will keep you constantly informed of your current heart rate.

To help support the wide range of stride lengths, the handles provide have been designed to provide you with an extra grip position compared to standard ellipticals.

As well as the longer set for training your upper body, the smaller set extends beyond the height of the console, helping you find the most comfortable position for your current workout.

If you need to move the machine between workouts, having a large handle at the back and transport wheels on the front stabilizer makes it much easier.

Custom user profiles

An interesting feature on some of the more recent Schwinn fitness machines is Schwinn Advantage. Automatically tracking your workout results, Schwinn Advantage allows you to track your workout progress through the creation of user profiles.

The Schwinn 460 allows you to create 2 of these profiles, providing details such as starting weight, target weight, and height. As well as being useful for measuring your progress, this also improves the accuracy of the ‘calories burned’ workout information shown on the display screen.

Workout programs

Although you aren’t provided with any heart rate controlled programs like you get with the Schwinn 170, the Schwinn 460 still provides a variety of preset profiles and custom workout options.

Custom workouts
Each of the 2 available profiles allows the user to create a custom workout, which can be used for your current workout or saved for future use.

The display screen will show a series of segments representing the length and intensity of your workout. You can then select the resistance setting you want for each stage of your workout.

Preset workout programs
To provide a wider range of workout options beyond the custom and manual programs, the Schwinn 460 also includes 11 preset training profiles which fall into 3 main categories.

Course (4 programs) – The ‘Course’ programs attempt to recreate the feel of running outside, with lots of variation between the resistance levels.

Circuit (4 programs) – More closely resembling interval training, the ‘Circuit’ programs repeat a pattern of resistance various times to represent running laps around a circuit.

How quickly the resistance changes varies between the programs, making them suitable for both beginner and advanced levels of fitness.

Pursuit (3 programs) – The highest intensity group of programs, Pursuit keep you at higher levels of resistance for longer periods of time.

The interval style of 2 programs and continuous hill climb of the third makes these options ideal for if you are looking to improve your aerobic endurance.

Display console design

As well as the overall build quality, one of the things Schwinn are most famous for is the quality of the display console on their fitness equipment.

Although you don’t have the same collection of physical buttons as on the 430, the touch-screen buttons ensure the workout programs and settings are just as easy to setup.

Being backlit, this also means important workout information displayed on the LCD screen is easy to read, even in low light. This includes your speed, time, distance, heart rate, resistance level, and calories burned.

All of this information is displayed around a central grid, which is used to display the current workout program and how far you have progressed.

Although its angle isn’t adjustable, the built in fan is a convenient feature to have that can keep you cool during your workouts.

Customer reviews

Whenever you are considering buying a new piece of fitness equipment, it’s always important to do as much research as possible. While videos and articles can certainly help, customer reviews are still one of the best ways to find out what other people who bought the machine really thought of it.

With over 100 reviews averaging 4 stars out of 5 on Amazon, there’s plenty of positive feedback. Listed below is a list of some of the most commonly mentioned pros and cons from the current range of customer reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

• Less of an arm workout than ellipticals with a fixed length stride
• Some people found the assembly and instructions too complicated
• A couple of reviewers found the variable stride difficult to get used to

As with any fitness machine, the Schwinn 460 has a handful of lower rated reviews. After reading through these and checking the dates, the vast majority were from older purchases (2010 and earlier), or relating to one-off faults with the display console.

Manufacturer’s Warranty