The Best Stair Steppers
HOW TO CHOOSE = When selecting among the best stair steppers, the first thing to do is evaluate your fitness goals. Unless you are an avid user, a small budget or mini stepper may meet your needs. More serious exercisers will want to look at mid-range or club-quality units. Regardless which of the best stair steppers you choose, keep stability of the unit in mind. Models with wider, heavier bases will feel the most secure, but they will be more expensive and take up more room. Your stair stepper should have self-leveling flat pedals, keeping your feet parallel to the floor while you use it. This is important for keeping the correct posture during your workout. Other things to look for include: it should be reasonably quiet, upper-body accessories, and a variety of programs. A heart-rate monitor is also useful if you want to track your heart rate while working out. Most of the budget models will not offer this feature. Lastly, adjustable resistance levels will allow you to increase intensity of your workout. Units without this feature could leave you bored or unchallenged once your body adapts to the workout. THE REVIEW = The Best Budget Mini Stepper is the Stamina SpaceMate Folding Stepper 40-0069, which sells for a little over $100. It got good owner reviews. It has handlebars and a display screen. Many were impressed with the hard workout they got with such an inexpensive machine. This is one of the few budget stair steppers that has adjustable resistance.
Other top performers include: Best Mid-Range Stair Stepper = NordicTrack MTN 740 Stepper @ $699. Best Hybrid Stair Stepper = NordicTrack FreeMotion s5.6 @ about $790.
Best price found in Dec., ’09 and again in Apr., '10 = Go to Amazon.com The 2 NordicTrack models were best priced direct from NordicTrack.com.
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for the Mini Stepper.