LifeSpan TR 5000-DT5 Treadmill Desk Workstation

I've had lifelong spinal issues that were finally compounded in a very bad way last summer when I was rear-ended by a large truck, resulting in 2 herniated discs. Yikes. As I already had spinal fusion at C4&C5 11 years ago, the doctors suggestion to have another fusion at L5&S1 was the last thing I wanted. (The other herniated disc is at C5&C6.) All of my doctors (and man are there a lot of them) have been adamant that my 9 hour per day sitting desk job was the Absolute Worst Possible Thing for the health of my spine. After six (yes, six) months of jumping through hoops, getting doctors signatures and forms filled out, dealing with HR and legal, etc., FINALLY my dream came true and I have my treadmill desk! The difference in my neck and back was noticeable immediately, no joke. Some of those lifelong spinal issues also include spina bifida and a tethered spinal cord that I had released when I was 4 years old. As a result of the spina bifida, I had a number of surgeries on both feet when I was young, and there were some further complications as a result... so, yeah, I'm a bit of a mess. I only tell you this because it inhibits my ability to walk very much, so imagine my shock to discover that only a few minutes a day was making a difference. I've had the desk for almost four weeks now and have already been able to work up to nearly 3 cumulative hours per day and expect to see that go up slowly but surely until I reach my goal of 5-6 hours per day. My feet hurt, but they're getting better, and the difference in my legs is already noticeable, but, more importantly, my neck and back feel GREAT! In fact, other than the foot pain (which, honestly, any regular person without a history of foot surgery should be able to mostly avoid), everything about me feels better.I chose this particular model because it was rated for the longest continuous use, but more importantly, because it does not require maintenance. That's huge. For the extra $500 more than next model down (which does require maintenance), it was WELL WORTH IT.My job put together and installed my desk so I cannot comment on how easy that part is, but it is amazingly quiet and sturdy. If I could change one thing, it would be to customize the starting speed so I don't have to adjust it each time I get on and off (which is pretty often). I start off around 1.2 and usually work up to 1.5 for most of the day. This is really slow but even going that slow makes every ounce of difference.If you are considering a treadmill desk, there's really no reason to look any further. This unit is gold.

Solid. Quiet. Works well.I tried to buy mine through Amazon, but they won't ship from the USofA (Amazon.com) and Amazon.ca did not carry this model when I was looking for it.I looked at review sites, and for treadmill desks, LifeSpan was always at, or near, the top of the ratings.I briefly considered the TR800 and TR1200 models. The 800 was never in contention at all, as soon as I read the compartive specs. The TR1200 was looking good, and the price was not too horrifying, but what pushed me to the TR5000 was the 10hour continuous-use rating. The others are made for people who spend, at most, a few hours per day walking. The TR5000 is rated for continuous, all-day use, in professional office environments, where more than one person would use the 'mill, in rotation.I found the Canadian distributor, Flaman Fitness, and placed my order. The beast arrived in a Day & Ross truck the day after our furnace was condemned by the gas-company inspector... so, the day we were getting a replacement furnace. The driver was half my size, and muscled the two heavy boxes inside the front door. After that it was my job to tear down my existing rig (more about that, later), move it out of the way, unpack the new treadmill and desk units, haul them to the vacated place-of-honor in my home office, assemble, and test. This, while running downstairs every few minutes to pester the furnace guys.If you want to take my enthusiastic review with a grain of salt or two, consider what I was replacing. When I decided that sitting all my life was killing my back and other bits, I decided to stand, so I bought a sit-stand workstation for my cube at the employer. It was OK, especially when I jazzed up the experience with a wobble board, but while I persuaded myself to buy another one (for my wife who works from home), I couldn't quite make myself buy a third one for my own use when working from home. I'd seen articles on treadmill desks, but they were either gimmicks or 6000-dollar SteelCase units. But some people on the interweebs were converting old sports/athletic treadmills into deskmills. We had a 1990s ProForm SpaceSaver mill gathering dust, because it was noisy and the belt would slip/skip at running speed, under my bulk. Using MacGyver-like ingenuity I didn't know I had, I glued several sheets of pink foam insulation together, making a stack a foot high. Then I carved the underside to conform to the hand-rails and the console of the old 'mill. When I finally got that to fit, semi-level.... -ish, I glued a thin sheet of plywood to the top. Then I cut a hole for access to the controls. Yes, it was roughly as ugly and awkward as it sounds. But it worked. My contraption was sufficiently solid to hold my laptop, keyboard, monitors, and stray bits, at the desired height for keyboarding. Some judicious propping with books and old cookie boxes put the displays at the correct height for viewing.It didn't take long to become accustomed to typing while walking, and doing coarse mousing. If I needed finely dextrous mousing, like for drawing something, I would simply pause the belt or straddle it for a while. The thing was a little less noisy at walking speeds, so that wasn't too bad. The "desktop" contraption was mounted on the treadmill superstructure, so it was constantly wobbling a bit, but since I was walking, it wasn't too bad. Also, the belt slippage was not happening at the slower speeds I was now using the old 'mill.Good enough. So why am I here, writing a review for an expensive, purpose-built product when I had my handy, home-grown solution using items already in my house? Well, it turns out that HOME-use treadmills intended for exercise in a home gym are built to run best at 4-to-10(ish) miles per hour, for an hour or two at a time, maximum. They are not intended for all-day slogs at slow speed. After a year or so, the noise level was climbing, new squeaks and sqwawks arising every day. And ... yes... that was definitely the scent of overheated electrical bits and bearings. I knew it would not be long, so that's why I researched, and then bought a purpose-built walking-desk treadmill, and held out for the one that was rated to run longer than I would ever run it each day. Er.. that is.... longer than I would WALK it... just sayin'.Here it is,about a month later, and I've used it several days per week, averaging 20,000 steps (so that includes the days I worked at the employer office and didn't log any treadmill time), and I'm ready to review.As I said, it arrived in two boxes. One is the completely self-contained treadmill unit. The other is the commercial-grade height-adjustable desktop that straddles the treadmill. So the treadmill came out of its box and rolled to the desired corner. The desk (easily as heavy as the 'mill), is flat-packed. It took all of ten minutes to get it together, not including the trip to the basement for a ratchet, since the included wrench is... well, you can use it, but you'll long for a ratcheting socket wrench before you are done. The only connections between the 'mill and the desk are that the 'mill straddles a couple of pegs that keep it centered under the desk, and there's a cable connector for the console that controls the 'mill. The console is a slim effort on the front of the table-top, right about where it nestles against your belly-button when you have the table-height properly adjusted. There's a small plastic cover-thingie that snaps over the other end of that cable, where it connects from the table uprights to the table-top. That's it. You plug in the power cord and you are in business. Well, ok, you do need to pop your laptop and display(s) on top and plug them into a power-bar. There's a handy cable-trough under the table-top that helps keep cables and slim power-bars out of sight.The functions are simple and few. Attach the safety pull-out (The red end must be plugged into the console; the yellow clip is supposed to clip to your clothing and yank the red thing out, if you fall.) I never attached the clip to me. Just the red thing to the red-thing spot, where it never strays.Here's the only flaw I've found: the power switch is down on the end of the treadmill, where the power-cord and data cable attach, meaning at the far front of the whole contraption. This means you crawl under the desk to switch on power. The 'mill wakes up and a quiet cooling fan comes on. The console beeps above you, and you bang your head...You stand up, and the console is blinking at you. If you press and hold the start button, the treadmill counts down from 3-2-1 and starts rolling at 0.4 miles-per-hour. That's the slowest it can go. There's a mode button that I don't really use. If you don't annoy it, the LED display cycles through displaying things like speed, foosteps, calories, etc. Yes, the beast detects and counts your footsteps. Unfortunately, it's only a 4-digit display (meaning it goes no higher than 9999 steps before it rolls over and starts from zero). Since I carry my phone in my pocket, and it uses its accelerometers as a sensitive pedometer, I prefer that, and don't normally refer to the console. So, next to the display on the other side is a Pause/Stop button... you can probably figure out what that does. Finally, next to that are up-arrow and down-arrow buttons. They get some use if you are trying to set or use functions, but otherwise their purpose is to control the treadmill speed. Each press is a 1/10 mph increment, up to the maximum 4mph.At top speed, there's a bit of belt whine. The motor is pretty-much silent.I'm not able to do office work at a slow jog, so I mostly leave the 'mill rolling between 1.9 and 2.2 mph. A little higher if I'm just going to read for a while. It only ever goes up to 4mph when I feel the need to loosen up a tad.Around 2 miles per hour is comfortable. I walk barefoot, and the belt surface felt a little rougher than the belt on my old contraption, but I got accustomed to it within a couple of days.The sound-meter app on my phone says that the old machine was squealing and shaking at upwards of 70 decibels, while the new beast is consistently down near 40 while I'm walking at 2.1mph. That would go unnoticed at a library. . . for those of you old enough to remember libraries.It runs smoothly. No shaking or shuddering. I can migrate from one side to the other of the belt, or fore-and-aft, without causing any change to sound or motion. I put 12 hours on it one day, broken only by pee breaks and lunch and dinner... it was a deadline week.... I don't usually work that much. The 'mill did not complain at all.The only flaw, as I mentioned, is the placement of the power switch. I rather stupidly leaned some weight on the motor housing and cracked the plastic, the first time I was fumbling for that switch. I'm wiser now, and have done no further damage. A little glue will fix the small crack in the housing, which is only a dust-cover for the motor and circuit boards.For the desktop, I got the DT5. That's the one that gets the desk height set manually. I set it once on the first day and have had no cause to change it.If I was using it in an office and sharing with other people, or even sharing with other family members at home, I would have gone for the DT7 desktop, which has motorized height adjustment. For a single user, there's simply no advantage to the DT7 over the DT5. The TR5000 underneath is the same unit.By the way, if you already HAVE a table of the correct height that will straddle the 'mill unit, you can purchase the TR5000 with no desk. Instead, you get a wired controller that you get to mount on your provided desk as the console. If you don't have, or if you aren't thrilled with an existing table that you might use, I can recommend the DT5. It's a solid, hefty, well-designed and well-constructed piece of kit. And of course it fits perfectly and includes those centering pegs to keep the 'mill and the desktop from wandering apart.I had no trouble giving the LifeSpan TR5000-DT5 my highest recommendation.It does what it says it does, and it does it well. What more could you ask?UPDATE1: I forgot to mention something you might want to know. When the TR5000 and the DT5 desk are hooked together, the whole assembly is about 75 inches long. The table-top is the widest part, at about 47 inches. You don't absolutely NEED any more than a fraction of an inch of clearance on either side (if you want to set it up in a closet...), but I advise giving yourself an extra bit on the length in case you get startled (or tripped) by your cat and misstep and get rolled off the back end. If I slide off my treadmill, I land on the sofa behind it. In real life (not a closet, unless, you know, you really have nowhere else) you want some space to one side or the other of the 'mill for ease of mounting and dismounting. How much space, I'll leave to you and your waistline. But in a pinch - or a closet - you could mount from the rear, sidle up the side-rails, and then just step on, with no pressing need for space alongside. Up to you, and your situation, but those are the measurements you've got to work with. Hope that helps.UPDATE2: It's now June 8, 2015, so I've had the TR5000 for two months and a week. I'm ridiculously pleased with it.I'm not quite as pleased as I was when I bought my first-ever brand-new set of parachute gear (though you can imagine that's in a class by itself as fond memories go), but still, the TR5000 is looking to be one of the standout purchases I've ever made.I've already put a BUNCH of 20,000-step days, and several 30,000-step days on it. I've lubricated the belt a couple of times. Like the title says, "Solid. Quiet. Works well." If you work at a desk and if you have functional legs, and if you can possibly afford this, you need the TR5000-DT5. No foolin'. I have no relationship with the manufacturer other than as a very pleased purchaser and user of their fine product. I'm a happy camper. If that ever changes, I'll come back and update this review. But so far.... excellent.