The 6 Best Ellipticals to Finally Hit Your Stride

You may dream of sprinting effortlessly around the track à la Noah Lyles, but if you're one of the 25% of people who deal with regular knee pain, it may be time to stop pounding the pavement. The best ellipticals offer low-impact cardio that's easy on the joints, and contrary to somewhat of a wimpy reputation, ellipticals rival the treadmill and stationary bike in getting your heart pumping, which has positive effects on longevity and insulin resistance.

“Ellipticals provide a low-impact workout that’s gentle on your joints while engaging both your upper and lower body, offering a comprehensive exercise option,” says Josh York, ISSA-certified personal trainer and founder and CEO of Gymguyz. This is especially true in the era of connected fitness, when interactive workouts, better ergonomics, and endless customization options let them work with your body to get in a good workout that doesn’t kill your joints. If you’re sick of fighting for custody of the gym ellipticals, we found the best ellipticals that’ll boost your heart rate at home, one graceful stride at a time.

Our Favorite Overall Elliptical

We chose the NordicTrack AirGlide 14i as the best elliptical overall because it offers immersive workouts with certified trainers, has auto-adjusting resistance and incline, and syncs with Google Maps to simulate any street in the world during your workout.

Best Ellipticals: At a Glance

Props if you know exactly what you’re looking for in a cardio machine. Here’s our shortlist of best ellipticals for your thoughtful consideration.

• Best Elliptical Overall: NordicTrack AirGlide 14i
• Best Smart Elliptical: ProForm Carbon E7
• Best Elliptical for Beginners: Horizon EX-59
• Most Ergonomic Elliptical: Sole E25
• Best Compact Elliptical: Bowflex Max Trainer M9
• Best Budget Elliptical: Merach E19 Classic Smart Elliptical
• Best Commercial-Grade Elliptical: Life Fitness E1 Elliptical Cross-Trainer

The NordicTrack AirGlide 14i isn’t your parents’ elliptical. It’s bulky, yes, but the pedals and stride length will feel comfortable as you hike up the resistance and incline. With thousands of elliptical workouts on the iFit app, you’ll have tons of variety to encourage you to hop on the machine daily.

NordicTrack’s Airglide 14i measures six feet long and a little under 250 pounds. The stocky lower half gives it the necessary stability for intense workouts, but the console and handles are still super sleek. Keep in mind that you’ll also have to subscribe to the iFit app ($39 a month) to take full advantage of the interactive, trainer-led workouts and all the promised features. One of our favorite features is called AutoAdjust, which gives your virtual iFit coach control over your incline, decline, and resistance.

If you’re easily bored during cardio, the AirGlide 14i has a truly unique feature that might save you from ennui. Google Maps syncs to the screen, allowing you to simulate an IRL street view anywhere in the world as you work out, whether that’s the Champs-Élysées or the back country road to your grandma’s house. Our tester says that it’s the customization options, like the street simulator, that boost the Airglide 14i’s appeal. In addition to transporting you anywhere in the world, you can also adjust the pedal angle, incline, decline, and stride length, so no two sessions are the same.

At just under $2,000, this elliptical is one of the bigger investments for a home gym (although it is on par with some of the best running treadmills). If you don’t see yourself using this elliptical as your main source of cardio several times a week, a budget pick like the Merach E19 might be more your speed.

Best Smart Elliptical: ProForm Carbon E7

The ProForm Carbon E7 Elliptical is another all-encompassing cardio machine with iFit fitness app compatibility, a generous incline and resistance offering, and a small-but-mighty touchscreen.

The Carbon E7 measures over six feet long and weighs a little over 200 pounds. We wouldn't say it's the most compact, but it's still portable on wheels and packed with customizable features. As a noteworthy bonus, ProForm offers three years of iFit fitness app access (normally $39 a month) with your purchase, so you can still follow along with the interactive programming and trainer-led workouts. Syncing with iFit allows the virtual trainers to automatically adjust the incline and resistance throughout the session for a more dynamic training. The seven-inch screen isn't that big, but you still have the option to view your trainings with vivid color.

If you prefer to switch up your session manually, flip through 24 resistance levels and up to 20 degrees of incline (in five-degree increments). The 19-inch stride length is also adjustable to create as short or lengthy of a stride as you'd like, which allows for tall and short users to glide with ease. To incorporate a bit of upper body, hold on to the moving handrails, or grip the stationary handrails for a more isolated lower body movement.

Checking every box for price, user-friendliness, and functionality, the Horizon EX-59 is great for beginners. It has everything you need when you’re new to elliptical training: an LCD screen, multiple resistance levels, and Bluetooth capability to play music.

The Horizon EX-59 is our pick for those who are newer to the elliptical universe. It’s simpler in design (you don’t need an app for this one) and mimics a natural stride with an 18-inch track. Two sets of handlebars—a moving one to involve your upper body and a stationary one to isolate your lower body—also allow you customize your workout.

You won’t get trainer-led sessions from the EX-59, but you can set your phone on the device holder and connect to the Bluetooth speakers to stream workouts from your phone instead. If you don’t want to think too much about picking the right workout for the day, choose from five preset programs. The only downside we see: This is a bulky machine that doesn’t fold, but the front wheels do make it transportable from room to room. The upside is that the price isn’t as steep as others on our list, and we think the functionality is perfect for a beginner.

The Sole E25 is a heavy-duty elliptical that’s ultra user-friendly because Sole called on the help of physical therapists for its design. The footrests are ergonomically designed with an inward slope that’s easy on your knees and ankles.

If you’re going to be spending a few hours a week on your elliptical, it’s gotta be comfortable. Thanks to the input of physical therapists, the foot rests on the Sole E25 have a two-degree inward slope that takes the load off your ankles and knees. Two sets of handlebars track your heart rate and offer different muscle involvement, whether you’re involving your upper body with the movable handles or isolating your lower body with the stationary ones. The cherry on top—a built-in fan delivers a much-needed breeze after a heart-pumping interval.

The Sole E25 gets back to basics with a simple console that includes two Bluetooth speakers and a USB charging port. You can select from 20 levels of incline and resistance, or choose from five built-in programs. Our testers called out the whisper-quiet motor—ideal for early morning workouts—and the durability of this large-and-in-charge machine. Overall, we’re impressed by the comfort and customization options on this elliptical—especially considering it’s one of the cheaper ones we tested—but if you love a touchscreen and thrive on instructor-led workouts, the Sole E25 is probably a little too no-frills for you.

Bowflex’s Max Trainer M9 is a high-intensity elliptical stepper that fits in your apartment or home gym with room to spare. You can connect to instructor-cued interval training or binge a show on Netflix via the built-in screen.

Back in the ‘90s, you couldn’t flip a channel without seeing a Bowflex infomercial, and the brand’s cred has stuck around. The Max Trainer M9 is technically a cross between an elliptical and stair stepper (kind of like the NordicTrack Airglide 14i), but it’s about half the size of a traditional elliptical.

The elliptical integrates with the brand’s JRNY fitness app to stream classes, but you can also dive into four preset workouts that function sans app (both the app classes and preset workouts range from light to intense). Because the short handles keep your arms closer to your body, you’re also maximizing effort in your lower body. At its most challenging, think of a SoulCycle or Peloton class without ever connecting butt to seat.

Our tester did warn us about the noise, however, saying that this elliptical gets loud, especially when you’re doing an intense workout. We wouldn’t recommend using it early in the morning or late at night so as not to wake up your roommates. But other than the noise, he reports feeling just as energized with the Max Trainer M9 as he does on a Peloton bike.

The Merach E19 elliptical incorporates elliptical cardio with resistance band training for four different workout modes (walking, HIIT training, strength training, and lower-body training). It’s a budget-friendly pick, and the compact size is a win for small spaces.

For a sweet price of $400, the Merach E19 costs less than a month of Equinox’s most expensive membership. It’s small but mighty, easily tucking into a room’s corner. It combines the classic elliptical motion with resistance band cables—so you can add bursts of strength training to your steady-state cardio (plus: these have built-in heart rate sensors to track your effort levels). If you don’t want to use the bands, lean on the armrests instead, which adjust up to 7.88 inches to meet your ideal height.

To adjust the resistance, you have to connect the Merach with the brand’s free fitness app—unfortunately, there’s no way to manually do so, which our testers didn’t love. Both courses and games are built into the app, too, so if you want a connected fitness experience, you’ll be taken care of with this option. However, our tester says the app isn’t updated often and glitches every now and then, but there are plenty of diverse workouts to choose from in its existing library.

The Life Fitness E1 with the modest Go Console built with durability to last for years. It boasts all your basic stat tracking too, but the high-quality materials are the standout features here.

You’ll find a lot of Life Fitness machines in hotels and commercial gyms because they’re durable and dependable. If you want to bring the luxury gym experience to your home, the E1 Elliptical Cross-Trainer is a good place to start. It isn’t as shiny and attention-grabbing as other ellipticals on our list (read: no interactive or on-demand classes), but in this case, you’re paying for quality first and foremost. Our tester loves that it’s quiet, the preset workouts are challenging, and you won’t have to replace this for years. The lifetime warranty comes in handy if you find yourself needing a replacement.

The E1 comes with two console options. The Go Console, which is the simpler and more cost-effective of the two, comes with 13 preloaded workouts. Up to two users can store their progress on a personal profile and create one custom workout for each. You can’t store your phone on the Go Console as opposed to the Track Connect 2.0 option, but you can get a cheap stand on Amazon if you really want one. (For $3,499, the Track Connect 2.0 has 15 preloaded workouts and room for three custom workouts across four user profiles. It also syncs to the Life Fitness Connect app or your smartphone.

Before you make your final selection, let's take a look at how the best ellipticals stack up in cost (before any sales or discounts).

We know how daunting it can be to decide which gym equipment is worth splurging on. So many machines promise different things, and it’s easy to get lost in the details. But we take our testing methodology pretty seriously. Our team dives deep into researching every elliptical on the market and we put our top contenders through the paces to test them on durability, functionality, ease of use, portability, and performance. We found the best ellipticals for home gyms that are high-intensity for your fitness goals and low-intensity for your joints.

We also tapped Josh York, an ISSA-certified personal trainer, to give us the rundown on how an elliptical can make a difference in your fitness routine. After a few weeks, each elliptical was graded on its exercise chops and how it held up against different factors such as body type, storage space, physical ability, budget, and more. Our findings are handed off to the medical experts to see how our user testing mirrored the industry research and brand claims. If spending your hard-earned cash is enough to make you sweat, rest assured that these best ellipticals are an investment well made.

Between the features and space requirements, buying an elliptical is a little more complex than you might think. That’s why we talked to the experts for shopping tips to get the most out of this low-impact machine. Here are the factors to keep in mind.

What are the Benefits of an Elliptical?

Compared to treadmills and other cardio machines, the biggest benefit of ellipticals is that they’re gentle on your joints. The low-impact, gliding motion prevents all your weight from crashing down on your knees and ankles as you step, preventing injuries in the long run. The repetitive motion might get monotonous (especially since you’re not stimulated by an outdoor setting), but York says that if joint health is a concern, ellipticals are the way to go.

About the Experts

Josh York is a certified personal trainer with over 15 years of training experience. He is also the founder & CEO of GYMGUYZ, the largest in-home and on-site personal training company in the world. York is passionate about personal training, helping clients of all ages and backgrounds navigate their fitness journey from home, the office, or anywhere in between.

This article was expertly reviewed for accuracy and clarity by Pete Nastasi. Nastasi is the owner of Nastasi Nutrition, is a NASM certified Sports Nutrition Coach and Personal Trainer with a degree in Biochemistry currently residing in North Carolina.