Two Years Later: My Long Term Review of the $1000 Horizon 7.0 AT Treadmill

I've spent the last two years running on this sub $1,000 treadmill, so you don't have to. This is the Horizon Fitness 7.0 AT treadmill. It's one of the handful of treadmills in that $1,000 and actually a little bit less price range with very similar specs. But of course, this has some things that made me choose it when I bought it. And I want to share with you, well, my experience has been over the last two years, so you can decide whether or not this is a good fit for you.

So let's check it out. Hey guys, this is Michael with the Jungle Gym Reviews. Today we're reviewing the Horizon Fitness 7.0 AT treadmill. I've owned this for almost two years and I've been using it on and off for a handful of times a week, primarily for walking. I'm a big walker, so anywhere from one to three miles a day and running, I will say, full disclaimer. I am not a runner as in a traditional road runner.

I used to play college soccer and now simply I just run for fun, if that's even possible. And by that, I mean I do some Spartan races, Tough Mudders, things like that. Last year I did a 10K. This year I'm trying to get up to a 21K Spartan race.

I use this as some additional training to supplement my road running, especially when doing things like intervals, but also do things like incline walking on a very high incline, which simulates one of my favorite activities in hiking. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about why I bought this, some of the features it has, and how well it's held up over the last two years. Before I get into the video, you can quickly hit that subscribe button below if you haven't already. It'll continue to help us grow the channel and make sure you get notified when we post our weekly review videos throughout the rest of 2025.

And if you're interested in purchasing this after the review, please check out that affiliate link in the description below. The big things here that I chose this for is the fact that one thing above all else, these two quick dials, they have a little patented name for them, but basically you just quickly slide them up or down and it adjusts on the left. The incline, as you can see, you can also actually press numbers on here and on the right, the speed, the fact I can just press a button and it changes immediately to that speed or press a button and it changes immediately to that incline, literally just one button pressed. You don't have to hit button, enter okay.

And especially when you're doing things like interval training, which I've done from being a soccer player, it makes it really nice that you don't have to hit up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, enter while you're trying to actually run or increase or decrease speed or increase or decrease the incline. As I'll kind of show here, you literally hop on, you punch it to 12, you get right in there. The max speed is 12 miles per hour. This is pretty typical for treadmills in this price range, which we'll talk about here shortly. And we're going to stop before it gets that high and I want to slow down.

Look at that. Also use a quick dial. I want to bump that incline up to 15 all the way. There we go.

It's going to get going right now. 0.5 to 12 miles per hour. Now that is perfectly adequate for a lot of people because 12 mile an hour is a five minute mile. I used to have an assault runner, which allows more of the sprinting. You can't do sprinting on here. 12, five minute mile, that's just a very fast pace. So if you want to do sprints, pretty much most treadmills are out of bounds unless you get a really, really, really expensive commercial treadmill.

All of these more budget friendly home-oriented versions. Simply just don't go that fast. On the incline side, it goes up from zero to 15 degrees. And as you can see here, especially once I put it on three, four mile an hour, this is perfect for simulating some good, good hiking, which is exactly what I did.

Every year I go hiking, big trips out west. This is just the perfect machine to simulate that short of a stair climber. I've seen reviews online that people say they don't like how high this goes and that anything over 10 degrees isn't really useful.

I haven't found that to be the case. Clearly this is 15 degrees. I'm at 3.2 if you crank it up to four. I mean, this is great both cardio, but also just in general. It works your hamstrings. It works your quads. One other thing I actually like to do on this incline, especially in our new modern society where we're all pre-habbing, rehabbing, flip around. and knees over toes.

So this like decline walking, both for strengthening your quads and again that like eccentric loading on all your different knee musculature. This is actually really helped. I don't have the safety key in here.

It does come with one just like every treadmill you've ever seen in your entire life. You pull that out and it stops. It's supposed to be clipped to you for safety purposes, but there's actually a fan built in that very, very minimally kicks out air in your face. I don't really use that.

It's literally like someone going through a straw about a foot away from you. Not really helpful or a feature that I consider useful. It also has Bluetooth and Bluetooth speakers built in here. So you can listen to music, but again, when you're running and you put this on Bluetooth, you can barely hear it.

So I suggest good pair of headphones or very loud speaker. One of the other main reasons I chose this is literally just because of its all black aesthetics as you'll see from my gym here, black on black. And if you saw this in my video last year of my 2024 home gym tour, I mentioned that again, besides the little touches of blue, which I think are nice.

I simply like the all black on black to go with most of my black equipment. The other main reason I got this is again, because I do a lot of walking and stuff. Sometimes I would take my work calls in the morning on this or I need to have my laptop in front of me. This shelf here, it has this little shelf. So you can either put like a big tablet. I had a 15 inch tablet, or literally I can put my laptop right here with the screen up so that I can be like watching your presentation while getting my steps in.

So that was very helpful. Or you can use this tablet holder on top here. One thing I will say is when you do get running, if you're like running anywhere over seven, eight miles an hour, your tablet is kind of bouncing all over the place because you're bouncing on the deck and the deck has this attached to it.

Just know that, but otherwise, especially when you're walking, this is perfect. As far as the deck size itself, it is 20 inches wide by 60 inches long. When I get up to 12 mile an hour, I am six foot two with pretty long legs. I don't have an issue with like almost falling off the deck or anything. I think this is pretty standard deck size among other things. It also does have a cushion deck.

I chose that because I've had knee injuries and stuff from playing soccer, dislocations, sprains, strains, anything I can take to make running a little bit easier on my knees. I will do, it's called a three zone cushion deck. Basically it's just a little bit of cushion deck so it does provide a little bit of cushion when you are running on it. I have also noticed that having it on some stall mats like this, maybe logically, provides another layer of little bit of cushion. That is just something to keep in mind depending on what you want to store it on at home. Speaking of storage, one of the interesting features about this that I think quite a few treadmills has is simply you just flip this up and it will lock into place on the way down so that you can store it in this upright position.

This potentially creates a little more room depending on if you wanted to turn it out or if you wanted to store it in a corner. It does have wheels on it that you can wheel it around just to get it in and out of certain places. It's not incredibly hard to move. It is nice that it just gives you a little more floor space and clearance when you do put it up like this and taking it down is super easy as well.

Literally it's just a little foot latch to release and the little piston that holds it in place slowly brings it down to the floor and that's it. So again, I want to reiterate, I'm not really a true runner. So if you're putting on a ton of miles, I can't speak to exactly how that is. I try to do some rough calculations between my mostly walking and occasional running and it was somewhere in the 15 to 20 miles of walking a week, five to 10 miles of running at its peak.

Obviously not every week when it's nice outside, I like to go outside a little bit more but that's about the kind of the wear and tear I put on here. It's held up just fine and as far as how well it works, just fine. It's a treadmill, you want to make sure it works. The motor doesn't bog.

I believe it is a three horsepower motor from what I've seen. For me, I weigh 185 pounds. I've never had the belt slipping.

I've never, especially at full speed or full incline, felt like it was like slow or lugging or anything like that. As far as I can tell, it'll hold up well for most residential usage. This I got about two years ago for $999. Overall, I've been very pleased with it. They have a lifetime frame warranty, a lifetime motor warranty. I've been very happy with that $1,000 purchase.

The only thing that I've had to do as far as maintenance is lubricate the belt every X miles. I don't remember what that is off hand. Please take a look at the manual. One thing that is nice, it tells you actually, once it hits the mile increment that it recommends for service.

So something will flash on the screen and it'll tell you it's time to lubricate that belt. So the last thing I want to mention is some of the smart features about this. Again, in the $1,000 price range, you'll see there's no big built-in screen or anything for training, but you can actually very easily pair this with Bluetooth to Zwift. If you're familiar with that, it's like an online sort of interactive running mainstream app and basically it just visualizes you as a person in a 3D space.

You can raise it against your friends. So just know you can pair this with Zwift. You can pair this with the Peloton app because it does have Bluetooth. It also says you can pair this with your Apple Watch or Samsung Watch.

I haven't tried that so I can't speak to how well that works, but I don't see why not again because it has the Bluetooth built in. You can also get your heart rate through the heart rate sensors that are built in here, just like most treadmills that you've seen at the gym. It actually works really well and really quickly. It'll put your heart rate here along with your pace and some of the other key metrics. They do also include this heart rate strap that simply you just wrap around on your chest and torso on your skin and it automatically will sync with this and display your heart rate.

And if you use the apps like Zwift or some other smart apps, it also obviously integrates with all that as well. For anyone looking for a treadmill that's unsure, it's like, oh man, do I want one of those more expensive, couple thousand dollar ones? Do I want to go with a really cheap one? I think this is a very good, like middle of the road option that has a good warranty, good speed capabilities, easy maintenance, very well thought out and easy to use smart features. I definitely recommend this for anyone looking for that thousand dollar price range. Just know, because there are a couple of things that could go wrong, you just have to be aware of those.

You do have to take some care of this, but otherwise I definitely recommend it. So guys, that's it for today's review. Of the Horizon 7.0 AT Treadmill. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below.

I'll be happy to answer or at least try. Thanks for tuning in to the Jungle Gym Reviews. We'll see you next time. Take it easy. Peace.