This Is the Most Responsive Treadmill I’ve Ever Run On

Over the course of about six weeks, 11 of us put the Kickr Run to the test. Our testing panel included members of the New York Times Running Club, people training for marathons, and novice runners who don’t usually use treadmills. Most runners spent around 20 minutes on the machine, while I logged around 15 total hours on it.

Overall, we found that the belt is quiet, and the deck is solid. The Kickr Run uses a continuous belt, which the company’s website says is quieter than slatted surfaces seen on some high-end treadmills. The machine does take up a lot of space, though. Wahoo lists its dimensions as 72 by 38 by 58 inches, and the deck is not foldable. The entire apparatus weighs 410 pounds.

The Kickr Run’s minimalist display only shows incline percentage and pace (for example, a 12-minute pace at 5 miles per hour). A company spokesperson said this is because most runners don’t talk about their times in relation to miles per hour, but by their pace.

It doesn’t have a monitor like the one on the NordicTrack Commercial 1750, which has been our top pick in our guide to treadmills for many years. But you can access interactive workouts on the Kickr Run by connecting to Zwift via a TV, laptop, tablet, or phone. The machine’s 16.5-by-11-inch media console has plenty of space to securely place a laptop. I’ve tried to prop up a separate media device on almost every treadmill I’ve tested over the past two years, and the Kickr Run’s holster is one of the few that prevented shaking. It actually provided the best experience I’ve ever had working on a computer while walking on a treadmill. (A nice bonus, but far from the lone reason to drop roughly $7,000 on a machine like this.)

You can control the speed and incline using levers on the treadmill arms—right lever for speed, left one for incline and decline—which take some getting used to. Its maximum speed is a 4-minute mile (15 mph), and it inclines up to 15% and declines to -3%. Both the incline/decline and acceleration controls change rapidly.

To start the Kickr Run, you give a slight push forward on the right lever, which will move the belt at a slow speed. A further nudge forward increases the speed to a medium rate (you’ll see the time on the display decrease), while a harder push forward increases the speed at a rapid rate. (You can increase the rate in one-second increments if you hold the lever all the way forward.)

The treadmill can be stopped in a few ways: It has a stop button on the main panel and an emergency stop cord, but if you stand on the side panels at any point during a run, the belt will also come to a stop. The machine does not gradually slow down before stopping, so be prepared for a sudden, jarring stop.

It has other safety measures, like a protective plate at the back of the belt to prevent children or objects from being pulled under the treadmill. If you tap the acceleration lever when no one is standing on the treadmill, the belt won’t start.

Although it functions well as a standard treadmill with hand controls for speed and incline, the standout feature of the Kickr Run is its Run Free mode, which is supposed to mimic your stride when running outdoors. You can activate Run Free at any time by hitting a button on the right side of the control panel; hitting it again disengages this mode and takes you back to manual controls.

The Kickr Run’s time-of-flight optical sensor measures the distance from the console to the runner and continually adjusts the motor to adjust your pace. Reviewers like DC Rainmaker have described this feature as “mind-boggling.” A Wahoo spokesperson said the Kickr Run is the first treadmill to use a time-of-flight sensor, but they’re not proprietary.

Most testers felt that using the machine in Run Free mode recreated the feel of running unencumbered outside well enough, but they were split on whether it was enough to forget they were running on a treadmill. Still, many testers viewed the lack of a monitor as a positive attribute of the machine, noting that helped them to focus more on the feel of their runs.

“I would probably go a lot farther on it than I would on a regular treadmill,” says supervising editor Ingrid Skjong, who is also a certified personal trainer and an avid runner. “It feels very open to run on; I didn’t feel constricted or penned in.”

Often when I’m running outside, I’ll be surprised to look down at my GPS running watch and see that I’m running at a faster pace than I expected, without feeling like I exerted more energy. On the contrary, if I try to stay at a 10-minute pace (6 mph) on a treadmill, it can often feel like a slog. The experience of running on the Kickr Run was definitely more akin to the former.

On most treadmills you have to press a button and hold it for several seconds to reach a desired speed, then wait another 10 seconds or so for the motor to actually reach that speed. In Run Free mode, I could go from a 12-minute pace to a 9-minute pace in just a few seconds.

Run Free mode also has intuitive safety features. If the sensor underneath the stop button ever gets covered (say, by a falling towel), the machine stops.

“When it was humming along well, I could zone out and just run the way my body wanted to,” said Jaclyn Reiss, a member of the New York Times Run Club who is training for the Boston Marathon. Reiss added that the belt felt stable and secure, “like my body could take up a natural amount of space without feeling like there was too little or too much room.”

Almost every one of our testers experienced some trial and error using Run Free mode. For me, on the first few runs, the treadmill seemed to slow down when I didn’t want to; I also found I couldn’t slow down as it increased in speed, making me run much faster than I intended. It was like the machine was controlling me, the opposite of the Kickr Run’s stated intention.

But on ensuing runs, I learned body placement is important. It seemed the closer I was to the front of the Kickr Run belt, the easier it was for me to control my pace (although that may not be the case for everyone, a Wahoo spokesperson said). Once I understood where my ideal body placement was, I had much smoother runs and noticed that the changes in pace were much more minuscule (only a few seconds) compared with the larger jumps I experienced early on. A Wahoo spokesperson said Run Free mode was built to remember where you are on the treadmill each time you turn the feature on, and it did seem like the machine was finally adapting to me.

Another tester, who prefers to run a bit farther back on the belt (“so I’m not right on top of the console”) found that, in Run Free mode, the machine didn’t seem to pick up her true pace.

The 12.5-inch step up to get on the treadmill seemed steep, which could be a minor hindrance for some people (for comparison, the step onto the NordicTrack 1750 is 9.5 inches).

The Kickr Run has a warranty of five years for the frame, motor, and running belt, one year on all other treadmill parts, and one year on labor provided by Wahoo-authorized repair providers, which is less comprehensive than other treadmills we recommend.

For some runners, it may well be. A Times Run Club member, who regularly clocks 4-minute miles and trains for several races each year, called it the “best treadmill I’ve ever run on, by far.”

That doesn’t mean it’s exclusively for runners with shelves full of medals. Even our novice testers noted how the Kickr Run’s Run Free mode felt more engaging than staying at one static pace on a treadmill. If indoor running is your preferred workout, if you find traditional treadmills provide a bland experience, and if you have no interest in streaming interactive workouts to a permanently affixed screen at face level, then the Wahoo Kickr Run might be the right torture device for you.

This article was edited by Tracy Vence and Kalee Thompson.