Alexander Merten

Hey everyone!

Today I want to tell you about my experience with the walking pad P1. For those that don't want to read the details: absolutely recommended product 🙂

How I bought and received it
The journey with my walking pad started out not so well to be honest. The package arrived damaged and I was uncertain whether to open it at all or whether what was inside was also damaged. They had put the straps around the package in the wrong way, so that it bite into the it.
HOWEVER the support was super helpful, acknowledge the damage and told me to try it out and promised to take it back in case anything was damaged or did not work properly and also offered some discount for the damaged packaged, even if the product was okay. So for me, a 5 star customer experience. Really good.

Setting it up
It tool a bit of trial and error for me, but finally I found a good way to integrate it into my working space. Must have: electronic height adjustable desk. Pro Tip: I bought an old office desk from ebay kleinanzeigen and took the top-plate off .. then I bought a height adjustable frame from amazon and put that top-plate on it. Saved me 200-300€, as those top-plates are really as expensive as all the rest with the electronics.
There is also a remote control, aside from the app, which I hanged on the wall next to my desk. You can see it in the pictures above. This allows you to easily control the walking pad, start it and stop it.

Using the App
The app is solid, but from the overall experience really the worst of the package. You will see my screenshot from it with 541km, when actually I have walked something like 600+ because 1) the pad will only transfer data to the app, when you manually go and open it on a specific screen. Then the data is not stored in the cloud, so when you disconnect the walking pad from power, this training data is lost. Also it does not store the day of exercise on the walking pad. So if you do not access your walking pad daily through the app, then you get all exercise data mapped to the current day. This way, you can walk 100km on it in a single day 😉 However, it is not a really big deal. Just the worst part of the whole product experience – and it is still okay-ish to good.

Using the product
I have a wide desk, and put it to the left side of my chair, when I sit. When I walk, I put my chair there and roll the walking pad to where the chair was. So easily done, especially since the walking pad has some wheels on which you can move it easily.
Here comes another small issue: The power cord connects at the side, where the wheels are. Which means, when you lift the walking pad at the other end to move it, you press the power cord towards the floor, potentially removing it partially from the socket or might result in some long term damage of either the cable or the port. So far I have seen no such effect, but there it is – a small design flaw. To prevent this, you have to unplug it, before moving (which is actually part of the user manual), which in turn might lose you the training data. But there it is. No biggy but something to watch out for.
Also be advised that using a walking pad might accumulate quite some dust. You can see the result of one day on the pictures above. You might want to have a small vacuum at hand to regularly clean you working area. This should be the same for all walking pads however.
Finally which is really nice, is that the walking pad detects whether you are still walking on it or not and shuts down after 2 seconds. This takes away the extra click from you, allows you to jump off the walking pad in case of urgency (e.g. door belll rings, kid gets hurt, etc.) and nothing bad happens or the walking pad continues to run for 2h until you get back. So plus for this.
There is also an automatic mode, which I do not use – I just settle in for 3.5 km/h and I generally walk for 2h in the morning and 2h in the afternoon. This way I walk 14km a day with roughtly 20.000 steps. I mostly do desk work as a consultant, run workshops and meetings, create slides etc. Basically all can be done while walkign at 3.5 km/h. The only time I turn it off is when I really need to concentrate or do pixel perfect alignments in Miro or Powerpoint for example. Sometimes people will say they find it disturbing since you have this constant up and down motion in your video chats. However those were 3-4 people in round about 50-60 I worked with. I just shut it down then and continue working in a standing position.

Does it get damaged while using?
So far I can confirm, that the band is moving slightly left to right, depending on how you walk and put pressure on it. If you don't notice it and put it back in the center (which is easy), then it starts to get a bit unfurled at the edge as it scratches on the frame. No serious damage, that makes the product unusable, even after 600km, but something to look out for and make sure you treat your product with care.
I also had to instances where the walking pad suddenly got much louder than before. But somehow it disappeared again, before I could find a source for it. Happened 2-3 times in 600kms

Final Recommendation:
Though I pointed out the flaws of the product, I want to emphazise that the overall product experience is extremely solid, satisfying and useable day to day. I have been walking for 4h daily each workday since 4 months now and I have seen how it positively transformed my body. I took of 7 kilos as a slow but sustainable decrease and people started asking me about my more toned body and slimer face. It was THE answer for me to incorporate fitness into my daily routine as a working dad, as other ways failed on me completely, as I did not have the energy or time anymore after work to go out jogging or swimming.

So, if you are looking for a walking pad, this is your safe buy 🙂 Thanks for reading