I got a desk treadmill to relieve stress — instead, it stressed me out

2024 has been a stressful year. Other people might pick more relaxing ways to de-stress — a spa day, a nice cocktail, or maybe a social media detox. Not me, baby. I’ve decided to cope the same way I always do: ramping up training instead of stress eating my weight in mini-muffins. Except it’s unreasonable to abandon my desk and run a 5K every time the news cycle spikes my anxiety. Which is why, for the last three months, I’ve taken to logging miles on a desk treadmill. Specifically, the $240 Mobvoi Home Walking Treadmill.

As an overly self-quantified wearables reviewer, I picked Mobvoi’s walking treadmill for one reason and one reason only: it pairs with a smartwatch so all your steps are properly counted. 

My beef with treadmills — especially ones you stick under a standing desk — is that you can walk 500 miles on them but your smartwatch will record maybe 100 steps. Your legs could be working overtime, but smartwatches rely on arm swings to count steps. I know because anytime I write and walk at the same time, my Apple Watch says I’ve done diddly squat. And that’s even when I record an indoor walking session. No one needs to record every little step, but it helps me keep track of my workout volume and intensity.

Many folks get around that by strapping a smartwatch to their ankle. I refuse. Not only because I’ve tried it and found it uncomfortable but also because fitness tracking algorithms and sensors are all programmed and tested for your arm. Treadmill walk data becomes useless to me, a wearables reviewer, if I can’t trust that data to be accurate.

That’s where Mobvoi’s treadmill comes in. You can download the Mobvoi Treadmill app from the Google Play Store onto any Android smartwatch. (I used it with Mobvoi’s TicWatch Atlas and Samsung’s Galaxy Watches.) It connects to the walking pad when you turn it on. And voila. Your metrics are right there on your wrist — even if your arms are limp as you’re typing an email. It’s pretty accurate, too! There aren’t any extra sensors, but once connected to the app, it allows the device to share data with your watch. I noticed that meant my Android watches would correctly register my subtler movements as steps. My Oura Ring and Apple Watch didn’t.

Problem solved! Or, it would’ve been if I were a devoted Mobvoi user. But alas, even this simple walking pad can’t escape gadget ecosystems. 

For whatever reason, Apple Watch users are out of luck, as the Mobvoi Treadmill app isn’t available in Apple’s App Store. To view your live stats via the wrist, you must have an Android smartwatch. I don’t love that, and it’s a little baffling considering all this does is connect the walking pad and your watch over Bluetooth. Fortunately, I spend a good chunk of the year testing Wear OS watches and don’t care about having two phones and wearing two smartwatches at all times. But that’s not most people, and for regular iPhone users, this is a nonstarter. Mobvoi PR Manager Rongrong Zhao told me the company isn’t planning an app but is “committed to investigating potential avenues for providing support to both iOS and watchOS.”

Somehow, getting your phone to actually save that data is even more of a headache. If you have a Mobvoi watch, there’s no problem. Workouts recorded in the Mobvoi Treadmill app automatically pop up in the separate Mobvoi Health app on your phone. But the Mobvoi Health app only works with Mobvoi watches. If you use any other kind of Android smartwatch, you can’t just log the treadmill data into whatever health app you keep on your phone. You also have to download the Mobvoi Account app on your watch and use Mobvoi Health on your phone — at which point, you should’ve just bought a Mobvoi watch.

Things like this are why people pick one ecosystem and stick with it. During testing, I fixated on how to get all my walking pad data onto my iPhone — the device where most of my health data is stored. Thinking through all the ways to get my data off Android and into Apple’s Health and Fitness apps was so exhausting, it made me not want to use the walking pad at all. There were weeks when I let it collect dust in my office because I didn’t want to use it if I wasn’t getting credit for it. And getting that credit was too much work.

At this point, I had to take a good hard look in the mirror. The whole point was to use this device to relieve stress. Instead, all I’d done was overcomplicate a walking pad. I ended up anxious and dreading my imperfect, messy metrics. I was so concerned about doing something “the right way” that I ended up not doing it at all. Looking back, I’ll be the first person to tell you that’s absurd. And yet, I’ve also been part of enough running and fitness communities to know that this is a common trap that even the best of us fall into.

My experience improved once I chucked the smartwatches into a drawer. I accepted my step counts wouldn’t be accurate and that my training algorithms across a dozen wearable platforms would be slightly off. I actually stopped recording my walks on every single platform altogether. As a result, my mental health improved, and I take far more walks now. My life isn’t any less stressful — I just have more endorphins, but that’s enough to make me more resilient.

Once I stopped caring about the data, I was free to figure out how to use the walking pad meaningfully. A lifelong overachiever, I started out trying to walk and work at 2.5mph to make it “worth it.” Imagine my surprised Pikachu face learning it’s quite difficult to walk at a brisk pace and write emails or even read because you’re bobbing up and down. And sweaty. Eventually, I accepted that my desk walks don’t have to be fast and found a turtle-like speed that works. (I’ve written most of this review at a 0.6mph pace.)

On mornings when the caffeine just isn’t hitting, a 20-minute walk usually jogs my shriveled brain cells while I catch up on the news. When something just isn’t working in a draft, walking while reading my sentences helps enormously. I’ve also noticed how my body becomes so stiff when I’m frustrated, anxious, angry, or full of dread. Hopping on a walking pad for a ploddingly slow 10 minutes is always enough to loosen me up — even if my step count isn’t impressive.

I highly recommend a walking pad if you, too, often experience existential dread and anxiety. Just maybe not this exact one. It’s funny. I picked Mobvoi’s treadmill precisely because it had the bells and whistles. But at the end of the day, all the extra connectivity, the data, and the “smarts” got in my way. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is remember why you’re doing something, zero in on it, and cut out the extra noise.

Update, November 14th: Added comment from Mobvoi about iOS compatibility, and clarified third-party Android watch data syncing.