I don't know about the pedometer readouts, but I've checked the machines at my gym against my Polar HR monitor, and they're actually not that far off. For HIIT, they're a bit on the low side, but within 3%. For steady state cardio, they're about 5% too high.

I imagine it varies quite a bit from machine to machine, though. I've just checked stairclimbers and ellipticals.

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