SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra Review – Almost Perfect

We’ve got a small space dedicated to cardio equipment, so whatever we put here has to pack a punch. Being robust enough for my 250lb frame, but accommodating athletes like my daughter, typically means a VERY hefty price tag alongside a large commercial frame that just won’t fit anywhere in a normal home. But earlier this year we found the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra which comes in at a budget price for a stair climber and offers what they claim to be a “Commercial-Grade but Home-Friendly” build. After 2.5 months of use, we are ready to share if this thing checks all the boxes it claims, or not.

Transparency Note

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra was sent over by FED Fitness for free for sake of review. I also have an affiliate link with them. Using this link gives me a small kick-back and costs you nothing. The funds help manage this website, my YouTube, and the various things I do in the home gym community. I appreciate your support.

FED Fitness SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra Overview

When we started getting serious with cardio, we had this itch to get a Stair Climber. I actually had a company ready to work with me, but then we measured and the machine wouldn’t fit. I was bummed. But we want back to the search. My daughter has been asking for a stair climber, my wife has been asking for one, and I would have bought one, if we could have found one that met our needs.

Then FED Fitness reached out and offered a brand new piece they were working on, the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra. I assumed it would be another shiny toy I couldn’t have, but the tagline “Commercial-Grade, Home-Friendly Size” had me instantly intrigued. I grabbed my tape measurer and ran out to the backyard to measure. IT WOULD FIT! I measured again, and another time just to make sure. I sent off the email, and a few weeks later it arrived.

If you can’t tell, the biggest selling point here, for us, is the size. Most stair steppers have 4 or 5 steps, which is awesome and gives you some additional workout options, but it makes for a VERY tall workout, meaning that this 6ft tall dude standing under an 8ft tall covered patio, wasn’t gonna work.

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra has essentially 3 working steps at a time, which cuts down close to 2 feet of required head space. It is also fairly narrow, meaning it would fit well on our back patio without taking up the entire place. We still wanted room for one more cardio piece back there, and this was a perfect solution to do so.

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra is also rated to work with athletes around 45lbs (my daughter is around 65lbs currently) and up to almost 400lbs, so it should work for the entire family as well as all of our friends and athletes in and out of our space. With the adjustable speeds, programs, safety features, and more, we’ve got a product that my mom can use, my daughter can use, I can use, you name it. This thing was checking a LOT of boxes for our backyard cardio corner.

FED Fitness SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra Specs

• Brand: FED Fitness
• Made In USA: No
• Power Required: Yes
• Product Size: 57.87” L x 28.19” W x 75.39″ H
• Package Size: 50.98″L X 30.5″W X 49.2″H
• Warranty: Lifetime Frame Warranty
• Return Window: 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
• Assembly: Under 1 Hour
• Floating Pedal Design that simulates a natural stride
• 7″ step height and 10″ depth for more flexible workout space
• 25 speed levels with a range of 20–164 steps per minute
• Dual infrared emergency stop system for enhanced workout safety
• Supports up to 397 lbs for stable, wobble-free workouts
• Sturdy D-shaped base with a 98 mm arched frame for strength

Shipping & Assembly

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra arrives in one large box, on a cardboard pallet. If you plan to put it into the garage, this is a fairly simple process. Unbox it, wheel it out into place, and then assemble. Since I needed to go through my front door, through the living room, out the back door, and into the back patio, things were a little different.

To get the box off the pallet, you have to cut the straps. Those straps, unfortunately, keep the main box attached to the bottom insert. Which means you are going to be working with a less than stable box as you maneuver into place. The box fit through all of my doors, but it was VERY close on a couple of them. And it weights over 300lbs, so even though I regularly deadlift well over 500lbs, this was an interesting task.

There are no handles, no straps, nothing, to help you maneuver this. I got there, but it was an experience for sure. Ideally, I think the team would add some straps, handles, something to help get this from Point A to Point B. Also, if you are reading this, the main frame itself has wheels (I didn’t know this). So you can take it all out, attach the steps on the outside, use those as handles, and wheel the entire thing to where you need to take it. Then finish assembly, and be good to go. If I ever had to do this again, I’m pretty positive that would be my plan.

On a brighter note, they did a FANTASTIC job of packing the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra. The inserts were molded perfectly to the box, which had absolutely zero wiggle room, and everything was in perfect condition. It was delivered by freight, so that helps too. Keep that in mind by the way, depending on your driveway and access points.

The majority of the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra comes fully built, you need to add on the outside steps, the handrails, monitor and dash. They do a great job of zip-tieing all appropriate cables for easy installation, and anytime we have more than one cable assembly in a single spot, they made sure to make them different sizes so you couldn’t cross any wires. You need to install the plastic covers over the wire ports with a screwdriver, and you are done.

The other downside to the well packaged piece, is these large Styrofoam pieces are really hard to dispose of afterwards. I typically find a local small business or someone moving to take my packing materials, but these were so large, that didn’t work out. When it came time to break them down for garbage, it took multiple weeks to dispose of them in my trash. And even then, I had to break them into smaller pieces, which meant vacuuming the fragments up every time.

I think for a piece designed for a home, they need to consider the disposal of the packing materials for a typical home as well.

Moral of the story here, while this is meant for a home gym, it is heavy and large and not the easiest set-up I’ve ever done. You likely need a couple people to help get it into place, assembled, and ready for work. Or one 250lb stubborn dude with a little creativity.

FED Fitness SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra Features

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra plugs into a basic power outlet, has a full touchscreen monitor alongside multiple button options for controls, a number of safety features, monitoring, programs, and more. Lets dig into those briefly.

Overall Build

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra was much heavier and more robust than I thought we were getting. In a good and bad way. Luckily I’m a large dude, so moving it around and into the right position was easy (ish). For smaller, more normal human beings, you’ll need to consider this. It was heavy enough that when we rolled it on the wheels, it kept smushing the interlocking mats we have together and creating a problem. Make note of that depending on your flooring choices. They could potentially solve this with larger wheels, but with a piece you aren’t likely to move very often, that might not be necessary.

The steps have a honeycomb textured pattern to them, which seemed to work well throughout our testing. I’m glad it isn’t grip tape, but also glad it isn’t just flat. They found a good balance between the two.

The majority of the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra frame is your typical plastic housing for cardio equipment. With how much action this gets, I was afraid of some issues, but we didn’t find any. No cracks, no dents, no dings. Solid!

A couple notes on the build. The monitor sticks out the back ever so slightly from the frame, which unfortunately, if you are sliding it up against a wall, eats a few inches of space. I think they should make it all flush. Just like with the FED treadmill we used, the included power chord is fairly short. It at least isn’t just one direction, but I think a bungee power chord, or even just providing an 8-10ft chord with the ability to wrap up tightly would be nice. I always seem to be JUST shy on length. I ended up buying this replacement.

Safety Features

With a treadmill we often have a safety strap. With a stair climber we often have a few other options. The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra has an emergency stop button on the main dash, on the touchscreen, on the handlebar, on the frame, and has two infrared stops at the top and bottom of the last step as it begins to roll underneath the frame.

I’m glad we have a few options, though it can seem a little daunting with so many options. The button on the side is a great easy option for a spotter/coach as needed. And I think having a big red button on the center dash makes sense. The touchscreen seems unnecessary, and the extra stop on the handle does as well. But I’m probably being picky here.

Monitor & Programs

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra has a LARGE monitor, and I am here for it. It doesn’t do anything fancy, so we won’t be watching TV shows or anything here unfortunately, but it is easy enough to see everything at one time. The screen is a touchscreen, specifically for the buttons towards the bottom row.

Compared to a number of other cardio machines we have used, this is the cleanest, brightest, easiest to navigate screen so far. It has 6 different basic programs that rotate through variances in the difficulty/speed. It also has a manual setting, an interval setting, landmark, and a fat burning mode. The main 6 programs are clearly displayed on the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra screen, which is helpful in choosing them. Other cardio equipment we’ve used just says “Program 2” and you have to reference the manual to figure out whatever that is.

We also get our time, heart rate, calories, and other metrics on screen here. AND we get to adjust for our athletes bodyweight. Quick note here, the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra is rated for 44lb up to 397lbs. The machine defaults to metric (so kilos), without the ability to change it.

Controls and Other Features

You are probably going to spend a lot of time holding onto the handle bars of the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra, so I’m glad each of them has controls for pausing, starting, upping and lowering the speed, as well as the heart rate monitors. At first glance these seemed a little “in the way”, but in use that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The main dash has a phone charging station. On top of that, we have two power ports on the side of the monitor, USB-A and USB-C ports. It has Bluetooth speakers built in. And the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra has this cool blue LED accent lighting on the main body and inside the chains of the steps. Because this is a bit more of a permanent piece, you can leave it plugged in, it’ll sit in a sleep mode, until you press any buttons to wake it up. Sleep mode turns off the LEDs and is completely silent, which is good since we have this right outside our bedroom window.

They do however have a solid charging base for your phone. When we tested their Treadmill, you might remember that the base worked, until we started moving and the phone bounced all over. I can happily report that this, doesn’t do that.

We also have a Bluetooth speaker out the back. In our testing, it was weaker than the speaker on my phone. So one of those, thanks for the attempt, but not a win.

We also have two USB ports on the side. One we are using to power this fan, which is very helpful in the hot summer days.

The other we would probably use to charge a tablet since the charging station wouldn’t quite work for larger devices.

SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra Performance

The features and specs of the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra are the reason it got delivered in the first place. But none of that matters if it doesn’t perform well. We’ve owned two other cardio pieces from FED Fitness, and neither were keepers in our space. So I came into this with some fairly low expectations, but also with the idea that this was a $4000 piece of equipment.

Steps

We have 3 active steps on the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra, meaning you are on one, stepping to the next, while the third is getting into position for the next step. The steps for the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra are a major consideration over other stair climbers, because it’s the primary way they manage to make this thing smaller with making the least amount of compromises.

The GMWD SS03 is the stair climber we were originally offered… but it requires close to 10ft ceilings for taller individuals. That is because their steps clock in at 21.6” wide, 9.1” deep, and 8.1” tall.

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra clocks in at 16.5” wide, so a full 5 inches different. That helps shave some width off the machine. The steps are 6.5 inches tall, so your stride is 1.5 inches shorter vertically for each step, which adds up to just enough space difference for this to fit.

If you feel like that isn’t enough, the steps are set up where we can still skip a step and make this extra spicy. Something a lot of the smaller step machines can’t do. Interestingly enough, the machines both have a 9 inch depth for the steps. If we jump to something like a $10,000 Stairmaster model, we only just up to 10 inches on the depth.

And the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra has a unique design to the steps. Some companies call this a stadium step, where they have this angle as they hit the bottom that really gives them an extra inch of foot space without needing to make the steps larger. I wear a size 11 and clock in just shy of 11 inches for my foot length. And you know what they say about guys with big feet…

They can have some trouble using smaller stair climber machines.

So far I haven’t found the depth to be a cause for concern. My heels aren’t rolling off the backside, I’m not losing balance, everything seems to work well. And considering the fully commercial models only get marginally larger, I think the design choices have made for minimal compromises even for larger athletes.

Programs

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra claims 11 program options, but we have some definite overlap and issues.

Like how Manual and Program 6 are essentially the same thing. Landmark is supposed to be where you can pick famous landmarks, like climbing the Statue of Liberty or Eiffel Tower, but there aren’t actually any settings that you can pick. Like they made that program but forgot to load the actual landmarks. Fat Burn is just an increasing intensity program, same as P4 and P5.

I think we end up with a few less truly unique programs than the 11 it states. I’d like to see a basic interval, heart rate, an increasing intensity program, pyramid style, program and then a custom function so you can dial in each phase of the program you want.

Once we pick our program, then we need to enter our bodyweight. There are a few interesting pieces here.

First, it is in kilos. And there is no way to change that. Second, since there aren’t any user profiles, you have to hold the up or down arrow to scroll to the right weight setting EVERY single time. Third, is that I’m not entirely positive the weight actually impacts anything in terms of the settings. I’ve ran it at the highest and lowest weight setting, and it doesn’t seem to change anything at all.

Audrey was super pumped to test the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra. She weighs 65lbs by the way. She hit the start button, and it stopped. We figured out that she apparently didn’t meet the minimum weight requirement. So I emailed the team, and they confirmed that it is actually 99lbs, not 65lbs. So for a bit she was wearing a 30lb weighted vest which seemed to work. But then her family genes kicked in and she ran some experiments herself.

She figured out if she holds a 15lb medicine ball, bringing her to a total of 80lbs, it will work. She can then dump the medicine ball off the side, and the machine keeps running.

One, how about a round of applause for Audrey for figuring that out on her own. Proud Dad moment right there. And two… The team clearly needs to figure out what the actual weight requirement is, because this is a safety feature on top of potentially making it unusable for smaller athletes.

The last piece is dialing in our settings for the program. The top speed for the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra is 24, which claims 164 steps per minute. Audrey is the only one who has attempted that so far. I tend to sit somewhere in the 10 range, my mom was doing like 5, and we’ve had friends cook for short bursts at 15. So we’ve got plenty of range here.

We found that while these programs have a few intriguing cadences to them, they often progress too drastically. If I pick Program 2 for instance, and start at the 2 setting, by the time I get half way through I’m at 14 speed, which is quite the jump. One small gripe here, I want the number of circles on the program to match the speed in a 1 to 1 ratio.

And a small nitpick, as you adjust the speed up it randomly adds a dot for every level, then not, then again, and by the time we are at 10 we actually only have 8 dots, which is just kind of confusing. This doesn’t impact anything at all except my overly critical focus on specifics. But I know for some of you, well, you get it.

Last piece to note in this section, is that the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra is fairly quiet in operation. You need to get up into the 15+ range before you start making noise that would interrupt a conversation.

Safety Features

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra comes with a lot of safety features. Dual emergency stop buttons at the top and on the side rail, multiple control stop and pause options, as well as the infrared safety sensors at the bottom.

In testing, the infrared works similar to the safety strap on a treadmill. If you are going fast enough, it isn’t going to keep you from eating it, but it will keep you from getting punched in the face by the steps on repeat. This is a tough balance to strike by the way, because if we hit the emergency break and immediately stop, that could be enough to have you fall flat on your face as well. So I think the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra solution is a solid one.

The safety rails run the entire length of the steps, so whether you plan to walk freely and occasionally catch yourself, or lay over in agony in use, they got you covered. The machine has support steps on the front to help get you in place. I think having these fold up and be magnetized might be a good idea, just because I know I’m prone to hitting my shin on anything hanging out like this.

Should You Buy The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra?

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra is very stable. It handles me at 250lbs without any issues, even strapping on an extra weighted vest. The steps are far enough apart that my 6ft frame, even trying to skip a step at a time, has more than enough reach and its wide enough without me feeling cramped.

The speeds go from a very casual stroll, to an almost sprint, giving us plenty of range. The safety features are solid, and it has been suitable for a number of athletes in our space to use, with a few hacks, even unsupervised. And remember that we are keeping it and using it outside. It is running in the 100 degree temps, it has BBQ smoke on it. And this winter it’ll get the cold treatment as well.

There are definitely some areas for improvement on the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra, like the minimum weight capacity, some of the program details, and shipping and packaging experiences. But those add up to very small details in the day to day performance. After 2 months of using this thing multiple times a week, this is the best piece of cardio we’ve ever owned. From the first time I used it, I knew this thing sucked in all the ways a good cardio machine should.

There is almost nothing I would want different, from a different company, or a different model. And because of that we plan to make the SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra a permanent piece here for a long time.

If at any point that changes, we run into any mechanical issues or problems, I will update this article. By the way, this thing comes with a Lifetime Frame Warranty and Lifetime technical support to boot.

But for now, I am happy to say that our hunt for 1 of our 2 permanent cardio pieces, seems to be accomplished. The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra is here to stay!

Wrap Up

The SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra is now a permanent piece to our cardio puzzle, fully taking care of that Zone 3 cardio for us. It is a challenging piece that can be adjusted for any number of athletes, big and small, young and old. No matter what, it will have you sweating and breathing heavy. Which is kind of the point, right? I had a feeling we were going to enjoy a stair climber, and this confirmed that for us. Now its time to lock down that second spot with another permanent piece.

💲Want to buy a SC2 Stair Climber Machine Ultra? Use this link.