: Burning calories: Using elliptical type equipment While ellipticals offer stationary movement with low impact on the knees, they also seem to offer burning off insane amounts of calories when compared to equal time/work on

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I find it highly unlikely that you would burn more calories on an eliptical trainer than running at a similar pace on the treadmill. The treadmill is more like using free weights, whereas the elliptical trainer just needs a push in somewhat the right direction to keep going round. Also, pushing with one leg automatically moves the other, which is almost like a free lunch!

Basically: all the things that make it great are also what make it bad.

Yes, it has lower impacts on the knees, but that also means your knee extending muscles are trained less.
Yes, using your arms increases the intensity of the workout, but because the arms drive the legs, that's all energy your legs aren't going to provide. You win some, you loose some.
Also the enforced stride length may not be the right one for you, depending on your size and physical condition. Running at a different frequency effects the efficiency and intensity of the workout as well.
And lastly, the resistance on an elliptical trainer comes from a fly wheel, that requires air resistance. As I explained on another question this doesn't scale very naturally. So to workout at 75-80% of your maximal heart rate, which is probably what you would need for ~700 calories/30 minutes, you'd have either a ridiculous frequency or abnormal high resistance.

As for finding out the truth: I highly recommend you try all the devices with the same heart rate monitor, rather than trusting the built in one. That way you can compare the increases in heart rate when you increase the resistance of the machine in three/four steps. Do that for the elliptical trainer, bike and treadmill and you get a much better idea of whether it actually measures correctly.

Final note: it's more important you do something that's fun, so if the elliptical trainer makes you come back more often, than go for it! Also, there's a study that showed that elliptical trainers can be a great replacement during the winter times, but they had to workout at 80% of their maximal heart rate, which was comparable to the intensity of their normal running exercise and the runners complained it was hard to keep this up. Either way: 3x more calories than on a treadmill is absolutely not possible!