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Are you referring to an Elliptical as a "cross trainer"?
What to you mean by "effective"? Are you looking to burn fat? Drop weight? Gain muscle? Improve cardio? What is the goal?
In a nutshell, "effectiveness" will depend on your intensity levels. 15 minutes of high intensity (max effort) will be better than 2 hrs of casual "brisk" or light workout.
I can't say which is better. I never do an hour of either, ugh too long and boring.
For me, using multi-machines works. Meaning for cardio I do both the elliptical and treadmill, or elliptical and stepmill. My mainstay is the elliptical due to knee issues but I enjoy running on the treadmill and like the challenge of stair climbing as well.
Intensity is key here. I don't do max capacity but I do enough to get my HR up to the high 140, low 150 range (I'm 42, so your max HR is probably higher). Since I don't have all the time in the world, I try to get the heart pumping in less time.
Cardio has it's place, weight training has it's place too (arguably more important for late-life health simply because cardio does nothing for bone density), doing 2 hours of Either to the exclusion of the other is worse than an hour of Each.
FWIW, I spend maybe 90~120 minutes a WEEK on my exercise. I've maintained a 16~17%BF ratio for at least 12 years since the last of my weight loss. Nearly none of that is cardio by itself, nearly all of it is high intensity training with light weights though most if body-weight only (pushups, squat-thrusts, etc...) Using a HR monitor is essential though, make sure you are hitting 80% of peak and keeping it there for the duration of the exercise.
For fat loss, diet matters more than time spent doing steady state cardio. If you want to increase your base metabolic rate so you're burning more calories 24/7, put on some muscle. If you just want to lose weight, lower the carbs in your diet and be in a caloric deficit.
Too much time on each you only need 20-30 minutes straight, stationary bike burns few calories, cross trainer burns more
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