Top 5 Mistakes When Buying An Infrared Sauna (2025)

In 2025, these are the top 5 mistakes I see people making when buying an infrared sauna this year.

In this video, I break down the Top 5 Mistakes people make when buying an infrared sauna. From falling for “full-spectrum” marketing hype to ignoring what actually matters for real detox and health results, I’ll show you how to cut through the noise and make a smart decision. Don’t waste your money—watch this before you buy.

Watch the transcript >

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Transcript

Alright, so in this video, we’re going to talk about the top 5 mistakes that I see people making this year buying infrared sauna, right? Or crazy things to watch out for that infrared sauna people say or tell you, you know, is really going to matter, but really it might hinder your experience.

So let’s not waste any time. Number one, curved benches, right? Everyone says that they have the most comfortable bench and that they have an ergonomic layout and that you shouldn’t do, you know, this style of bench because ours is more comfortable and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They basically say you need an ergonomic bench because truly, are they saying that’s what you actually need because they listen to you or because that’s what they have to offer you, right?

I’ll offer you a different perspective, right? An ergonomic bench is awesome. I actually really, really like them as long as I don’t want to sit with my feet up. If you look at my videos where I’m turned sideways and my legs are straight out, what do you think happens when there’s a curved bench like that and it digs into the middle of my butt?

It’s not very comfortable. Why? A curved bench is great as long as you plan to only sit straight. If you want to turn sideways and put a knee up or you want to put both legs up or you want to lay down or do anything like that, how in the heck do you think you’re going to lay flat on a curved ergonomic bench, right?

The other thing that I don’t like about some ergonomic benches and in some saunas, they’re great, right? Don’t get me wrong. These are just, these are things that are used like, oh, you’ve got to buy this sauna because it has an ergonomic bench or because it has this or because it has that.

And it’s like, well, yeah, but do you even know how I want to sit in it? Do you even know if I like to lay down, put my feet up, turn sideways, put one leg up, put a knee up, sit Indian style, talk to a spouse. Some of those seating positions you just can’t do comfortably on a, on an ergonomic bench.

It feels like somebody is trying to shove a stick up your, your butt. You know what I mean?

or it digs into your hip or the actual curve of the bench is the wrong size for your size leg and it digs in in the wrong spot, if that makes sense. So you know, nothing wrong with ergonomic benches, but I see people right here in this very group posting about this and I see people misleading these folks every single day and they don’t figure out, they don’t figure it out until it’s too late.

They have already bought the thing, they’ve got it set up in their house. You know, it’s uncomfortable, there’s really no way to swap it out. That was all that the company offered in the first place. It’s not like they ever really had a choice, but I see people making the mistake that, you know, not buying something because it does or doesn’t have this without realizing what their comfort preferences are.

That’s a huge mistake. You end up with the wrong sauna and you got to do something crazy in order to get out of it. So that’s number one. Number two is tech features and wireless connectivity.

You guys, I’ve been harping on this for a while and the people who are like really, really crazy about EMF, I don’t consider myself, you know, too, too crazy, but some sauna makers, you know, they have, you know, they have power to the Bluetooth even when the sauna is off.

Right. And in some of them they have to do that because the only way to remote start the sauna from a smartphone app, right, right from your, from your phone, from when you’re from afar. So the sauna has to be able to ping the whole network, even when it’s turned off in order for a remote start feature, you know, to work.

But there’s a devil’s advocate, there’s, there’s a big con to this. And I noticed this because if I have too many saunas that aren’t unplugged in my office or from testing something in my house, or like if I have a sauna in my master bedroom, One of the things that really, really irks me is the sauna manufacturers who leave Bluetooth enabled even when there’s no smartphone app associated with remote start, right?

Why is that such a big deal?

Sounds like a nice feature, right? Well, not really, because the phone remembers that connection. It’s saved in your list. So whenever you walk in the door to the house and you’re within range of this thing, if it automatically connects and you’re on the other side of the house or doing something else, and especially if the sauna glass door is closed, all my notifications, the phone ringing, all my text alerts, anything that I’m supposed to be doing is going to the sauna.

And I don’t even realize it. This has happened over and over and over. And in some brands, it’s not all of them, right? But in some brands, this annoys the heck out of me.

Like, it’s great to have features. And you could play devil’s advocate again the other way and say, well, Matt, it’s nice. Maybe we want to use the sauna to play music in the bedroom and just leave the sauna door open. And we have a multi-use thing.

And it’s really nice. And it’s elegant. You turn the lights on. And yeah, I agree with you.

But when the sauna is not in use, if it has this auto-connectivity, I literally can’t turn it off without unplugging the damn thing from the wall, right? I’m a person who that drives me absolutely crazy. I love the convenience of a smartphone app. And I love the idea of multi-connectivity and being able to do all these things and stuff.

But I really don’t like it when it automatically takes over and it has to be connected in order for those features to work. Because like I say, you come in the house. The damn thing auto-connects. Three, four hours goes by.

And you don’t realize you were supposed to be somewhere. Somebody is calling you. You’re not getting your calls. Why?

Because they’re ringing in the other damn room with the speakers of the sauna that it’s automatically connected to. I don’t know. Just pet peeve of mine, personally. I don’t know if other people would feel that way.

Some people love all the tech. And they want everything connected. I’m not one of them. But the mistake that I see people making is not taking this into account when they just automatically think, oh, yeah, a tech feature is awesome.

Because the really

that I mentioned if I had that set up in my master bedroom is because that sauna is also pinging all night long looking for signal right right next to your bed some of the other ones have a um I don’t know what you call it but it’s like an auto glow chromotherapy light in them or something so if you’re sleeping there’s no way to shut this off unless you unplug it from the wall this drives me absolutely insane because I could be laying in bed and all of a sudden I open my eyes or something and I’m like why is the sauna glowing right it just it trips me out I’m like did I leave it on is something going on what is the deal right so there yeah I think there’s different segments of this where tech features are awesome but if you actually put them in your living space or your sleeping space as opposed to a spare bedroom or things like that I think you you want to be careful of buying into certain types of criteria that may actually become a hindrance if they’re they’re not beneficial to you but just my personal opinion mistake that I see is that people are automatically spending more money for tech right and tech connectivity and upgrade what they perceive as an upgrade which is sometimes a huge pain in the neck I just get irritated with it I don’t really need to turn the sauna on you know an hour before I come home right I come home I turn it on I do some stuff in the kitchen uh do some exercise and by the time I’m ready the sauna is ready right or if I wanted to have a countdown timer the majority of them have a built-in countdown timer right on the front of the control panel there’s no need for me to like hook a phone it’s kind of like these red light therapy devices have you seen the new ones where you have to run a smartphone app you know to control them I don’t want any of that that has gotten way too out of hand I want to walk up to it hit two buttons turn it on and stand in front of it and do my red light therapy session that’s it though I don’t I don’t need all this app stuff I don’t want to download an app in order to use my red light therapy just like I don’t want

a sauna taking over, you know, my Bluetooth or my phone notifications or when my phone rings or getting text messages or things like that. So number three, this is probably the most important mistake that I see people making, right? Whether you watch my content or you hate, you know, the stuff that I like or recommend or don’t like or good reviews, bad reviews, it doesn’t really matter.

The number one thing that makes an infrared sauna work for people is the heater layout. So you can have a cheap sauna, you can have an expensive sauna, and you can have everything in between. But if the heater layout is poor, if you watch my FLIR videos, actually, if you look at these images that are on the screen, right, do you see the all the blue in a lot of those?

The reason that I have these up there is so that when I do Q&A videos for people, I can say, Hey, I understand that you like, you know, this cheap sauna or whatever, but pay attention to the actual heaters that are in it. Just because that’s within your budget doesn’t mean that you should splurge and buy something else, but you should look at these options over here that look more like the top picture where there’s hardly any blue because the blue in the FLIR camera are cold spots.

And what do cold spots mean to your body? That means no heat accumulation at low temperatures, which means, you know, you have to ramp up the convection or the air temperature, much like a traditional sauna in order to get a good sweat. It’s counterintuitive. The thing that makes these saunas work really well is the radiant heat hitting the body.

So if you have a sauna with a poor heater layout, you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot with the whole thing. So, and I’m not saying you don’t have to spend a whole bunch of money to get one that has a better heater layout than another. You just have to pay attention to this and no one’s really showing this, but I’m telling you when I use them side by side, you can feel it and you can especially feel it in wintertime when the temperatures are a little bit cooler because the body is not subjected to as much heat.

So selecting, you know, I don’t care what anyone says, you are going to feel this.

from sauna to sauna, right? If you go in a sauna that has no floor heaters and you go in a sauna that has no sidewall heaters and only heaters on the back wall, you are going to feel that. It’s gonna feel scorching on the back and cold in the front.

The problem is you can’t rotate around like a rotisserie in these things. So you’re never gonna get heat exposure on your front. You’re just relying on heat accumulation or convection in the sauna itself. So big mistake that I see people making is, whether it’s a cheap sauna, an expensive sauna, or anything in between, is not checking this, right?

Because it makes or breaks your sauna experience. Number four, some sauna manufacturers have beautiful saunas and they have all glass fronts. One of the mistakes that I see people making is having too much glass in the front without front heaters. Okay, usually when a sauna company or manufacturer builds a sauna that has an all glass front to have that really open aesthetic feel, which is very, very nice.

A lot of times they’ll put additional heaters that are mounted on the back of the glass to compensate for that heat loss, right? And it is needed. If you go in a sauna that has, you’re kind of compensating for the insulative value loss versus bringing in more heat, right?

So if you’re in a sauna that has an all glass front that does have no heaters, like there’s zero heat coverage in the front and the sidewall heaters don’t go all the way to the glass, you’re going to feel that. If you tried a different sauna that has an all wooden front or a different sauna that has glass and they put heaters on the back of the glass, that is going to feel hotter because you have the heat loss through the glass, right?

Just being projected toward the front, not really reflecting back, no insulative value, no wood, no nothing. You have all this heat loss on the front and nothing to make up for it. So big mistake that I see people making is just going for aesthetics and the way that something looks or how beautiful it is and not really considering, does this affect performance?

Does this affect the health benefits?

that we get from this equipment because in a lot of cases it does so to me that’s a mistake because you would never like the whole reason to buy these and sit in them to me right maybe some people just want a pretty thing to put in their home gym i don’t know but for me if i’m going to spend all this time three four hours a week sitting in this thing i want the maximum benefits for myself so if i have to sacrifice a little bit of curb appeal or a little bit of you know like furniture quality or however you feel like it looks when you walk into the room but you get better performance more health benefits in less time preheats faster you don’t have to wait as long better sweat low temperatures you know i’ll take that so i think it’s a mistake not to consider that but i see people doing it every single day just because it looks cool in a brochure doesn’t necessarily mean you know what i mean um number five biggest mistake i see why is this in my notes buying anything but infrared oh far infrared mistake number five is buying into the hype of full spectrum saunas there’s a lot of cool features on the market there’s a lot of cool you know products on the market but it doesn’t matter if it’s you know this special wavelength or that special wavelength or whatever in an infrared sauna the real workhorse the real wavelength that is generating the majority of your health benefit and your your hyperthermic response or your sweat response is the far infrared so the biggest mistake that i see people making this year and beyond is that they’re getting shiny object syndrome distracted they’re getting distracted by this oh wow so and so has this great new full spectrum sauna or it has red light therapy in it or it has you know mid-infrared or it has this wavelength or it’s a certain micron range or a certain emissivity or supposedly they say based on this third-party report it has this or does this or da da da da but just like i just mentioned selecting a poor heater layout if you’re not focused on far infrared in an infrared sauna you’re most likely going to suffer the consequences because you could have all these red light therapies

You could have the beautiful chromotherapy in the ceiling. You could have these full spectrum heaters. You could have this, you could have that. While they might contribute some light therapy or some heat to the sauna or something like that, the majority of your sweat is coming from the radiant heat of the far infrared wavelength.

It’s the majority of the real workhorse that’s creating this heat response, right? If you look at all the studies and you wanna generate heat shock proteins, how do you think somebody is able to generate heat shock proteins from a hot bath or a jacuzzi, right? Is it the jets that’s making it?

Is it something else in the water? Is it some heater feature in the thing? It’s the body coming into contact with heated water, slowly heating the core temperature and the body doing what it does in response to that. You’re creating heat stress, right?

So how’s that happening in an infrared sauna? Well, it’s not from the chromotherapy lights. It’s not necessarily from the full spectrum heaters that are placed in weird places in there. It’s not because it has red light therapy or some mid infrared, right?

It’s because it has surrounded the body in far infrared and is doing what it’s supposed to do, heating you up. So the most detoxifying, penetrating sweat that you’re gonna achieve in an infrared sauna is coming from the far infrared wavelength. So I think, in my opinion, it’s a huge mistake to pay attention to or get blindsided by, and hey, these are great features that are something that you want more power to you, of course, but don’t lose sight of what’s really giving you the health benefit.

You can have fancy lights and color this and certain wood type that and everything else. Guys, that’s not changing your sauna session. That’s not changing the benefits of heat therapy that you’re getting over the next five to 10 years when you use this thing. So pay attention and make sure that you’re focused on what is actually going to make a difference in your life.

So if you like these five things, I think I’m gonna do another series. There’s all different.

types of areas of sauna that I think people are making mistakes when they evaluate them. But this is just a couple of things that come to mind. We’ll see you in tomorrow’s video.