Not all portable saunas are created equal. I’ve tested over 42 sauna brands—including nearly every tent-style and dome-style unit you can buy—and in this video I break down what’s worth your money and what isn’t. From off-gassing Amazon saunas to reliable options like the Relax Sauna and our DIY tent sauna, I’ll show you what to look for and what to avoid.
~ BEST SAUNAS FOR 2025
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Sauna Installation Guides (8 of them) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzshGzWtpV8
~ PORTABLE SAUNA OPTIONS
SAUNA DOME
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RELAX SAUNA TENT
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PRASAUNNA SAUNA BLANKET
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SAUNA POD
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DIY SAUNA (build your sauna for cheap $$$)
https://saunacourses.com/p/diy-infrared-sauna-guide
~ MATT’S AMAZON (towels & accessories)
~ RED LIGHT THERAPY DEVICES
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VIBRATION PLATES
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REBOUNDERS
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DETOX BINDERS
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~ GET THE CERTIFIED SAUNA LIST
Insiders: https://certifiedwellness.com/insiders/
Transcript
You’re probably clicking on this video because you’re in the market for a portable sauna like one of these behind me. Today, I’m going to show you a couple alternatives and maybe why some of these are not what you should spend your money on. Hi, I’m Matt. I’ve tested over 42 sauna brands.
I’ve owned pretty much every portable sauna that you could think of on the market. In today’s video, we’re going to go over some pros and cons of each. So let’s start with why someone would even purchase one of these. I’ve had a bunch of them.
Some of them are okay. Some of them are good. None of them are perfect. But usually, you’re tight on space.
You’re not in a forever home. Maybe you live in an apartment. Maybe you’re traveling. You want to incorporate some heat therapy.
A lot of these give you the ability to have heat therapy and you don’t have to set up like a permanent structure. Even though a wooden sauna is really not permanent, you can take it apart and move it. Obviously, it doesn’t just collapse up and fit in a little bag and you carry it along with you.
And the price, right? A lot of these are usually under $1,000. In some cases though, you’re not really getting $1,000 worth of value. So let’s talk about that.
Here’s an example. You don’t have to see everything in this video, but if you go on YouTube and you look at some of our other videos, here’s an example of a sauna that was produced that performed well for a little while and then they started catching on fire.
So you might want to check out those videos. We won’t go into detail about it in this video. We don’t use it anymore because it’s a fire hazard, but we do keep it here just to keep other people safe and kind of illustrate what can go wrong. The poor quality of materials and it kind of shows the sticky points of all these portable saunas, which is the tent style.
There’s always going to be fabric. There’s always some off gassing. EMF is not perfect. There’s nowhere to put the electronics that aren’t in close proximity to your body.
And so, you know, there’s pros and cons to these things. Contrast to that, here’s a portable sauna that I do recommend. This is the Relax Sauna. It comes with a much bigger tent that I fit in comfortably.
My shoes.
Shoulders don’t rub, the material doesn’t stain, the heaters are relatively low emf and all the electronics are at your feet, so nothing close to key areas of the body. The other thing about this is this sauna preheats really, really, really, really fast. Only bad thing about it that I’ve seen in the last couple of years is they keep raising the price because I think it’s probably the best portable sauna that you can get on the market.
On the note of price and build quality, there’s a huge difference between this portable sauna and maybe one of the $200 Amazon ones like in the corner or the $500 or $600 Amazon one that’s also diagonally in the corner or something like this that’s now a fire hazard that’s around $700, $800, $900. This is considerably more expensive, but you also get a considerably better experience.
On the other end of the spectrum though, about the cheapest thing that you can do that works really well is take our DIY sauna course because you can build something like this that’s huge that you can stand up in. You can get a smaller tent if you don’t have this much space, but you have options.
You can change your heating elements. You can make it hotter. You can make it cooler. It’s not perfect.
It’s not the prettiest thing, but for $350, $300 somewhere in there, you can build this and have just as good if not better sweat experience than almost all the portable sauna options on the market. So now that we’ve covered expensive and affordable, let’s talk about something that’s middle of the road.
This is another Amazon style. This chair is very uncomfortable. It’s digging into my legs because the camping chair is narrower than me. But this is something that’s middle of the road.
You can get these for four or five, $600. I actually really, really, really, really like the design of this because it’s big enough to where I’m comfortable and I’m not bumping into things when I’m sweating. But this is a huge issue. These I don’t know if you can see this.
Maybe I can unzip it for you. These off gas like crazy. You see, they put a flimsy carbon emitter inside
one of these you can hear it crinkling and they wrapped it with this neoprene nylon front and back well when this heats up this is a continuous off gassing that fills this tent with some fumes that just absolutely give me a headache so i love absolutely love the design the size the way that this thing works it looks better than our diy sauna you know like it’s easy to use but i’m just not convinced that it’s safe right if you’re going to use these things for health benefits do you really want to be sitting in something that has you know off gassing vocs continuously and it doesn’t seem to go away and that leads me to one of the main points that i wanted to make in this video if you’re choosing a portable sauna most of them are fabric based make sure that you’re choosing one that’s safe and hey full disclosure our diy sauna is not perfect but it’s foil lined and it certainly doesn’t off gas like this and it dissipates over time if you leave it out in the air for a few weeks and it hasn’t been vacuum sealed and packaged in a cardboard box sitting in a warehouse for how however long it does stop off gassing that much it’ll never be like something like this and now some alternatives so let’s talk about some non-conventional portable saunas some people don’t consider these as portable saunas but i took this one apart this is a xl dome so this thing is huge it fits me really really comfortably we’ve got other videos on the youtube channel if you just search for sauna dome and my name but what’s cool about this is you can take it apart and store it in a closet and so we have it separated right now so that you can see you can turn these dome edges uh i’m sorry you can turn these domes on edge and slide them into a closet you can stick them in a quarter of a room you can fold up the mat and basically just open it up and use it whenever you want this is a great alternative to a regular portable sauna they have a bunch of different price points they have some that are under a thousand dollars and they have some xl versions like this that have almost no and they’re oversized to be very, very comfortable. Amazing heater coverage. The reason that I bring this up to you as an alternative is because a lot of the portable saunas, they have inadequate heat coverage, right? You’re just not gonna get the same sweat or it’s gonna take forever to heat up.
These work really well because your body’s surrounded by infrared, much like in a wooden sauna. So if you’re thinking about, you know, different various portable tent sauna options, maybe one of these domes is a good alternative for you. But no matter what you choose, the main thing is to get something that’s built of quality materials, something that’s gonna work really well, that has great heater coverage.
It’s very odd to be laying underneath a camera guy zooming in on a lens with you. So now that I’ve shown you some portable sauna options and some alternatives, the main things that you need to know are what really matters is the heater layout and what your body is subjected to.
There’s a lot of other things that I could have put in this video, like some of the portable sauna blankets or an infrared sauna blanket. I really just don’t prefer those. It’s kind of like being in a cadaver bag. You’re sort of laying in your own sweat.
You could argue that the dome is similar, but the dome is gonna give you an incredible sweat compared to a blanket, which is basically heating you up in a Ziploc bag. If you liked this video or some of it was helpful, give us a like and a share, make sure you’re subscribed.
We put out videos like this every single week and let me know in the comments what you’d like to see next.