Cheap vs Expensive Red Light Therapy Panels: STOP Wasting your Money

I’ve tested everything from cheap Amazon red light therapy panels to high-end premium models costing thousands, and the differences are not always what you think. In this video, I break down what actually matters: output, build quality, safety, and most importantly, how you plan to use the panel.

Red light therapy has been a big part of my recovery and health journey, but I’ve learned that the most expensive option isn’t always the best. Sometimes a budget panel can do the job just as well—or even better—depending on the design and your setup. If you’re looking into red light therapy for your home, this video will give you the real-world perspective you won’t get from sales brochures.

Read the transcript >

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Transcript

I’ve tested both cheap Amazon red light therapy panels and high-end premium models, and the differences are bigger than most people realize. So today, let’s put cheap versus expensive panels to the test and see if the price tag really matters. You’ve tested a ton of red light therapy panels.

I think that you’ve gotten great use out of them actually in the past, and I’d like you to touch on that a little bit. There is a huge range for price when it comes to these things, and I honestly cannot tell a difference between the super expensive ones and the super cheap ones.

Can you kind of run me through the differences and just vaguely explain why the expensive ones are so expensive and why the cheap ones are so cheap? Yeah, so there’s a couple things. We could definitely talk about prices too, because, you know, back in the day, I’ll just tell you right off the bat, I was paying $600 for red light therapy panel from Andrew at Gemba Red, and those were awesome.

And back in the day, you could get something like a platinum LED for under a thousand. A lot of times, these companies have expanded to what they call max panels. They’re wider, bigger. They do daisy chaining.

You know, they’re up to thousands of dollars, which I think is crazy. But to circle back, the biggest thing that I notice between all those and something on Amazon, the Hygge panels are getting better, but back in the day, a lot of them had cheap plastics. They had loud fans.

You know, there’s a difference in wiring versus premium construction. Some of the actual, like, housings, I guess you can’t see it off screen, but I’ve got four panels hanging for testing right there. A lot of times, the housings wouldn’t be grounded, or if you take something, and there’s exceptions to the rule of this too, which I think makes this very interesting for the viewers, because unless you could see and touch and feel all these panels, you wouldn’t know this, because you can’t tell from the pictures on the internet or on the website.

So you take a expensive panel like a Juve, it’s got a plastic housing, plastic stand. It’s not grounded, because you can’t ground it. So you pay all this money, it’s got high electric fields.

And something like in that case, you’d be better off with an Amazon panel like a hygge You know, okay. So but when you see in touch and feel these things there are differences when you actually use them It’s kind of like the saunas, you know, you can feel the build quality you can tell Now where that changes is does it actually?

You know, does it actually make a difference in your red light therapy? Are you still getting photobiomodulation from a cheap panel just as you would from expensive? So here’s where the rubber meets the road and that’s that your second point is the light output You know, there can be a measurable difference in power and consistency of using, you know, a decently built panel versus a poor You can you can get a panel on Amazon for $150 that says it’s got 660 nanometer wavelength in it Which it does but it’s very low output LEDs, you know, there’ll be like 4 watt LEDs or something So the issue here is then unless you’re doing skin contact therapy Andrew talks about this a lot He’s got great blogs if you want to check him out better info than I have But a lot of this stuff, you know when I got out of leukemia treatment I was using red light therapy both the right way and the wrong way to try to heal neuropathy in my feet and hands and so You know, we can read studies and do this and do that till we’re blue in the face But when you’re in a dire straight situation like that, you’ll do anything to try and get the benefit And so unless you know, you’re doing back to the the cheap Amazon, you know type panels 4 watt LEDs Unless you’re doing skin contact therapy or you have a device where you can do really really really close range Similar to the skin contact.

You’re not gonna set that up across the room for you and get photovoltaic modulation. It’s not gonna happen so yeah, if you plan to use your red light therapy while you’re on the treadmill or Or From overhead or somewhere where there’s great distance between you and the panel output and power and You know the actual lens

that are used are going to start mattering more and more and more. So for one person to say, you know, Oh, that’s good enough. You don’t need to spend more money. A lot of that comes down to application too.

How are you using this thing? Because you could be just, you know, thinking you’re getting red light therapy and it’s like having a red light bulb in your ceiling, you’re not getting anything. I see numbers when I’m looking at red light therapy panels. I don’t know what they mean.

Is there a range in which you need to make sure the red light therapy panel can output, or does that make sense? Like, is there a range you would follow that you wouldn’t buy anything that’s below this output and above this output might be overdoing it? Well, sure.

You could watch a couple of my other videos that talks about dosing. Um, you could look at anybody’s dosing calculator and get like a, you know, but it’s going to differ depending on the device. So if I tell you a number right now, that might change if you choose to get something else.

So it’s better if we talk about that, uh, in regard to a particular category of panels. So not a desktop. Um, actually I have one somewhere. It’s not within arm’s reach, but.

Uh, maybe next video I can have a desktop one here and I’ll just turn it on and show you what I mean. But, um, it would be better to reference, especially, you know, a range of output. Typically they measure them in milliwatts a centimeter squared at a certain distance measured in inches.

And so you could use any dosing calculator from there and figure out a normal treatment, um, length or distance protocol would look like. Um, you know, the other thing we didn’t hit on was the wavelength accuracy. If you got, you know, some of the cheap panels, there’s a lot of bleed through.

They say they’re six 60 or something that’s in line with the research studies where it should be, but you know, does it bleed into the other wavelengths is there, you know, tight controls put on that, you know, you get what you pay for when companies produce, um, Reliable metrics.

When they test them, a lot of them are overinflated. Like a lot of these companies will say buy ours because.

because we have a higher output, 150 milliwatts a centimeter squared. You don’t really need that unless you’re using the damn thing from across the room. Just like if you had a four watt LED panel, unless it’s skin contact, even though it’s $35 from Amazon, it’s like the torch flashlight or something.

People use red light therapy on their testicles to try and boost testosterone or things like that. Maybe it’s powerful, but is it the right wavelength and the right dosage? You might be better off in that situation with lower power and skin contact, but I’ll let you look at the research for that because you don’t want to be superheating your balls.

Or maybe you do. Maybe you want to be infertile. I don’t know. Look into it.

Let me know what you think. You know, I never know where these conversations are going to go. Well, Aaron, maybe you’re just not ready for child number two yet. The other thing is safety concerns.

I touched on this when I said panels aren’t grounded, but a lot of people think of this in terms of EMF. Unless you’ve got skin contact panels, EMF is going to be less important because usually there’s a distance between you and the equipment, but you do have power supplies, heat sinks, AC wiring, everything else.

So if you are using close proximity panels, it would be nice if they’re low EMF. Part of the problem that I find with any of the plastic panels, unless they’re DC to AC converted, meaning like skin contact panels, a lot of Andrews or things like that are designed specifically as DC power input.

So the EMF doesn’t really matter. They can be plastic housings and you don’t have an exorbitant amount of EMF coming through, whereas the big full body panels, like a Juve, those are plastic and you do have significantly more EMF coming from those than other brands that are both more expensive and less expensive.

So how do you, you know, how do you slice that? You could say it’s poor quality control, but really it’s poor design. They could do a better job for the price they charge.

It kind of seems as though it’s very comparable to the Costco versus the Life Pro sauna, where they’re both very similar in price. The Life Pro is actually cheaper, but the heat coverage, the actual execution of the sauna is better. It’s not like the EMF is lower. It’s not like any build quality is better or anything like that.

The actual layout of the sauna is more effective. So is that similar in this case? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, a lot of it comes down to the design, just like the saunas.

You could find exceptions to the rule in both use cases, expensive and cheap, and it also depends on what you’re trying to do. I think people should start there, because if you came to me and said, hey Matt, I run on the treadmill in the morning, and I would love to do my red light therapy before work when I do the treadmill, because I don’t have time any other time of the day to fit it in.

My suggestion to you, both on looking up some panels, what to use and how to use them, is it’d be very different than if you said, hey Matt, I want to put a red light therapy panel on my recliner, so that when I relax at night, I can do red light therapy in the evening.

Because you have the ability to choose proximity, meaning the distance from your body, and you have more options in the recliner, because you’re not moving around, you’re not running. Whereas on the treadmill, I already know how you’re going to mount it, what your limitations are on how far away it’s got to be from you.

You’ve got to allow enough flexibility for you to swing your arms and do all this other stuff that you might be doing. So if I just told you a brand recommendation, it’s kind of a disservice to you. In that case, let’s say it’s a treadmill versus someone sitting in a recliner, you’re going to need higher output for the treadmill, right?

You will, yeah, because distance is going to come into play. Mounting is going to come into play. You’re going to have to make a choice.

And are you going to have two panels on either side of you? Because a lot of times, you know, situationally, the treadmill is going to have the, the tech tower stack in the front with the support arms. So if you try to put it in front of you, the majority of the light’s going to be blocked unless it’s off to the side.

So a lot of times what people do is they’ll just take two panels. Uh, and they’ll put them on either side, which can work really well on a vertical stand. Um, or they’ll just, if they can’t afford it, they’ll do one and then half their cardio session, they’ll just move it to the other side.

Some people mount them on the ceiling, but you’re getting, you’re getting kind of limited on absorption. In my opinion for that, I’d recommend something else. Ideally for treadmill, we’d love to be able to just mount it right in front of us, but there’s hardly any treadmills on the market that don’t have, um, a tower in the front, so that’s a problem.

If I’m buying a sauna, that’s under $2,000. It says it comes with a red light therapy panel, or I’m buying a sauna that’s above, you know, five to $6,000. And it says it comes with a red light therapy panel. What are you seeing in the differences between those two panels?

Cause one of them I feel like is not going to actually do anything. Yeah. Under 2000 junk above 5,000, it has a chance sometimes still junk. Um, you just have, I mean, think about it logically, can a, can a company subsidize giving you a thousand dollar red light therapy panel for free?

Just cause you bought a sauna from them. Not really. Right. So you’re either paying extra for it or they’re undercutting on the delivery of this, you know, add on equipment or whatever it is over 5,000, you have a chance, but there’s some, some saunas that are $10,000 and up that supposedly have, you know, near, mid and far, they’ve got red light therapy in the sauna, but you really don’t get that much.

They’re low powered LEDs behind a grill. Mounted on a fixed plane, three sides of the sauna, you’re never getting red light you’re never getting red light therapy on your torso. You’re really being sold a bill of goods that doesn’t work. Right.

Um, so.

If I just had to give you an answer, most of the time junk, no matter the price. Yeah, there’s only like two or three exceptions to the rule. You’ve got, I mean, I can just list them for you here, which is probably be easier for you. So if you’re looking at a $10,000 sunlight and impulse that has, you know, red light therapy behind the grills in the sauna on three sides, probably not a great candidate.

Like it’s fine that it’s in there, but you probably still want to add a red light therapy panel separate from the sauna because you’re not getting as much photo by modulation as you think you are on the opposite end of the spectrum. If you take something like a clear light sanctuary, it’ll say it has full spectrum heaters in it and stuff where they say there’s some, you know, near infrared and blah, blah, blah.

You’re not getting red light therapy from those, not anything meaningful under 900 nanometers wavelength and down. So they have a red light add on that you can add to the door. comes pre-wired. This is why I said over 5,000, you have a chance, but not usually out of the box.

So you can add that panel panel works effectively, has the right wavelengths, right output, right everything. But it is going to be mounted on the back of the door in most of the pictures that you see online. So just keep in mind, it’s better than the other options because you’re going to get torso.

But in order to treat other areas, you would have to take it out of the sauna and use it on a stand, which is an option, but you’re going to pay for that. I mean, it’s like, I think it’s like $2,000 or something for the, for the add on light.

Other exception would be the heavenly heat red light therapy sauna. I have one back there. You just can’t see it. Same thing mounted on a fixed plane.

The cool thing that they do though, is they give you that glass panel. So if you want to take the, like it comes with everything when you buy it, you don’t have to buy anything extra. So whatever the price is of the sauna, you’re not upsold on anything else.

If you want, if you don’t like that, the red light therapy panel is mounted on the front wall cause you can only use it on your torso or your sides. You can just take it out.

out, use the glass window in the sauna and then hang the panel anywhere else. Um, and it’s, it’s a max panel. It’s quality. It’s got all the right wavelengths, good output.

Uh, so those would be some options to, you know, to take a look at if you did want to combine it. The other ones, much like the sunlight and you know, $10,000 sauna, sky red light therapy in it, but not much, you know, photobiomodulation from it, same thing from your below $2,000 Amazon Wayfair, all these places.

There’s two things that I see in those. One is that they have a nice red light therapy panel that’s mounted to the back wall, kind of like on a 45 in a, in a angled fashion, which is really weird because you’re not going to bounce the red light around inside the sauna.

So I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work for you, but it’s pretty gimmicky. Yeah. Supposedly you get red light therapy with the sauna, which you do, but using it, it becomes a different story. And then on the flip side, you have these Amazon saunas that have the little tiny panel like this.

You might, it looks like a tabletop panel to me. It’s very small. You might get some red light therapy, you know, from that, but it’s not going to compare to like a giant panel that I have hanging right there. What is the cheapest red light therapy panel that you could recommend?

And then what is one that you’ve bought that’s expensive, but you’re like, it’s, it’s worth the money. Well, if you look at my list on my website or the Facebook group, you can kind of see the ones that I’ve tried that I like, um, some of them are, you know, when you just asked me for a cheap panel, I immediately go to, well, how are you going to use it?

Cause you could say the cheapest thing you could get is like a helmet or a face mask, which I’ve tried. I like them. I don’t notice as much from those as I do from a, from a body panel, but you get a cheap light and it, you know, it’s going to work.

Uh, but if you check out that list, I think you’ll see some options on there for the different sizes, but I think for, I don’t know, 400 to five, $600, you can get something that’s.

you know, inexpensive from the list. Um, and kind of like the saunas, I think it starts to get out of control, like over $2,000. Who, who needs to pay $4,000 for some gigantic, you know, red light therapy thing in a stand? It’s, it’s, it’s getting, it’s kind of like, you know, this over here is a DIY test that I have going.

There’s four panels hanging from the ceiling. I’ve made a couple videos on it. Why am I doing that? Because I think it’s insane to pay $40,000 for a light therapy bed.

Because I can replicate, you know, 70% of the benefits with something like this and each one of those panels were only, I don’t know, 800. Let’s just say they’re a thousand bucks. So for 4,000, I’m doing 70% of what a $40,000 or $35,000 red light therapy bed will do. So this is me, you know, this is my personality.

I think after you get to a couple thousand dollars, you shouldn’t really need to spend more than that for red light therapy in a stand. I will say, I think it’s worth the money to spend for a horizontal stand because you’ll actually do more red light therapy if you can lay underneath it.

You think where it really comes into play is once you do get a good panel, you think the setup is partially more important? Yeah, because I mean, I could be alone in this, but this is the truth, man. Like everyone shows these pictures. Oh, it’s easy to mount.

Put it on the back of your bathroom door and then all you have to do is stand five minutes on your front, five minutes on your back. I’m just standing there staring at a door. It’s like, I mean, it’s fine. I’ll do it a couple times, but after I do that, like two or three times a week, I’m kind of like, well, this sucks.

You know, I don’t really just want to stand in front of the door. I could be doing something else and when you’re facing it, like it’s so bright, even if you wear, whether you wear eye protection or not, that’s a whole different deal. It’s not like you can do anything else.

You can’t see anything.

so you can’t do email, you’re not gonna be reading a book. When I do the lie down stuff, I can, it’s better for me. So at the end of the day, most panels will turn on and shine light, but the difference between cheap and premium is how you wanna use it, comfort, safety, and really the thing that matters is the actual results that you get.

So you don’t always need the most expensive option. In some cases, you’d be better off with not the most expensive option, but if you want reliable performance, a well-built panel is usually worth the investment last year long time, and it’s gonna be the best choice for you.