We’ve Tested Over 40 Saunas and These Are the Ones We’re Keeping

We finally made it through Black Friday and the chaos that comes with it. Tons of new people joined the community, and after seeing all the install photos and questions rolling in, I realized a lot of you probably don’t know the backstory, the testing, or the resources we’ve built over the years. So this video is a quick reset for the newcomers and an update for everyone else.

I’ve tested more than forty different sauna brands over the last seven years, across multiple houses, states, climates, and health situations. Some of these units worked great, some were terrible, and a few surprised me. In this walkthrough I’m showing you exactly which saunas we’re keeping for long-term testing, which ones are getting moved out, and what’s coming next as we film new courses on how to fix underperforming saunas, superheat older models, and correct bad heater layouts.

A lot of people don’t realize we keep certain cabins in-house for long-term use so we can actually test updates, compare parts, and show you what works instead of just giving opinions. With all the new members in the Facebook group, this seemed like a good time to revisit the whole mission here and show why we do things the way we do.

Read the transcript >

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Transcript

All right guys, we made it through Black Friday. That was absolute craziness. Really good deals this year. I hope you guys were able to snag one of the deals while they lasted. I see that a lot of stuff is sold out now. Tons and tons of community questions. Group members, you know, showing their install spaces inside the Facebook group. Awesome, awesome to see. But I also realized from all those posts, there’s a lot of new people here. People that probably don’t know that all these resources exist. Don’t know the health journey that we’ve been through. What brought us to this point? Why we do the work that we do? So for you guys that are new, welcome to the channel first and foremost.

Also want to mention that we have a Facebook group with 30-40,000 people in there. That’s where the pictures and install spaces and inspiration that I’m talking about comes from. We use both YouTube and Facebook, so we have a private group. It’s free to join if you’d like to. The link is in the description. And for those of you who don’t know, I’m Matt. I’ve tested over 40 saunas in the last, different brands by the way, in the last seven years. Been doing this quite a while on a personal health quest. Been through all types of things on my health journey. Amalgam filling removal, got me into detox, seeing functional medicine doctors, not understanding, you know, do you really need to take 30 supplements? And then years later I would go through leukemia treatment. Still here, so very blessed. Happy that you guys are here. The thing that fuels my work here is seeing other people get great success in their health and doing it faster, easier, quicker, cheaper than it took me. So with all that being said, let’s jump right back into it like we usually do and take a look at some new stuff that’s up and coming.

In here, as you guys, well, maybe if you’re new, you haven’t seen, but I have a lot of saunas that we’re either getting rid of, giving away to healthcare practitioners in the central Florida area that want to use them for their patients. I don’t really need to sell them. I just want to give them to somebody who’s going to use them for, you know, helping other people. But before we do that, we’re going to film a new series. We also have some courses coming that are going to show you. We finally found the ideal way to fix the Costco sauna. I know I said I had it before and I did, but I think it was too difficult for people to implement. So I’ve come up with a way that we’re going to release in a course that’s going to show you how to basically superheat any particular sauna. And it’ll be for a few different styles. The limitations on some of these are most of them have led panels and stuff in the center of the roof. So for you to mount something here or cut holes here, you have to relocate this stuff and move those wires. That’s the part that I think is too difficult for most people. So I’ve come up with a better way. And before I get rid of these, before we give them away, we’re going to film me doing that. And I’m going to teach you exactly how, where to drill, what to mount and put thermometers in there.

For those of you that just absolutely cannot stand the fact that the entire industry shows you, you know, one particular temperature on the control panel and the air temperature is something else, usually about 20 degrees less. We’re going to put real thermometers in here and show you how to crank this sucker up to 160, 170, 180, 190, 200 degrees. If that’s what you want. I personally don’t think that you need all that, but I’m going to show you how to do it because that’s what you guys said you wanted. We’re also going to serve another batch of style of saunas where you can mount stuff to the roof. So in many saunas that don’t work that well in the past, come in here. I’ve told you, just put a heat lamp fixture or something in here and put heat lamps at yourself, right?

These mounts, they’re kind of flimsy. I don’t really like them. And the biggest issue that I see with them, while they do have a metal housing with a ceramic E26, E27 insert, which is what you need for those bulbs. I don’t like the wiring that comes with them. I think that the wiring is inadequate. The leads are only six inches long, but it’s like 22 gauge wire or something. It seems brittle to me. Obviously I’m testing it and have installed them and used it. But when it comes to showing other people how to use it and knowing that the safety of your family, your pets and everything else, and fire hazards could be possible in someone else’s household, I’m not really comfortable with that. So I have some new equipment coming in the next eight to 10 days that we’re going to replace and retrofit this with. And I’ll share that with you.

I’ve also got to do an update to our six-year-old video, how to add near-infrared heat lamp bulbs to any far-infrared sauna. Those extensions, those lamp or can light extensions that we used in there, the Satco people and the other ones, they have changed how they manufacture those and the plastic in the new housing, it melts. And so I don’t like that either. I left one of mine on, came back, the bulb was on the floor and the melt or the mount had melted and deformed basically to where it let go of the E26 housing. Obviously that’s not safe. So some of these things I have had worked out in the past, but now that you can’t buy the same parts or the manufacturer has changed the way that they do the parts. So I’m looking for other things to replace that with. I think I’ve found a solution, but before I release it to you guys, I want to test it myself and make sure that it’s good to go.

And then finally, I’m going to cater to another sauna problem, another style of sauna that just has a poor heater layout. Everyone thinks that just because I give bad reviews that I just don’t like stuff or this, that, and the other, but quietly for the last eight to 13 months, we’ve been working on ways to fix these saunas. And I think once you see what we have come up with, you’re going to be really, really surprised. So the third style of cabin that has a poor heater layout that just doesn’t work are ones that have very directional infrared heaters behind you. Obviously we’re talking about primarily infrared and no side heaters, hardly any floor heaters, no feet heaters in the floor, no nothing. So you get intense directional heat from behind. You get a little bit from the front if they have emitters on the front wall, but you get absolutely nothing from the side. You get nothing from the floor. You get nothing for the torso, like lower half thigh leg region. We’ve tested a bunch of different personal room heaters, some wall heaters, bunch of different styles of things. I’m going to show you what works, what doesn’t, what has super high EMF that you wouldn’t want to sit next to, what has moderate levels. It’s kind of like there’s a trade-off somewhere in here. Also ease of installation. I’m looking for things that are plug in place. You don’t have to have an electrical background or install junction boxes or drill holes and run wiring and route cabling and this, that, and the other. If you want to do that, we’re going to release a private course that probably we charge a few bucks for or something that’ll take you through all the steps, but we need control of how that’s delivered. We cannot do it with a YouTube playlist and then as stuff changes over time, we’ll make updates to it. So it will be in a course format. It’ll take you through step-by-step of selecting the right heater for you, how to install it, how to wire it, and then how to make sure that you have enough adequate power to run it.

Because one of the things is everyone would love to have a hybrid sauna. Everyone would love to have a combo sauna. It solves all the issues and the pain points and the fears that people have. The real intention here is to make things as simple as we can for you guys. The other intention is to make sure that you don’t have equipment that just doesn’t work and you’re stuck with it. I think that’s the worst part. I mean, people buy something expecting it to have a certain level of performance. They’re sold a bill of goods basically and then they receive something else that has a subpar, you know, performance and they’re just not happy with it. They basically think they have expensive firewood, you know, they’re not getting great sauna sessions. So I want to fix that. I want to teach people that you can modify stuff. So that’s the intention is to try and use these as a way to show you how to fix this stuff. Otherwise, you know, the only reason that we have all these still is to shoot the videos, do tutorials, make sure that these saunas work well before we give them to doctor’s offices and stuff like that. Because in their current form, they’re kind of subpar and I don’t want their patients to have subpar results. We’re going to fix them. We’re going to show you how to do it and we’re going to film everything before we give them away.

That said, let’s show you the saunas that I do like that I am keeping. Aaron’s mad at me. This isn’t supposed to be released until 2026 and probably companies wouldn’t like it if I showed you how to modify stuff to this extent. This is a one-person sauna. Basically what we’re looking to do is if you have a really, really small space, I know you’re not supposed to do a lot of this, but one of the ways to ramp up your sweating ability and your detox protocol and get more lymphatic fluid exchange without having a giant room with fitness equipment and a sauna and all this crap is to stick it in here.

So I know you guys have been waiting for me to come out of the closet for quite some time, but Aaron wants me to talk about things that we’re going to keep in the closet. Heavenly Heat Eco Mini. You guys don’t like my humor? Find somewhere else to go. No, I’m just kidding. This sauna is just awesome. I like it for quick sauna sessions. I’m actually thinking about moving it to the master bathroom, like right outside the shower, so that if I get done with a workout real quick, I mean, not that it’s bad inside the closet. I like us doing a closet biohacking, you know, studio thing because it just shows what’s possible if you really just break all the rules and try stuff. But this is awesome to sneak into a master bathroom. You get done with a workout, you come in, you preheat the sauna like 10 minutes before. It doesn’t take very long to heat up. I know it’s small. You guys

Have your gripes about, oh, can you fit in it? Is it comfortable? You’re not going to be in here for very long. I wouldn’t worry about it. Intense heat. Works super good. Clean sauna. Can’t ask for too much more. Super small, compact. Fits pretty much anywhere. Hefty price tag, but hefty build quality. So nothing else that’s in the mini sauna market that I’ve seen is going to be built like this thing. Nothing is built like a tank. Usually they’re flimsy, thin. You know, they’re okay, but not like this. So this is one of the things that we’ll continue to test.

Like I say, you get done with the workout, having your master bath, turn the shower on. You could alternate contrast therapy if you want cold shower, hot sauna, or you could just have everything ready and just bing, bang, boom. In under 20 minutes, you get your sauna session in post-workout, dressed, ready for dinner and do whatever you got to do. It’s a pretty cool package. Yeah. So this is definitely a keep. There’s no way that we could get rid of this right now because not a lot compares to this. And we want to compare this to other product offerings that get released in 2026. This is pretty much the gold standard as far as I’m concerned of a small sauna.

I don’t know of anything on the market that matches, you know, the build quality, the low EMF, the low VOCs, but it’s really also the heat intensity. Actually, can we get through here without showing this mess? No, no. You want them to see it. So we’re not going to touch on portable saunas today. This is an absolute mess. We had an issue in the mechanical room with AC stuff, had all this set up with red light therapy, portable saunas, editing station. We’ve got the DIY stuff. We’ve got some top secret things, you know, here that you’re not supposed to see. So let’s skip all this.

So next on the list would be the Radiant Health 2.5. This is quite possibly my favorite sauna. Well, maybe you don’t show them all that. This sauna, one of my favorite saunas I’ve ever used, just really spacious, big enough for me to use, you know, either with someone else or by myself and really stretch out. Got the concealed heater in the bench. So even if I put my legs up, I’m still getting heat from the underside. In other saunas, when I sit sideways or lay down flat, I check this on a FLIR gun. Like I always say, the bench is cold. It’s blue. So pretty cool to have heat coverage basically just completely wrapping you. There’s heaters in here on the back of the wall here, heated floor, calf heaters underneath the bench, leg heaters in the sidewalls, tons and tons of back and side wall heater coverage. And I’ve just enjoyed these for years.

I’ve had multiple models in different states and different houses, gotten the opportunity to try different sizes, different applications, cold environments, hot environments. We’re in Florida right now. So, you know, this just, of all the things that I’ve ever tested, this still to this day is one of my favorite saunas that I’ve ever used. So an absolute keep from me. So also in the same room for the last one would be Clearlight has some unique product offerings where, especially for outdoor, a couple of years ago, they were one of the only companies that made a true outdoor sauna. They were also one of the only companies that offered things like a yoga sauna or like a Premier IS-5 with a recliner bench.

So if you’re a person that had sciatica or something like that and needed to sit in a certain position, you just couldn’t get a sauna without going with Clearlight. So a lot of cool offerings from them. Most of their, it’s funny for me to say Premier line, which is really the sanctuary, not the Premier, comes pre-wired for accessories, which no one else offers at this moment in time. If they’re claustrophobic, they’re some of the only saunas with a clear glass front. What I’m getting at is basically they have certain applications for people that have specific needs that you just can’t find anywhere else.

And for us, it’s been great having this. I mean, for selfish reasons, it’s easier to film because it has an all glass front and the way that it’s set up, we don’t have to fight with, you know, wooden walls and stuff. I know that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to actual sauna users. But, you know, in order for us to bring you these comparisons, it’s also useful to have all this equipment in house so that we’re not relying on other people or like, you know, non-factual opinions, basically. You really get a sense of what’s going on when you can actually sit and use and test stuff and you’re not under the gun.

It’s not like we travel somewhere for a weekend to do a photo shoot and we only get to use the product like two or three times. If there’s a random day where I get inspiration and I’m like, you know, I’ve never tried a clear light sanctuary with heat lamps in it. So-and-so from the group said this, this, and this about that. Why don’t I go do it myself? You know, having all this equipment and having saunas that we want to get rid of that we don’t like, you know, having other ones that we do like and are keeping and use for testing and everything else. It’s been a great blessing and we’re able to bring you the best content that I could possibly create by having all this stuff.

So for all your newcomers and for everyone who’s been here for a while, you’ve probably seen half of these things already, but for everyone who’s new, check out the channel. There’s over a thousand videos on the YouTube channel. I’ve been doing this a long time and we’ll see you in the next one.