What is the “Best Sauna” After 7 Years of Testing

Everyone wants to know what the best sauna on the market is, but after seven years of testing more than 40 saunas, I can tell you this: there is no single best brand for everyone. And the people who care about you the most are usually the ones willing to tell you which saunas not to buy. This whole idea of “just pick the best brand” is the problem. It ignores your power limitations, your space, your budget, your health goals, and the actual heater layout that determines whether your sessions give you anything at all.

I went through this the hard way. Before I had access to all this equipment, I spent months stuck in analysis paralysis, listening to sales reps, influencer hype, and people online who had never even stepped inside the saunas they were recommending. That struggle is exactly why I do these videos now. Most buyers get wrapped up in features, marketing language, and brand loyalty, when the real question is simple: what fits your situation and will consistently give you a solid, reliable sweat?

This video is a straight-up rant and a blueprint for how to stop choosing saunas based on noise and start choosing based on your actual needs. If you want personalized help, this is the framework I use for every single person I talk to.

Below are the links I always include so you can compare options and decide what fits your setup best.

Read the transcript >

---

---

Transcript

If you truly want to help somebody decipher what the best product is for their unique situation, you have to dig in a little bit. So you’re looking for the best sauna that you can buy this year, right? Have you ever considered that despite the way people portray stuff on social media, the only people that have your best interests at heart are those willing to tell you which saunas not to buy. I know that’s a big statement, but it’s true.

All these polls, even in my own Facebook group, people are like, Oh, which brand is the best and dah, dah, dah. Should you buy a sunlight? And should you buy a clear light? Should you buy a heavenly heat? Should you buy a radiant health? Should you buy a Thera sauna? Should you buy a health mate? Should you buy a Costco? Should you buy a life pro? Should you buy a dynamic? Should you buy, just go on down the list. You could state every possible option out there and you’ll get people that are like, Oh, buy this brand. It’s the best. Well, the best for who, how do we know that it’s the best for you without even taking into account your unique needs?

So my problem with this and the reason that I don’t, you know, people think that I’m being snippy with them. It’s not a personal thing when people start these polls and they’re like, Oh, which brand is the best? And it’s limited to like these three or four brands or something. The person that that’s for hasn’t even stated their criteria yet. So of course I chime in and I’m like, you know, there’s a lot of info missing here and they’re like, well, what do you mean? Why do you have to be like this, Matt? And because if you truly want to help somebody decipher what the best product is for their unique situation, you have to dig in a little bit.

Just having some, Oh, this is the best brand. And that’s what everyone says on social media. Just creates like sheeple herd mentality that think brand is everything. Well then how come Ford and Chevy and Dodge and you know, go on down the list, Toyota and Nissan. How come all these people, companies are making trucks and certain people find them a better fit for their individual towing needs or driving needs or off-road needs, you know, then another, and so you’re telling me that there’s only one brand on the planet of sauna that could be good for anyone. That’s like saying there’s only one truck, one model that could be good for anyone.

Well, how would you know if a full size is the wrong, you know, fit for somebody that really needs like a Toyota Tacoma, something that’ll fit in tighter places, a little bit smaller, have better gas mileage. Doesn’t need to tow a fifth wheel trailer. Same thing with the saunas, right? The guys will know what I’m talking about for you gals. You know, do you need a Mercedes SUV? Probably not. Is it nice? Well, absolutely. Are those features valuable to you? Is it better than having like a, you know, a Honda or like a Honda element or something? Is there a different driving experience from a Honda element to a Mercedes? Uh, AMG SUV, right?

Cause there’s going to be a damn huge price difference, right? There’s going to be a huge feature difference. There’s probably even going to be some build quality differences, even though it’s hard to say that Hondas aren’t reliable, the same thing translates to saunas. The trouble that I see a lot of you guys in is that you get wrapped up in a sales agent that works at either one company or one store that is only allowed to carry certain brands, right? So you’re asking them to compare saunas or biohacking or wellness equipment with other brands that a, they’re not allowed to carry B they’ve never used and C can’t sell you even if they wanted to, right?

So then the conversation is steered toward, Oh, it’s this brand, this type of heater, and this type of wood doesn’t grow mold and these heaters are more emissive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, features and smart connected, all this crap, but does that really attribute to a better heat therapy session? That’s going to give you health benefit. See, I didn’t get into this so that I could watch TV in a sauna or have some fancy screen or turn it on while I was at work or all that stuff is great, but does that help me improve my health?

Inherently those feature sets, while are awesome, don’t actually do anything for me, maybe it helps me use it more consistently if I’m able to turn it on remotely or have some tech that makes my session more enjoyable or will make me use it more frequently or stick to a schedule because I like it more. Okay, fine. But foundationally, did I say anything in there that actually contributes to a better sweat, more consistent detoxification? If you’re not paying attention, there are things in our world that we need to assist the body to get rid of, right? That it’s coming into contact with and regular sauna can help it do that on its own. Very, very, very important.

So foundationally, you guys are, are, are at war with, Oh, one brand is better than another. I’m not looking at that. I’m looking at what’s the best heater layout within a certain budget that I can fit within a size requirement and an electrical constraint. That’s how I do assessment on what the best sauna is for someone. And you can see it in my videos for the last five years. I don’t deviate from that because when you truly try to uncover what someone’s needs are, these are the things that you’re going to have to go through.

Question number one, what kind of power can you run, right? Are you limited to an apartment or condo where you just have a regular outlet and that’s never going to change? Okay, fine. We could talk about the greatest sauna models since sliced bread that have ever been created. 70% of them, you won’t even be able to run. So why are we looking at them? Why are you looking at posts from people that have never tried any of this stuff that are saying, Oh, buy this brand because it’s the best. And it doesn’t even work for your situation. That’s great that somebody else thinks it’s the best, but is it the best for you? No.

Right. So what happens is this contributes to this analysis paralysis in the sauna industry. Have you ever noticed that picking out a sauna is like an absolute nightmare? When I was going through this and I didn’t have access to them, like I didn’t have a whole bunch of them that I could try and use. There was all this dialogue and chatter from people on the internet that were trying to tell me that some saunas were a certain way that I would go and step into them and use them and come to my own conclusions. And I realized that half of them have no earthly idea what they’re talking about. And they really shouldn’t be advising people on, you know, sauna decisions because they’re not actually trying them.

You know, it’s like people that post in the group and say, Hey Matt, what do you think of this review video of this brand? And I’m like, it’s not a review video. It’s a guy sitting at a computer, pulling up a website of a competing brand that he doesn’t sell and tells you why it’s bad or good. Why would I waste my time? I have it right behind me. Why wouldn’t I just go sit in it, turn it on, get a sweat session and turn the camera on at the end and say, Hey, this is what I think after I used it. I don’t need to look at the website.

I don’t need to look at some stupid brochure. I don’t want to know about some califragilistic experts, super blah, blah, blah, wavelength, emissivities, carbon ceramic, specialized crap emitter. It’s just a fancy name. There’s not a 90% difference between these emitters yet. This stuff is positioned in a way where you think if you pick the wrong thing, you’re not going to get the benefit. A lot of times that’s not the case. A lot of times that’s just perpetuating you putting off deciding something that’ll work well for you. Unfortunately.

And who suffers you? How do I know this? Because I went through this. That’s how I came to do what I do today because it was such a struggle point for me and I would waste months and months and months and months and research and research and research and these idiots from these, you know, groups or whatever would send me these DMS and it’s, I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve seen it so many times now it’s a copy and paste sequence that they send to everybody.

Oh, we help people, you know, get this and do that and dah, dah, dah. Oh, you got to try this because if you don’t have this, you won’t get that. Really? When in fact, those people that are selling those products don’t even have that product in their house. They have one that’s 10 years old. Guys, a lot of this stuff is not what it seems, you know, at the end of the day, if you’re not able to get information from someone that’s going to say, listen, don’t buy anything. Don’t buy anything. If you’re not able to get like real info about this health and wellness experience, journey products, biohacking techniques, equipment, whatever, from somebody that’ll look at you and say, you know what, here’s what you shouldn’t buy.

And it’s not in a fashion where it’s like, Oh, don’t buy all the competitors only buy ours stick. I mean, if you, if you’ve been in this industry for five minutes, you’re going to get it right. And if you call, if you call the wrong sauna companies, like some of the ones that we don’t recommend, or I don’t recommend, you know, as soon as the call center gets ahold of your real cell phone number, they’re just going to blow you up until you block the number, which is totally insane.

Like there’s some companies out there where I wouldn’t send my mom or my grandmother to call them without a Google voice number and a burner email account, because they’re just going to light them up until they absolutely go nuts and either cave and buy just to get them to stop contacting them or just become, you know, hate that brand for the rest of their life and be like, you know what? Just never contact me ever again. I can’t stand you used cars, men, used car salesmen type stuff, right?

You have everything in between when it comes to these things. There’s some people that, you know, seem genuine and this, that, and the other, but my temperature, my thermometer, thermometer, gauge, temperature, gauge slash thrum slash thermometer, or barometer for whether someone is full of it or not is, are they willing to do the right thing? Are they willing to do the right thing for me when it doesn’t, you know, put money in their pocket or serve them as far as social media brand perception? Right.

A lot of these, these social

Media people are paid to get a brand or something to be perceived in a certain way. So they wear a fancy bikini, they’re all shredded, or they have like some sexy body or something. They’re paid to take pictures and post X amount of times per month, you know, with the product or, you know, whatever, except before they got that deal, they never even used a sauna a day in their life. And now they’re telling you how amazing it is. And because sex sells, you know, we see it as flashy. We aspire to have better health, be in better shape, lose weight, all this stuff, those things are kind of used against us, yet the product is the same. The product hasn’t changed like all things being equal, right? But the way that it’s presented definitely has.

So all that to say, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what you want from me. I can tell you what the best sauna is for you by talking to you within three to four minutes, typically. Right. So I try to produce as many videos as I can, highlighting different scenarios. Sometimes I’ll post in the Facebook group and then somebody can put in a picture of their install space and say, Hey, what do you think about this? I’ve got a door over here. It’s a spare bedroom, or it’s a, you know, this is our primary bedroom. We want to fit us on over here. We don’t want the room to heat up too much, or we want to do this. We want like, there’s all these situations.

We want to stick it in a bathroom. You know, can it be in a wet environment? What about the breaker? They’re usually on GFCI, you know, just all this stuff. And then somebody else, you know, we’ll see some of those and the situation is at least relatable enough. And I’ll say something like, Hey, you might not want to get this because it’s going to cause a problem for you. And so trying to educate folks so they don’t, don’t do what I did. End up with bad stuff at your house. That’s delivered by semi on a four by eight palette and then get really, really, really angry when it doesn’t work out because can’t put it back in the box.

Very difficult to move without help frustrated that you were sold a bill of goods and it’s not that, I mean, everybody would be upset. You know, I’m kind of used to it now, so I don’t get as angry as I used to be, but I’m also like, I’ve done it too many times. I’m not as excited as I used to be too. Right. It’s run of the mill. I’ve seen everything. There’s not a lot of situations that I haven’t been able to, you know, or that I haven’t been exposed to this point in time. Been doing this of quite a long time.

Um, and all I can tell you is stick to your parameters, stick to, um, things that matter, the stuff that matters, especially in infrared saunas are going to come down to something that you’ll, you know, something that you find comfortable. So when I think of size, I just think of, you know, what’s something that I can comfortably sit in. It doesn’t have to be the biggest thing. It doesn’t have to be the smallest thing. It doesn’t necessarily have to feel like a recliner, but it can’t be like where I dread going in at every single day.

So whether that’s a larger one person or a two person or a three, you know, everybody’s different. I don’t really care that much about, you know, laying down. Some people do. If you don’t, if you’re like me, I mean, you can use a one person sauna or a two person. No issue. You can turn sideways and put your knee up. Right. And everything larger typically comes with larger costs. And I don’t mean just the product. I mean, a larger sauna is going to have a larger power supply. Larger power supply is going to require a larger electric supply.

So usually there’s associated costs with installing that. All this comes into play for some people that’s too difficult and they should just get something that’s smaller that works, you know, easier for them or is less expensive or fits within a budget, but still has the right heater layout, the right amount of heat coverage, right? If you don’t have the foundational principles, you’re going to be spending hours and hours and hours inside of a hot box and not getting anything out of it. To me, that’s like the worst of the worst, you know, somebody that gets a sauna that doesn’t perform well, I hate to see that because all these folks on social media could say till they’re blue in the face that this is the best brand.

But if somebody buys that and it’s not the right fit for them, all that’s hogwash. There’s no such thing as the best brand because it’s not working for their needs. See what I mean? So I’ve said a lot of stuff in this video. You could argue that I haven’t said anything in this video. A lot of people are looking for me to just say, go buy this brand, but I need like two or three tidbits from you in order for that to be an honest recommendation and something that I truly believe in, how am I supposed to know what’s right for you without hearing from you on what you need?

And I don’t see how anybody could tell you any different. So these are my, also I use this as red flags. I said, barometer, these are my thermometers, my temperature gauge. This is just my way of, uh, just 30 seconds observing whether or not someone is being genuine with me, because if all they’re doing is talking at me and telling me why their sauna has this output, their sauna has, you know, this wavelength or has this feature or whatever, they’re not really interested in matching up a product to my situation, right?

All they’re doing is trying to convince me that their brand is going to offer me something that someone else’s doesn’t, but that doesn’t really help me decipher whether or not it works for me or is the best choice for me. Right. And so the lat that’s what I focus on for people. And so I would urge you to take that with you, right? There’s no, I’m not going to shove anything down your throat in this video. Yeah. It’s a best of, you know, sauna video, but really the best thing for one person isn’t the best thing for another person.

So I like to cater to that and make sure that people are in the best position possible for them to win. So if you have questions, throw them in the comments, we’ll see in the Facebook group until next time.