Transcription
What is the most powerful red light therapy panel on the market? Well, I've tested a lot of panels over the years. In fact, I have 17 of the latest wall panels behind me. I've also got a really cool spectrometer. I've gone through, checked out their numbers, crunched the data, and I'm going to share with you the top 10 most powerful red light therapy panels in 2024. Let's go!
Now, power in red light therapy is an interesting topic. Okay, so bear with me here because this is quite important. Firstly, there are a lot of ways you can measure power output. I personally use a spectrometer; it is quite accurate—I'd say within 5% of a professional laboratory— which is good. A lot of companies are using what are known as light meters or solar meters. These meters are generating rather high, typically two or three times higher, than real-world data.
So, often what happens is companies get these high numbers from these inferior meters, and those are the numbers you see on the website. It's why you can go over to a website and see a company that says, “We have the most powerful panel in the market,” and it's putting out 200 or 300 mW/cm², and you should buy our panel.
Well, if you've seen any of my reviews—and I've done a lot of them; check them out below—be sure to subscribe to see future reviews. I actually look at the company's claims, and then I do the testing. And yeah, there's always a big difference.
The other thing is how you test the panels. I test them 6 inches from the panel. The further away from the panel you go, the lower the power output. 6 inches has just become a bit of a standard, which means comparing panels is a lot easier.
Speaking of comparing panels, be sure to head over to Light Therapy Insiders and check out the shopping tool there because you can sort through 50, 60, 70 different products I've tested and see a bunch of metrics on power, price, and all sorts of cool things.
So yeah, I test at 6 inches. Other companies may test at 12 inches, 24 inches, but for the purposes of this video, all the numbers I'm sharing are at 6 inches. Now finally, we have how they're doing that testing. You can have the right device and the right distance, but there's an issue if you just take a snapshot reading.
What I do is I actually measure nine different points on a panel and then take an average. I try to do six around the perimeter and three through the center line. This gives me a pretty good indication of what the panel is doing. Like I said, I then take an average, and it's this average we're going to use in this video to determine which panel is the most powerful.
Now, the other thing I need to mention is more power is not always better. It is a very somewhat controversial topic, to be honest. It is something I want to work on. I'm going to be doing some more videos on dosing and power output. I'm also going to be speaking to people like James Carroll to try to get a better understanding of this.
Okay, so I've tested all 17 of these panels. I'm going to rank them from best to worst, but we're going to start at ninth place. So we're going to get rid of the bottom seven because, yeah, they were rather low power.
In ninth place, we have the Mito Red Mito Pro X. This had an average radiance figure of 68 mW/cm². Now, I just need to say before we go further that this number is a really good power output. 68 mW means you're going to get good penetration into the tissue; you're going to get a good therapeutic dose in as little as a couple of minutes. If you're only wanting surface level treatment, yeah, there's plenty of power here. You can go further away from the panel, out to 12 inches, even 24 inches, and you're still going to get a therapeutic dose.
So even if there's a panel you really like that comes in low in this ranking, don't worry; these panels are powerful.
Now, in eighth place, we have the Infrared Pro Max at 72 mW/cm². This panel is exceptionally loud. Before you go out and buy this one, make sure you watch that review, because it is, yeah, it's not the most pleasant panel to use.
In seventh place, we have the Rodo Therapy Refine 900 with 73 mW/cm². A very unique and quite fascinating panel. It's only the second generation panel, but it has some awesome features in it. I'm not going to get into it in this video, but this is a panel you need to learn more about. I'll put links to the product down below, and also to the review. Go check out my review; you'll love it.
Now in sixth place, we have the Red Therapy Co. Red Rush 840 pulsed panel. This is putting out 76 mW/cm². It's only using 660 and 850 nm. The other panels so far have used multiple wavelengths, so you get an 810, 830, 630, but the Red Therapy Co. just sticks to the basics.
In fifth place was the Rouge Kia G3 Pro with a figure of 81 mW/cm². Now what's interesting is I tested this early in 2023, and at the time I think it was the most powerful panel I tested. Whenever I do a review, I add all the data into the Light Therapy Insiders shopping tool so you can go through and rank it from highest powered to lowest. I'm pretty sure that at the time of the review, they were at number one.
If you go over and look at that shopping tool now, you'll see that in the space of 12 months, a lot has changed.
Now in fourth place, we have the Huga Ultra 1500. This has a figure of 82 mW/cm². This is a really nice panel; they have quad chip LEDs, meaning each LED has four different chips putting up four different wavelengths. You're going to get a really nice blend of light, and at 82 mW/cm², you're also getting a lot of power.
Okay, so there's three panels to go. If you're enjoying this, can you just take a second, scroll down, or use your thumb, hit the like button, and then also subscribe? Because I've done a ton of reviews, and I've got heaps more coming out. So if you like this stuff, I promise you there's a good chance you're going to like the other stuff that's coming out soon.
Also, feel free to say hi, leave a comment, share it, do all that cool stuff. I really do appreciate the support. Speaking of support, if you want to buy any of these panels, I'll put discount codes and links down below in the show notes. If you click the link and use the code, you'll save a bunch of money. I get a little bit of a commission, which helps me keep doing this; it's a win-win!
So now, in third place, we have the Canadian company Cara with the Cara Elite. This panel is putting out 84 mW/cm². Great figure; exceptional power here!
Now, if you've seen my reviews, you'll notice I also do two other readings when it comes to the power section. I do the average radiance, which I'm sharing with you here, which is probably the most important to get an idea of how much light is coming from the panel overall. But I also do a peak reading, and this is where I move around and try to find the highest figure at one point.
That is interesting, but it's not really useful. I mean, you could have an amazing amount of energy coming in this particular spot, but everything else is really low. You'd rather know the average, right?
But the other reason I share a wattage figure is that it's not the wattage that's been used by the panel—how much energy is drawn from the wall. Though companies will share a wattage figure, to be honest, it's rather useless. I've done a video on this and how it's a bit confusing.
The figure I come up with here is looking at the average radiance and then taking the area of the panel. I do a bit of math and get an overall optical wattage figure; it's how much therapeutic light you're getting from that panel.
Now, the two variables are the average radiance and the size. But for the top three panels, I'm going to share this wattage figure. So the Cara Elite has a figure of 119 watts, meaning that's how much therapeutic light you're getting in watts when using this panel.
Okay, so that leaves two. Now, in second place, we have the Block Blue Light Mega 4.0. This panel has a whopping radiance figure of 87 mW/cm². This is huge! And like the Rouge I was talking about earlier, when I tested the Block Blue Light Panel, they also came out at number one at that point in time.
As you're going to find out, they're no longer number one, but still, 87 is huge. It's getting to the point where some of these panels may be putting out too much light, too much energy. If you just want to treat the skin or do a really low-dose routine, you're either going to have to stand a long way away from the panel or just do a really short treatment.
However, there's a possibility with the radiance figures at this level, even if it's a short treatment dose, you may still be overloading the body. The cool thing is a lot of these new panels—and this is true for Block Blue Light and also the panel that comes in at number one—there’s a dimming function built in, so you can go through and reduce the power output if you wish.
So, Block Blue Light Mega—a great panel! It's actually a really good panel. Check out the review on that one; a lot of people love it. It's a go-to for many people, and I highly recommend it as well.
However, when it comes to pure power, there's something even better, and that panel is, drum roll please, the Platinum LED BOMx 900 8th generation panel.
Now, this panel puts out 90 mW/cm² at 6 inches. This is an average figure—it's crazy! It's ridiculous; maybe not ridiculous, just a lot of power, a lot of energy. So yeah, that means you're going to get great penetration; it means you're going to get a ton of therapeutic light.
Remember, this is photomodulation; this is light that has been documented to help benefit the body. And I should note with the BOMx panel, it actually includes blue light LEDs as well, but I disabled the blue light for this reading, so we're only looking at the red and the near-infrared wavelengths, not the blue.
So the whole panel is not even running at full capacity. If you turn the blue light on, you'd get an even higher figure, though it's outside the red and near-infrared range, hence why I didn't include it. Still, though—90 mW/cm²? Crazy numbers!
If you're after a panel that's all about high power levels, then the BOMx panel is the one to go for. But I talked about those watts earlier; let's share the wattage data because it gets a little bit interesting here.
You see, the BOMx panel has a wattage output figure of 186 watts, which is enormous for a panel with 300 LEDs or less, but it's actually not the highest. The Block Blue Light Mega has a wattage figure of 190 watts, which is higher than the BOMx.
So, you're probably thinking, “What's going on here? How can the BOMx have a higher radiance average but lower wattage?" Well, it's because of the size. I mean, when you look at them, they actually seem very similar size-wise, but the Block Blue Light Mega is slightly wider and slightly taller, so it means you can cover a larger area.
Sure, the average power output is lower, but when it comes to true treatment size, true treatment area, you're getting more light coming from the Mega. So that's why it's slightly better.
Is it more powerful? Well, I mean, you're getting more power from a treatment area point of view, but the BOMx is slightly more intense, so to speak.
At the end of the day, though, both of these panels are great! In fact, all of these panels in the top nine are all great. Like I said before, I've reviewed all of them. I'm actually going to be doing a comparison between the BOMx 900 and the Block Blue Light Mega because a lot of people are trying to decide which one they should go for, so be sure to subscribe for that.
But most importantly, just know that all these panels are putting out a heap of power. Even if you get a panel that wasn't on this top nine list, you're still going to get a decent therapeutic amount of energy.
Now, before you go, there's another thing I need to mention. If 90 mW/cm² isn't enough for you and you want something even more powerful than that, well, there is a consumer-grade red light therapy product out there that's putting out a whopping 500 mW/cm².
You can learn more about it by clicking this video up here—it's my full review. The numbers on this thing are insane. Check it out!