Red Light Therapy Device - 4x808nm+16x650nm Near Infrared Light Therapy for Joint Muscle Pain Relief, Handheld Infrared Therapy for Body, Knee, Shoulder, Back, Dog, Cat, Horse, White

Update to my review: the company replaced the first defective unit. I am happy they stand behind the quality of their product! I have tried out the new unit, and it's functioning as expected. I was able to resume my red light treatments for healing my shoulder, which stalled in the absence of having a functioning unit. I'm very happy I can continue with this therapy, it has really helped!Previous review:This unit functioned really well, up until about 6 months out when it died completely and would not charge. When I last turned it off and set it down, the day before, it had at least 1/4 of a charge left. So I expected it to power up and keep working. It was completely dead, so I charged it, and nothing. Apparently others had this same defect in their units. I'll look at another brand.

It was necessary to have surgery 6 months ago to repair a tear in my Achilles tendon. The tear was caused by a heel spur. Twenty-two physical therapy sessions had not brought any relief whatsoever. None of the modalities (exercise, ultra-sound nor massage) during these PT sessions brought relief. It was the end of the road as my insurance benefits had been exhausted. Unable to walk more than a few feet without having to sit down, climbing stairs to do laundry was a near impossible chore as I couldn't bear the pain, I was desperate for relief. My life had drastically changed.Out of desperation, I turned to the nearest "pain-free" clinic 60 miles away. Utilizing high-level, medical-grade RLT with an estimated cost of up to $4,000--without any guarantees. That's when I decided to explore the purchase of a hand-held device. It was the smartest thing I could have done! I'm overjoyed to say that I'm improving with consistent sessions.My senior dog has lower-back, arthritic issues making walking very difficult. So I plan on giving her daily treatments, too. My vet offers RLT and as expected, it's quite expensive.In summary, my best advice is put your skepticism aside. What have you got to lose but pain! Have found that it's most important to be consistent with your daily sessions for the first 4 weeks. The effects are cumulative so please don't get discouraged in the beginning.I hope my review helps prospective buyers who are on the fence in making this purchase realize that RLT does work!As an added note, I've personally found that the "pulse" mode works best for joint pain whereas the "continuous" mode is more efficient for soft tissue-related pain.

This is a very long review. I'll talk a lot about cold laser in general, this one in particular, as well as the included glasses. The TLDR is that cold laser in general is great and has tons of research. This laser seems surprisingly nice and is a great value. Finally, I do NOT think these safety goggles are enough. Lasers can be dangerous and if you get unlucky you can permanently blind yourself. You should buy a separate set of glasses. That said even without glasses this is a great deal. Read on for more detail.I've sunk 100's of hours into researching different cold lasers / PBM (PhotoBioModulation) / LLLT (Low Level Laser Therapy), which are all basically the same. The research is amazing and if you go search PubMed and read about the results being achieved, it's truly impressive how many different conditions show improvement with the use of red light.I also watched some interviews with one of the most prominent PBM researchers in the field (Mike Hamblin) where he gave a history of light therapy and showcased some of the dramatic results achieved.--Wavelength and Dose matter, light source maybe not--My takeaway from all this research was that it probably doesn't matter what your light source is. What matters is the wavelength, and dose (i.e. energy density commonly cited as J/cm^2).--Wavelength--Wavelength matters because different parts of your body will absorb different wavelengths. In the 650-900nm range (roughly) the research generally thinks you're targeting Cytochromes in mitochondria with the result that oxygen consumption, Mitochondria membrane potential, ATP, cAMP all go up. That's a lot of words to say you get more energy production. There's also a theory that you stimulate your stem cell reservoir by increasing oxygen usage. If you're into this, watch Mike Hamblin's presentations on YouTube for more. "PBM2021 Hamblin 127" is a keynote he gave to a PBM conference.--Absorption / local or systemic--Lasers and light in general also do not really penetrate that deeply - even the 800nm range. We're talking a few mm's into the skin before 99% of the light has already been absorbed. To underscore this, you'll see practitioners in hospitals working on post surgical patients talking about treating a patient with wounds on their left ankle by using their laser on the RIGHT ankle. Mike Hamblin also had a quote that you could "treat a bony area with good absorption like the forehead or shin and end up healing your heart or your brain." Basically, it seems like a lot of the effect is systemic in nature and not about where you treat locally (though everyone still treats locally and gets great results).--Dosage and Dose Rate--Lasers can get REALLY expensive. It's common to see the more powerful ones - often aimed at doctor's offices - advertised with the idea that because they're outputting more energy, the patient will get the required dose faster. BUT, there does seem to be some rate which it isn't good to go faster than.There is also what's called a "biphasic dose response" which is a fancy term for saying there is a goldilocks amount of light you want. Too little gets no effect, enough gets a healing effect, more than that can still have a pain inhibiting response but slows healing. More is definitely not better. Different tissues should get different doses, but roughly it seems if you're in the 3-20 Joule/cm^2 range you're probably good. Research seems to say 10 Joules / cm^2 is a good target for most tissues.Going back to the idea of dose rate, you wouldn't want such a powerful laser that you get all 10 Joules in 1 second. It's probably best if you get it over the course of 20 minutes.--Review of THIS laser--Let's talk about THIS laser in particular. It seems surprisingly well made. The controls are actually fairly intuitive. Lasers are dangerous and I appreciate that it takes a 3 second press of the power button to turn the unit on. Once it's on tapping the on button turns the laser on, and tapping it again turns it off. I try to turn the laser off every single time I pick it up off the skin.There isn't an indicator when it's plugged in charging, which is too bad, but it's not that big of a deal because you can unplug it and turn it on and see what the battery indicator on the LCD says.I don't have a laser power meter so I can't tell whether the diodes they've included are the ones advertised. I'm pretty confident that the 650nm 5mW diodes are probably real. Those are very common and not particularly strong. It seems plausible that the 808nm diodes could be 150mW as claimed too. If you look at the pricing it's conceivable that they could buy these parts, put them together and make a profit. They're common parts. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they're a bit weaker than claimed, which isn't a knock on this laser. It's really a way of saying that this is an insanely good value. However, read on about the glasses for another reason why I think the 808nm diodes actually do have some power.To figure out dosing you'll start with the total power and then multiply that by whatever is being absorbed. Light can be reflected, absorbed, transmitted, or scattered. If you hold the laser above your screen for instance, you'll have more light scattering on the skin surface than if you press it against your body. These are rough estimates I've read, but you're probably going to get about 60-80% of the energy absorbed by the tissue in your body. So 680mW * 70% = ~0.5 Joule / second or 30 Joules / minute.To get your dosing right, measure the area you're treating and decide on the total dose you want in Joules. So if you're treating 20cm^2, and you want 10 Joules/cm^2, you'll need 200 total Joules of energy. At 30 Joules / minute of absorbed energy, that means you'll use the laser for a bit less than 7 minutes. Because slower dose rates are better I tend to move the laser slowly back and forth over the area I'm treating instead of just leaving it in one spot.--The included goggles do NOT seem to be safe--The included goggles are blue, and they effectively filter the 650nm light. You'll put them on and the red lights will totally disappear. However, your eyes are NOT safe. 808nm is infrared light which means you can't see it. Our eyes are most sensitive to 555nm, the same neon yellow/green color as hi visibility vests. Truth is you can actually see 808nm still, but whereas your eyes can pick up 100% of 555nm, you only pick up 0.0002% of 808nm. So even when there is TONS of light energy you'll BARELY see it.Sure enough, when you put on the included goggles, you'll see a very faint red light, which is coming from the powerful 4x150mW 808nm diodes (as mentioned the 650nm diodes are filtered out). If you can see a faint light from the 808nm diodes it means that there is actually 1/0.0002% as much light energy as what you perceive. *****Or over 5000 times as much energy as what that dim little dot you see would lead you to believe.**** This energy, if it gets into your eyes, will blind you. If you score a direct hit on your retina you will vaporize the tissue. Normally I never leave reviews, but this is the sole reason I sat down to write this. Now granted, they have put a diffusing filter on the diodes so the energy isn't coming out as a tight beam, but this is still a ton of energy. You can see how bright the red lights on this are. The invisible light is 7-8 times more powerful than that!This is a fantastic laser, a great deal, but PLEASE take care of your eyes and don't let the fact that "it looks like the goggles filtered out most of the light" to lull you into a false sense of security. Goggles all filter out different wavelengths at different amounts. You'll see them talk about OD or optical density. OD0 is 100% of light passes through, OD1 is 10%, OD2 is 1% and OD3 is 0.1%.So an OD3 goggle effective at 808nm would take the 4x150mW and filter it down to 600mW * 0.1% = 0.6mW which is weaker than a laser pointer. You still don't want that in your eye, but you're safe at that point. Also, because it's 4 separate diodes that aren't all focusing in on one spot, and they put a diffusion filter on it (so the light doesn't come out as a tight beam) you're not going to get the full 600mW in your eye even if you're unlucky, but you only get one set of eyes so it's worth being conservative.So you'll want goggles that are at least OD2 at 650nm range and OD3 at 808nm. Probably your cheapest bet is to look for some IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) glasses. They'll be dark and not let you see much through them, but that inconvenience is worth it for your eyes. You can also buy ones that let more light through (higher VLT - Visual Light Transmission) but those will run you more. If you buy off Amazon, be wary of fakes. Maybe try to look up on YouTube to see if the one you're buying has been reviewed. Bonus is you'll probably see what lasers are capable of in some of the videos.If you buy this, you're scoring a great deal on a laser. Just don't squander that win by damaging your eyesight permanently. You're buying this to improve your health; keep that same intention for your eyes.

Bought this in October of 2023, used maybe up to 2xs a month mainly on my knees and right ankle. Noticed minimal relief but now it is completely dead and won't take a charge. For what I paid for it, it was not a good investment.I changed my rating from 1 to 5 stars after the company reached out to me and offered a full reimbursement. I asked if they would be willing to provide a replacement instead- better deal for both of us. They agreed and I received a new device. I was very impressed with their customer service.