$49 Or $399 Massage Gun? Theragun Versus The Cheap Chinese Copies - Forbes

[massage]

The Theragun Elite head-to-head with two cheap massage guns

Andrew Williams

Exercise is perhaps the best way to regulate your mood at the moment, and a massage gun can speed up your muscles’ recovery.

The result? You can work out more often, without spending 40 minutes trying to stretch in your tiny studio flat to get a similar effect.

Last month I reviewed the Therabody Theragun Elite. It is one of the best massage guns around.

However, it’s expensive at $399. I have used it alongside two cheap massage guns for the last few weeks to see what you lose when you spend around $49-100 instead.

The contenders


The two cheap massage guns were bought from Amazon and eBay, for this piece. Both were sourced in the UK, but you can find near-identical ones just about anywhere.

Most massage guns sold online are based around a few familiar designs, customised with a brand’s logo. Usually a brand you’ve never heard of before.

You have to buy from a company like Therabody or Hyperice to get a massage gun not intended to be shipped out in dozens of different forms, attached to a stack of different names.

The basic Rybozen massager doesn't even have a battery

Andrew Williams

This test’s cheapest massage gun was sold under the Rybozen brand, but there’s no mention of that name on the box or the case. It is one of the simplest massage guns money can buy, and even lacks a battery.

It cost just £17.45 (~$22) from Amazon Marketplace, but would usually sell for around $49.99.

The one-step-up model is a clone of the Hyperice Hypervolt. It is one of the most commonly rebranded Chinese designs, and UK-based Hirix slapped its branding on this model.

It was purchased for around £40 (~$50), but is listed at £299 on the Hirix website. Let’s hope no-one actually paid that much because that’s the cost of the real Hyperice Hypervolt. And, make no mistake, this is a cheap copy of one.

This Hirix massage gun is based on the Hyperice Hypervolt

Andrew Williams

The Therabody Thergun Elite is our “legit” massage gun.

It costs $399 and sits fairly high up Therabody’s line-up of massagers, below the Thergun Pro and above the Mini and Prime models.

The Therbody Elite has a triangular grip

Andrew Williams
Build Quality and Design


“Is it going to fall apart?”

That’s the first worry when buying cheap copies of popular kinds of electronics.

The good news is none of these massagers instantly feels poorly-made. The two cheap guns are still made of tough, thick plastic, have rubberised handles and do not have scarily wide seams.

Guess what? It’s not too hard to make a fairly tough gadget when it is largely made up of a few pieces of moulded plastic.

The three massage guns on test

Andrew Williams

You do have to accept no-brand, low cost devices like these will have very little quality control compared to a Therabody massager, but there is still a form of useful evolution going on here.

There have already been several generations of these budget massage guns, with important changes to elements like the motors and batteries inside. And the companies selling them will always want to limit returns, particularly if they sell through Amazon’s distribution network.

There are still clear differences between the cheap pair and the Theragun Elite, though.

The mid-tier Hirix massage gun emits a buzzing-like noise at higher power settings, as if the vibration has hit on the resonant frequency of one of the parts inside.

It has an LCD screen, and the last digit of the display visibly wobbles more than the rest, again, at higher power settings.

Each cheaper massager has its own little build quality issues

Andrew Williams

These issues give you far less confidence that a massage gun will last long-term. That said, the most point of failure for these devices is the battery, that at some point it just stops holding charge.

The cheapest Rybozen massager actually seems sturdie. Its simpler design offers fewer parts to go wrong. However, as there is no battery the handle (where the battery usually lives) feels relatively hollow, and the adapter plugs into the back.

This leaves the power port exposed, not handy for use around sweaty people. And the power cable has a habit of falling out when you try to use the gun on your shoulder blades.

The Rybozen is also, of course, useless away from a power socket. Versions with a battery are sold online.

The Theragun Elite has none of the same build worries. There are no phantom buzzing sounds and the design is more flexible as it has a multi-angle handle.

How do they feel?


There’s no surprise here. The Theragun Elite feels better than either of the two cheaper models, proving more-or-less instantly you don’t get exactly the same experience for much less cash.

But why? That’s the more interesting part.

Two factors elevate the pricey massage gun, amplitude and head density. Amplitude is perhaps the most important.

It tells you the range of motion of the head. Greater motion overs a deeper-feeling massage. You can improve this a bit in the cheaper one by pushing harder, but it’s not quite the same effect.

The Therabody Theragun Elite also has much greater variation in the density, or hardness, of its attachments. They range from fairly soft to dense foam tips with only a little give.

Here’s how the softest Therabody and softest Hirix attachments compare:

There's a much greater variation in attachment hardness in the higher-price Theragun

Andrew Williams

All of the cheaper massager guns tips are much harder, with much less variation. The softer a tip is, the less intensely it pushes into a specific area, which is why the smaller attachments are the harder ones.

However, even in direct comparison, the middle-price Hirix massager gives a perfectly good massage.

The cheapest Rybozen massager seems disappointingly shallow next to the other two, and ends up feeling relatively weak at comparable speeds. That said, I used this gun for several weeks before the others arrived, and still found it a useful tool for recovery.

Its range of motion is still far greater than a regular massager not designed for sports use.

Features


The feature set of a massage gun does not tell you much about how good it is, or how much it costs.

For example, the Theragun Elite has the fewest speed presets, just five. The cheapest massager has six and the mid-tier one has 20.

You’re likely to find two or three settings you like the most, so the extra choice means little in the end.

However, I do like that the power floor of the cheaper massage guns is much lower.

The Theragun Elite does not have a “relaxed” setting, as its base 1750rpm mode is still energetic.

For a longer, chilled-out massage of your legs while watching the TV, sometimes the low-rent massage guns are a better fit.

That said, two of the three people I tried these massagers on preferred the Theragun instantly. I think this may be in part down to the very soft default general purpose head. It feels great, and is the attachement I use most of the time.

The entry-level Rybozen gun uses a simple set of LEDs to show the mode used, the middle contender a large LCD screen and the Theragun Elite a small OLED. But none of this matters.

The Theragun Elite has an OLED screen on the back

Andrew Williams

There’s no real benefit to a display. You just need something to show the level you’re at clearly. LEDs do this just as well as a screen.

Similarly, the value-add features of the Theragun Elite do not seem essential.

There’s a Therabody app that links up to the gun over Bluetooth. It offers fine grain control over the rpm setting and lets you see whether the amount of pressure applied is correct, and logs your recovery sessions.

However, the best use for this app is to tell how hard you should be pressing when you first use the gun.

You can’t save presets to the device, and most of us are interested in logging our exercise sessions, not our recovery ones.

The mid-price massager from Hirix has touch sensitive controls on the back

Andrew Williams
Noise


Noise is one of the main areas of improvement for massage guns over the last two years. Some early models sounded much like power tools, because that’s more or less what they were.

Therabody has made huge improvements to noise levels in the last couple of generations. Much of this comes from changes to the motors inside, which companies like Therabody and Hyperice most likely do not design from the ground up.

Their job is trickier, though, as fully branded massage guns tend to have more powerful motors than the cheap crowd. Here’s how their noise levels compare:

Theragun (max to min power):

• 70dB
• 68.5dB
• 67dB
• 64dB
• 63.8dB

Hirix (power settings 20, 15, 10, 5, 1):

• 65.6dB
• 62.6dB
• 63dB
• 61.5dB
• 63dB

Rybozen (max to min power)

• 70.1dB
• 68dB
• 67.5dB
• 67dB
• 66dB
• 64dB

What can we take from these figures? While they motor tones are quite different, the noise levels of the cheapest massager are very similar to the Theragun’s. And the Hypervolt clone from Hirix is actually the quietest.

All three are comfortably quiet enough to use while watching the TV, as long as you’re not sat next to someone who will get annoyed by the buzz.

Stall force


The other key aspect of a massage gun is stall force. This tell you the amount of pressure that can be applied before the motor stalls. Doing so regularly increases the risk of motor burn-out.

This is one of the primary ways massage guns fail, next to the lithium battery failing to hold charge. In these three models at least, I have not found stall force limiations an issue.

I had to press the head against the floor to get them to stall. And all three did. The Hirix was the easiest to make stall, the Theragun the hardest. But all three require pressure I can’t imagine using in any muscle-massaging scenario.

The takeaway


The parts that matter most in a massage gun are not the things you’ll see most clearly on a product page.

Lots of speed settings aren’t essential, a fancy screen adds little and no-one really needs an app for one of these recovery tools. The tested cheap massagers even get most of the build quality basics right.

There are no wide seams, no sense they might fall apart if you drop them. They use the right tough plastics, have rubber grips in the right places.

There are clear and meaningful differences between the cheap and expensive models, though.

The Theragun is made with much greater attention to detail, with no buzzing noises or signs of unwanted movement in the internal components at higher power settings. As such, it’s much more likely to work as it should for longer.

And I’d trust Therabody’s warranty over a company that may not even exist by the time you try to make a claim when something fails after six months.

The quality of massage is superior too, with a longer-throw head and attachments that differ in density, not just shape. Those wanting to try out a massage gun could do worse than try similar to the 20-speed model tested here, though.

It offers a good recovery boost, has all the right features. And, if you shop around enough, is available at a bargain price. I was also reasonably happy with what is perhaps the most basic massager on the the market too, until I tried the other two.

Let’s not lose track of the main aim here: to increase bloodflow in certain areas and work out a few knots, which you don’t need space age tech for.