Sunlighten VS Clearlight

Here we are several years later, and customers are still asking about Sunlighten compared to Clearlight saunas. Which is better, is what everyone wants to know.

Not so fast. The real answer is, it depends on what’s most important to you in a sauna. Sunlighten is known for amazing cabinet quality, however their EMF levels are pretty high in some models. Clearlight on the other hand, has great low EMF sauna models, but sometimes the full spectrum Sanctuary’s can draw a bit too much heat away from the user.

So what do you buy if you’re looking for the best fit for your needs?

Well let’s compare: if you want a fancy sauna, complete with a tablet, user control modes that turn on and off the infrared in cycles, good build quality, and don’t care about EMF at all, and price is no object, buy the Sunlighten.

If you’re looking for a low EMF low VOC full spectrum sauna option, and still like an aesthetically pleasing cabin design, especially if you’re Closter phobic or anything of that nature, buy the Clearlight. With it’s all glass front, it’s the most open feeling sauna on the market. It may not preheat as fast as something like a Radiant Health sauna, but for folks in need of that open feel, it’s a good fit.

Pros & Cons Of Each Brand

Despite having updated EMF testing for Sunlighten saunas produced by Sunlighten themselves, they’re still not mitigating electric fields. The EMF testing procedure shows you low magnetic fields in the video, but the third party EMF testing report only shows a single heater tested on a bench in a lab for electric fields. Clearlight has far lower EMF overall than a Sunlighten.

Is this detrimental and should this stop you from buying one? No, not if that’s not important to you. If you’re family or children are going to use the sauna for a heavy metal detox protocol or something similar, I’d reconsider and be a little more stringent if it were my family personally.

That’s not to say Clearlight is absolutely perfect either! They’re very very could when it comes to EMF mitigation, almost as good as Radiant Health Saunas. Good enough to where I don’t have any concern at all.

However, you will be a bit duped by the full spectrum heaters on the back of the front glass. While they are scorching hot, and do add heat to the sauna, I wouldn’t rely on them for a primary source.

Far Infrared Or Full Spectrum

Both saunas fall short for full on red light therapy. The Sunlighten places an LED array behind the grill in M Pulse models, and while that may look cool when you run the custom mode to enable it, the grill is blocking a good portion of the light. You would get far more PBMT therapy from a separate body panel than you would from this sauna.

Same with the Clearlight Sanctuary, the full spectrum heaters on the back of the glass in front, while might be screaming hot, are not delivering much near infrared to the body as you would think. In fact, in this case as well, you’d get much more light therapy from a separate red light body panel like a Gemba Red than you will from either one of these saunas.

The only thing that does give you this inside the sauna, is the red light therapy addon in Clearlight Sanctuary models. I would only add this on larger 20 amp models, where there is enough power to run these accessories, so it’s not robbing the power from the far infrared portion of the sauna. (you can’t just add 300 watts of something to a static power supply, and expect it to make extra power out of thin air. Exactly, it pulls if from the far infrared allocation… not good.)

The Sunlighten Signature and Clearlight Premier saunas are not full spectrum saunas. A sales associate may say they have overhead chromotherapy lighting, and you can get some red light from these, but do not confuse this with real red light therapy. The output is way too low to be in the therapeutic range for PBMT.

I believe you can however add the red light tower to the Clearlight Premier models now.

What To Buy?

It depends on your application really, and what your needs are. Do you have 240v available at your install location? Is cost or having an electrician modify your panel for a specific sauna an issue or not a problem? Will kids of anyone that’s health compromised be using the sauna?

These are all basic key ingredients that go into choosing the best sauna for you. Check out some YouTube videos or book a call with Matt if you need to run through all the options before spending a good chunk of change.