Exposing an Even Bigger Lie of the Red Light Therapy Industry

Selecting your ideal red light therapy panel set up is a tough choice, and we do get the question; If the LTE 45w panels work, why do you sell anything else? Another thing we hear a lot is how our competitors love to claim they have the most powerful and therefore the best products. At TLA, we try to speak favourably of our competitors, and thus will not be mentioning any of them in this blog. I will however touch on a few hit marketing campaigns out there as I want to clear the air and dispel some myths that are quickly turning into ‘facts’. Frankly, as the director of an LED light company, I’m a little disappointed in what I’ve been seeing around the industry and I have felt some companies are crossing lines in terms of the claims they make.

A perfect example of this are our LTE 45w models.

The LTE 45w was this writers’ original love. For reference, at a distance of 1 mm, our 45w panel puts out just 60mw/cm2 of light. For this blog, I wanted to use a couple of real life examples and explain why a machine having to perform at 100 joules (or more) at precisely the point the light reaches the skin is more marketing noise than anything based on fact.

TLA LTE II 45w Red 660/630 & infrared 850/830 LED light panel.

So where did it all begin?

A lot of suppliers earlier on, wanted to boost sales by claiming their devices were the most powerful; most of them boasted they had the highest power machines on the market. It would seem some of these suppliers don’t quite have their head around light and light dispersion, and thus the industry has become tainted by opinions and not facts based on science or mathematics. Some companies have taken this so far that they are even using different types of light meters that are not fit for purpose, but do show favourable readings. (Especially when comparing their products to others…). It all sounds a little fishy if I’m being polite, and like downright BS if I’m being honest.

Another example we’ve seen is yet another competitor claiming their panels are the most powerful on the market (most companies claim this, to be fair). This competitor in particular uses bulbs with 90⁰ angles on their panels. If you have a read of this blog (30⁰ & 60⁰  lense differences explained ) you will probably form the opinion that this is literally an impossibility, and that a 90⁰ lens angle could never concentrate or disperse a beam of light more effectively than a 30⁰ lens angle for instance.

Without getting too technical, essentially you would have to make a machine with 90⁰ bulbs 6x more powerful than one with 30⁰ bulbs to achieve this feat. The reality is, the machines’ rated wattage and physical size do not allow for this, and thus this competitor may well be mistaken in thinking their machines are the most powerful.

pro 300w infrared Light therapy panel 

But how important is the power of the machines anyway?

Put simply, we have sold 1000’s of 45w panels (one of the least powerful machines on the market) and still haven’t got a bad review. SO, if you need 100mw/cm2 of power to gain any benefit from a red light therapy panel, why are so many of our customers not only returning, but also recommending our products to friends and family members? (Especially our LTE 45w panel).

The answer of course is you do not need a certain amount of power to gain a result using these panels. The whole idea of red and NIR light panels is to correct a deficiency, caused by human beings living indoors and not receiving the proper amounts of NIR and red light.

You are never going to be able to secure a natural source of red and infrared light at a constant 100 joules for 10-20 mins twice a day. In fact, for those of us on the East Coast of Australia, there hasn’t been a lot of sunny weather these last few weeks. So because the sun wasn’t shining perfectly, the plants all stopped photosynthesis and photo-biomodulation also stopped in all humans because the red light therapy companies said so, right? Of course not, the reality is that these processes continued on absolutely unaffected by a few marketing campaigns.

I’ll put it another way, if someone was vitamin C deficient, it stands to reason they may need 2 oranges worth of Vitamin C (example). Thus, would giving that person only half of one orange be useless?

I think the point is made.

To wrap this Blog up, I’d like to spell out some key differences and features the 45w panel lacks, as opposed to its more expensive counterparts in our LTE Pro, Pro and Black ranges. These features make the LTE 45w cheaper to produce, and cheaper to sell; but they do not make the product useless by any means. In general, we don’t believe there are any bad red light therapy devices, just some really inaccurate and inappropriate marketing techniques.

Here are the Key differences between non powerful 45w Panels and higher power panels we sell.

(And perhaps some more legitimate reasons to get a larger red light therapy panel should you need to)

Besides the obvious differences being price, physical size, appearance and warranty periods; there are some other major considerations:

45W LED Light Panel

Australia’s best infrared red light therapy device’s the TLA Pro 1000

Session times

This is the main thing you will notice and want to consider when purchasing a 45w panel or a larger panel. We recommend a maximum of 5-10 mins per area per 6 hour period when using any of our high power devices. I would say from a lot of personal experience and customer feedback, that you can be a bit more liberal with the 45w panels. Because the power is weaker, you may be able to get quite close to the panels and use them for up to 20 mins per area per 6 hour period.

One thing to consider here is longevity. Personally, I want to use a red light therapy panel daily, so I want something with a big warranty and the ability to be used over and over without becoming hot. I also want something that gets the job done quickly, so for me (and you if this is you) I would go with a bigger, more powerful panel. If you have all the time in the world, and perhaps some budgetary constraints, the 45w panel could be perfect for you. The difference I would liken to a Toyota Camry (45w) vs a Mercedes Kompressor (1000pro model) They are both vehicles, and both should get you the desired result eventually. If time is of the essence and you want to get results fast and have all the power you need plus more, you should probably get a larger panel.

Secondary lenses (bulbs)

In most of our products, we use 5w Diodes with large 60⁰ secondary glass lenses (or bulbs). The 45w panels contain no bulbs of any type and instead, the LED diodes use the contour of the outer shell to shape and disperse the light. After time, this will prove a factor in the machines’ total life expectancy, as covering the diode with a bulb will surely decrease the likelihood of damage occurring or dust building up.

As mentioned in our last blog (30⁰ & 60⁰  lense differences explained) the secondary glass lenses (or bulbs) play a key role in dispersing the light given off by the diodes, most evident when considering how far the light travels at a usable power range. We touch on the differences between 30⁰ lenses and 60⁰ lenses in this blog also – if you haven’t checked it out yet definitely do!

Diode Size

For those that are a little less technical, LED is actually an acronym for ‘Light Emitting Diode’. Thus the size and power of the diodes used in each machine hugely varies the machines functionality. The size of the diodes in the 45w model are much smaller than those used in our other models.

The TLA Pro 300w panel for example is 300w and has 60 LED diodes (300w/60) = 5w/ diode.

Our 45w panel uses 225 LED diodes to make up a 45w total power, 45w/225= 0.2w /diode.

300w 2021 Edition

Drivers

So that our larger Panels can be set to use NIR and RED lights independently, each larger panel contains 2 drivers. Drivers are relatively expensive and heavy, so the 45w uses only one simple singular driver for all diodes, reducing its build and material cost, and thus the final price point.

Fans

The 45w panel has no cooling fans meaning that it shouldn’t be left on for longer than 20 mins at a time. All other models contain fans, and can thus be run perpetually, session after session, without becoming hot.

Other Materials

Our 45w panels are made from a plastic acetate. While this makes them incredibly durable, we use aluminium in our larger products for several reasons. Having an aluminium shell is optimal for our Home and Pro models as aluminium disperses heat well, and in general looks and feels of a higher quality than plastic or acetate. This is important as we offer large warranties on our larger models, so we want them to be as hardy as we can make them. We also wouldn’t want our larger models becoming hot during usage. There are much bigger parts working a lot harder in these larger machines, thus fans and aluminium are required to keep all the parts of the machine working at an optimal temperature.

60W Travel Kit

I hope this blog has helped broaden the readers’ knowledge of our products and some claims made by our competitors. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t believe there are any bad red light therapy products; some are higher quality, and some perform tasks more efficiently or are built to be more powerful.

This is not the be all and end all of the products, and in conclusion I would suggest most marketing and smear campaigns out there are designed to make sales and not increase the customers product knowledge. As always, we invite your questions and stand behind the integrity of our own claims, not others.

Thanks for reading
Jonathon
Founding Director TLA