How we review

We have not physically tested the cold plunges, saunas or heaters on this site. We own none of them. Anyone telling you otherwise about their own site is making a claim you cannot check. We would rather make claims you can.

What we actually do

1. Compile every published specification.We read the manufacturer’s own listing for every product and record what it publishes. Each product card links to that source with the date we read it.
2. Record what is missing, visibly. Where a manufacturer does not publish a spec, the table says “Not published.” It never says a number we inferred. A blank cell is a finding about the manufacturer, and in this category there are a lot of them.
3. Do the arithmetic nobody else does. Manufacturers publish kilowatts and stop. We compute the current draw and the breaker the National Electrical Code requires, cite the code sections, and print every step.
4. Compute cost to run from rated power, at a stated electricity rate you can change, with the duty-cycle assumption written on the page rather than buried in it.
5. Take prices from the API, dated. Never typed in, never remembered, never left to rot.
6. Cite everything. Every factual page ends with its sources and the dates they were read.

What we do not do — stated plainly

• We do not test.No units, no lab, no stopwatch, no “in our testing.”
• We do not score out of ten. A score implies a measurement. We rank and we argue in prose.
• We do not use first-party product photos, because we have none. Product images come from Amazon and are labeled as supplied.
• We do not publish testimonials.We have no customers — we are a publisher, not a retailer. So there is no reviews section, rather than an invented one.
• We do not sell placement or take free product. Some publishers in this category disclose that they do both. We do neither.
• We do not publish wire gauge or a confident GFCI verdict. Those depend on your specific installation, and a safety claim we cannot verify to primary code text is one we have no business making.

Why this is a better deal than a testing claim

The standard move in this category is to lead with a countable: tested more than 20 cold plunge tubs, tested 30 saunas. It is an effective claim precisely because it is unfalsifiable from where you are sitting. You cannot audit someone else’s garage.

It is also frequently thinner than it sounds. One major publisher brands itself “Vetted” while its own disclosures indicate it tested 2 of 5 plunges and 1 of 8 saunas in its own roundups. That gap between the badge and the footnote is the thing we are attacking.

Everything on this site is checkable from your chair. Click the source link on any spec. Redo any calculation on your phone. Compare any price to Amazon right now. We think that is worth more than a number of units we could claim to have sat in.

What we would need to start testing

Units, and the money to buy them. If Ice & Cedar earns enough to acquire equipment, we will test it and say so — and we will publish the protocol before the results, so the method can be criticised independently of the conclusions. Until then, this page describes exactly what you are getting.

Corrections

We get things wrong. When we do, we fix it and say that we did, with the date — we do not quietly edit and move on. If you find an error in our arithmetic, our specs or our sourcing, tell us. The full policy is in our editorial policy.