Summer has a way of slowly dismantling every routine we spent the first half of the year building.
One late dinner becomes four. Bedtime moves back an hour. The workout schedule gets increasingly theoretical. We live out of suitcases, eat at strange times, spend entire weekends in the sun, and tell ourselves we’ll get back to normal after Labor Day.
Well. Here we are.
There’s something about September that makes getting our act together sound good again. Not in a January “new personality, new life” kind of way. More like: we would very much enjoy sleeping properly, moving our bodies regularly, and feeling vaguely centered again.
Which brings us back to the wellness tech we’ve tested over the years and, importantly, actually kept using. We’ve spent enough time with BON CHARGE devices to know which ones have earned a permanent place in our routines, from the Red Light Therapy Blanket we named our best wellness tech investment of 2025 to the PEMF mat that surprised us with how quickly it could quiet the noise when our brains have approximately 37 tabs open.
No full life overhaul required. We’re just trying to feel like ourselves again.
When Your Body Is Still Catching Up
Sometimes vacation ends before your body gets the memo. After the flights, unfamiliar mattresses, long days, workouts squeezed in wherever they fit and a general lack of anything resembling consistency, this is usually the point when we start craving recovery tools that ask very little from us.
The Red Light Therapy Blanket
In 2025, we named the BON CHARGE Red Light Therapy Blanket our best wellness tech investment of the year. A year later, it’s still one of the wellness devices we use most.
There are plenty of wellness devices that are exciting for exactly two weeks before being banished to a closet. This wasn’t one of them. When we first tested it, it quickly worked its way into our nighttime routine and stayed there. Read our full Red Light Therapy Blanket review
The setup is essentially two full-size red light mats zipped together, so instead of standing in front of a panel, you get 660nm red light and 850nm near-infrared light from both sides while lying down. It has 2,520 LEDs, adjustable intensity, pulsed settings, and it can also unzip into two separate mats when you want a more flexible setup.
But the real reason we love it is much simpler. Zip yourself in, lie there for 20 minutes and do nothing. It’s easy enough to keep up with, which is probably why it became part of our nightly routine so quickly. And yes, it’s back in heavy rotation.
If there’s one device on this list we can confidently say has made it past the novelty phase, it’s this one.
The Infrared PEMF Mat Max
If the blanket is our “please let me lie here and recover” device, the Infrared PEMF Mat Max is what we reach for when our whole system feels overstimulated.
We tested this one previously because the spec sheet is kind of insane: PEMF, far-infrared heat, 660nm red light, 850nm near-infrared light, plus layers of crystals and semi-precious gemstones, all built into one full-body mat. Read our original PEMF Mat Max test
And yes, the crystals are actually in there. BON CHARGE builds the Infrared PEMF Mat Max with a crystal and semi-precious gemstone layer underneath the surface, alongside its infrared heating system and PEMF technology. The full-size mat is nearly 75 inches long and offers adjustable PEMF frequencies from 1 to 30Hz, far-infrared heat up to 176°F, and separate red and near-infrared light LEDs.
What surprised us when we tested it, though, was how much we liked it for the brain rather than just the body.
BON CHARGE maps different frequency ranges to different uses. Its 9 to 12Hz alpha range is positioned around calm and creativity, while 8Hz is associated with grounding and Schumann resonance. When we tested it previously, the alpha setting ended up being our favorite. Twenty minutes on the mat had a way of quieting the mental noise enough that we actually wanted to write, think, make something, or just sit there without reaching for our phone.
After a summer full of plans, travel, people, noise and constant input, lying flat on a heated mat and letting your brain settle for a minute feels pretty incredible.
If you’re not ready to commit to the full mat, BON CHARGE also makes the Mini, Demi, and Infrared PEMF Wrap. The Wrap is smaller and designed for more targeted areas, while the Mini works well for seated use and the Demi gives you more coverage without taking up as much space.
For us, though, the Max is still the one we keep coming back to when we want the full experience.
If Your Sleep Schedule Has Gone Completely Rogue
Summer bedtime has very loose boundaries. Maybe you were traveling. Maybe dinner kept starting at 9:30 p.m.. Maybe you watched one episode in bed that mysteriously became four. Whatever happened, your alarm is back and suddenly “going to sleep whenever” has consequences again.
Before we start throwing supplements at the situation, we go back to something much more basic: light.
We previously spent three days intentionally resetting our circadian rhythm and realized how much the lighting inside our home was working against us. Read our 3-day circadian rhythm reset
The practical takeaway stuck: your home should not look like a CVS at 10 p.m.
During the day, BON CHARGE’s Full Spectrum Light Bulbs make an easy swap into lamps you already own. They have three settings designed to move from brighter daytime light toward warmer evening light without requiring another app, hub or complicated smart-home situation.
Then, at night, we want the lighting low and warm.
The Blue Light Blocking Lamp became one of those simple changes we liked immediately. Keep one on the desk if work tends to bleed into the evening, then move it, or add another, to the bedside. It cycles through different brightness levels and uses red light at night rather than blasting you with the kind of bright overhead light that tells your brain the day is still happening.
And if you’re the person who wakes at 2 a.m., flips on the bathroom light and is suddenly mentally drafting tomorrow’s emails, the little Motion Sensor Night Lights deserve an honorable mention too. Sometimes your sleep routine doesn’t need another seven-step ritual. Your house just needs to learn what time it is.
If Summer Did a Number on Your Skin
Yes, we know. Everyone and their mother owns a red light mask now. But what’s interesting isn’t how quickly they became ubiquitous. It’s that they’re still here.
Wellness gadgets come and go at an almost impressive pace, yet red light has managed to stick around and earn a permanent spot in a lot of our routines.
We’ve tested BON CHARGE’s Red Light Face Mask more than once, including an editor who used it consistently for a full year and had her injector ask what she’d been doing differently. Read what happened after a year with the Red Light Face Mask
That kind of unsolicited feedback is hard to ignore.
The flexible mask uses 630nm red and 850nm near-infrared wavelengths, and because a session takes around 10 minutes, it fits easily into the part of the evening when we’re lying in bed pretending we’re about to put our phone down anyway.
After months of extra sun, travel, sunscreen, sweat and skincare routines that became increasingly optimistic suggestions rather than actual routines, September is exactly when ours comes back out. If you somehow made it this far without buying a red light mask, this is still the one we keep reaching for.
And Yes, Summer Happened to Our Hair Too
Our skin was not the only thing traveling this summer.
Our hair came on every flight, sat through every long day in the sun, got dipped in pools and oceans, dealt with different water in different cities, and occasionally spent several days surviving on dry shampoo and good intentions.
By September, it has been through enough.
Which is why the BON CHARGE Red Light Cap makes more sense right now than it did sitting pristine in a box in May.
We tested the Cap as part of a larger experiment with science-backed approaches to hair loss and were pleasantly surprised by one extremely important feature: you’ll actually wear it. Read our test of four science-backed approaches to hair loss
It uses 650nm red LED light directed toward the scalp, but instead of looking like a medical helmet, it looks remarkably close to a normal black baseball cap. Sessions are just 10 minutes, it’s cordless, and you can walk around the house, make coffee, answer emails or head out on a quick errand without announcing to everyone around you that you are currently doing a hair treatment.
That usability matters because hair is the ultimate long game. Anything designed to support it has to be something you’ll actually use consistently.
The One That Makes Your Home Look Like It Has a Wellness Wing
Then there’s the Infrared PEMF Sauna Dome. This is the one people are going to ask about.
It’s big, it’s futuristic, and it immediately makes a home gym feel a lot more interesting. You don’t exactly tuck this one into a corner and forget it’s there.
Underneath the look, though, is a pretty serious setup. The Dome combines far-infrared heat, PEMF, red light and near-infrared light in one full-body system. The dome itself can reach 194°F, the mat underneath reaches up to 176°F, PEMF settings run from 1 to 30Hz, and the light setup combines 660nm red with 850nm near-infrared. It also incorporates crystals and semi-precious gemstones into the mat.
Everything can be adjusted depending on the kind of session you want, which makes it a pretty compelling setup for a home gym or recovery space.
It also stores more easily than it looks. The dome sections nest together when you’re not using it, so while it’s definitely a substantial piece of equipment, it doesn’t require the same kind of permanent setup as a traditional sauna.
We’ve called it the ultimate splurge before, and that still feels accurate. See where the Sauna Dome landed in our previous BON CHARGE wellness-tech stack
Maybe September Is the New January
January gets all the credit for reinvention, but September might actually be better.
Summer winds down, work picks up, and after a few months of loose schedules, routine starts sounding kind of good again.
Not a total life overhaul. Just getting back to the things that make us feel better. And if something here ends up making its way into your own reset, TCM readers can use code TCM15 for 15% off BON CHARGE. We don’t need a new personality for September; feeling like ourselves again would be plenty.
