The included travel case means it can be your new gym buddy too, making it easy to pummel the pain away post-session. The short handle does makes it a bit awkward to reach the lower back, and it wasn’t the quietest device, but overall, this is a nifty little machine to have in your gym bag. MuscleGun pulled out all the stops with this small yet mighty offering.
The 16mm stroke rate is arguably better suited to the heavily-muscled, too. The other heads are genuinely useful, although neck and shoulders aside I’ve defaulted renpho massage to the ball and flat heads. There has been no need to employ massage oil, and the R3 has been great for busting lactic acid and general fatigue.
It offers an excellent five hours of battery life and the six massage heads cover all bases for a versatile massaging session. For a mini massage gun that’s lightweight and compact enough to take anywhere, look to this surprisingly powerful model that can reach a high speed. It’s small enough to attend to all leg muscles, making it our top pick for runners. Coming in just behind its older brother, the MuscleGun Carbon, it was hard to find fault with this pocket-friendly massager. Not only does it pack a lot of power for such a small machine, but it’s also relatively quiet, comfortable to hold and is able to glide seamlessly over sore muscles without dragging. Weighing in at just over 500g, it’s also a good option for keeping in your gym bag.
It comes with six heads to provide the perfect size and shape to target soreness and strain in everything from your back and shoulders to your palms and spine. We also like that it has a digital display, making it easy to access different speeds and settings. The battery lasts renpho foot massager about two and a half hours, which should get you through several sessions before needing to recharge. Some massage guns can sound like a jackhammer, but thanks to its brushless, high-torque motor, the Mebak Deep Tissue Handheld is much quieter than most others in its category.
The Theragun Elite is a souped-up, more expensive version of the Theragun Prime (one of our picks). Compared with the Prime, it has five attachments instead of four, a higher stall force (40 pounds versus 30 pounds), and an OLED display (instead of LED lights). Those upgrades might be valuable to some people, but we found the overall experience of the Elite and the Prime to be similar, and we concluded that most people would be satisfied with the Prime. We plan to test the second-generation Theragun Mini, Therabody’s smallest massage gun, which has a 12 mm amplitude and operates at three speeds (1750, 2100, 2400 PPMs). We’ll also test the sub-$100 Sharper Image Power Percussion Deep Tissue Massager, which is heavier than our picks but highly reviewed by customers. The Mebak 3, one of the quietest massage guns we tried, comes with seven attachments (the most of our picks) and has a touchscreen display.