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If you’re investing in an electric cryochamber, congrats – you’ve already made a smart choice. No liquid nitrogen to handle, no complex safety protocols, just plug it in and you’re ready to go.
But there’s one question that confuses many new buyers: what temperature is actually right? One manufacturer advertises -110°C, another says -85°C, and yet another claims -40°C is perfectly sufficient. So which number truly matters for your business?
Let’s break it down.
Understanding chamber design
Electric cryotherapy machines generally come in two main configurations:
- Two-room chambers with a prechamber typically advertise lower working temperatures, down to -110°C. The prechamber functions as an airlock, helping maintain stable super-cooled air inside the main chamber when clients enter and exit.
- Single-room chambers usually max out at -80°C to -85°C, though some operate at around -40°C. With this design, every time you open the door, cold air escapes, which means you’ll face wait times between sessions as the unit cools back down. Depending on the model’s power, the breaks may be anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. A simple rule of thumb for this design – the longer the pre-cooling time, the longer the recovery breaks between sessions.
Don’t believe everything you see
The temperature displayed on a cryochamber screen is often not the actual air temperature inside the chamber. In most cases, it shows the temperature of the cooling medium, not the client environment.
Only a few manufacturers measure and display the real temperature at the shoulder height near the door, which is the warmest point in the chamber and the most accurate indicator of what the client actually experiences.
👉 Read more on chamber temperatures here.
What really matters: skin temperature drop
Here’s the key takeaway: cryotherapy works by rapidly cooling the skin, not by showing lowest numbers on the screen.
An effective session should drop the skin temperature from its normal ~32°C to 11-18°C within 3 minutes. So whether your chamber screen says –110°C or –40°C, the real question is: does it achieve this skin temperature drop efficiently and comfortably in 3 minutes? If yes, then your clients are receiving proper therapeutic results.
Beware of marketing tricks
Not all temperature displays tell the whole truth. Here are some simple ways to separate marketing hype from real performance.
Electronics don’t lie. If you see LED lights or displays working inside the chamber, the actual temperature is above –40°C. Those components simply cannot function at lower temperatures.
Session length gives clues. If the manufacturer allows sessions up to 5 minutes, it’s another sign the real chamber temperature is well above –40°C — otherwise it would be unsafe.
One more tip: windchill matters. Electric cryotherapy machines have to rely on strong airflow to feel colder. Check where the blowers are directed. If they blast directly at the upper body, which is almost inevitable in smaller chambers, your clients may find sessions uncomfortable or even experience mild muscle pain after sessions.
The session turnover factor
When running a cryotherapy business, efficiency between clients is just as important as the cold itself.
Electric cryo chambers generally take longer to recover between sessions than nitrogen-based systems. That’s why it’s essential to ask the manufacturer about required break times between clients. Typically, the longer the cooling time, the longer the breaks between the sessions, as electric chambers is not powerful enough to recover quickly.
To give you an example, Cryomed’s single-room chamber with a real -40°C inside cools down in 30 minutes and needs 5-minute breaks between sessions. Skip those breaks, and you may need to extend session time to 4 minutes, something only athletic clients can tolerate comfortably.
Cryomed’s -80°C single-room cryotherapy machines offer more flexibility. Even if the unit hasn’t fully recovered between sessions, there’s still enough cooling power to deliver effective 3-minute treatments consistently.
In contrast, other brands can require 1.5 to 4 hours of cooling time, depending on whether they use a single-room or two-room configuration. If you expect heavy client flow, a two-room chamber with a prechamber ensures faster temperature recovery between sessions compared to most single-room units. The downside? Larger systems may require 3-4 hours of pre-cooling each morning before the first session, while single-room models typically cool down much faster.
Make a smart choice for your business
Don’t fall into the trap of chasing the lowest temperature on a spec sheet. Ask questions to understand the offer better. Ideally, try the chamber you plan to buy to get personal experience and compare it to competition.
The best cryochamber is the one that consistently delivers effective treatments while keeping your schedule flowing and your clients coming back. Read more about the choice between different electric cryochamber models here.
