I buy the devices I test unless the article says otherwise. Some links and discount codes on this site are paid links: if you buy through one, I earn a commission. It never changes a score or a verdict.
I tested the Therabody TheraFace Mask over 8 weeks and 40 sessions, then I bought the TheraFace Mask Glo to put the two LED masks side by side. The Glo hasn’t been through my full protocol, so it carries no score here, but I’ve had both arrays in front of me and both shells on my face, and I can already tell you the differences…
So here’s what 144 extra LEDs and $270 actually buy you, with my recommendations of which one to pick.
| TheraFace Mask | TheraFace Mask Glo | |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | June 2023 | October 2025 |
| Price on therabody.com | $649.99 | $379.99 |
| LEDs published | 648 | 504 |
| Light points | 216 | 168 |
| Wavelengths | 633, 830 and 415 nm | 633, 830 and 415 nm |
| Published power density, red | 73 mW/cm² | 70.4 mW/cm² |
| Preset session | 9 minutes, 3 per color | 12 minutes, 4 per color |
| Light energy per preset session | 618.16 J | 618.16 J |
| Middle of the face | No LEDs | LEDs on the nose, lips and chin |
| Vibration | 17 motors, 8 of them around the eyes | 2 motors in the headstrap |
| Battery | 120 minutes of light, 60 with vibration | Up to 60 minutes |
| FDA file | K230293 | None under its name |
| Brand study | 31 participants, 12 weeks | 104 participants, 12 weeks |
| Warranty | 1 year | 1 year |
| My test | 8 weeks, 40 sessions | not yet tested |
| My score | 57/100, Shelved | not yet tested |
Buy neither if you want the light close to your skin. Both Theraface LED masks are rigid shells which rest on a thick band around the eyes: this kind of LED masks leave more than 1 cm of air under the LEDs, decreasing the light output.
Buy the TheraFace Mask Glo if it has to be a Therabody. It lights the middle of the face, it delivers the same light energy per session than TheraFace Mask, and it costs $270 less.
Buy the TheraFace mask if you want to enjoy an eye-area massage and a 9-minute session instead of a 12-minute one. But that’s all you get for those $270… I turned off the vibration feature, which isn’t as pleasant as it might seem.
What I tested: the TheraFace Mask and the TheraFace Mask Glo
I bought both LED masks on therabody.com, with no affiliate link and nothing arranged with the brand. The TheraFace Mask went through my full protocol, 8 weeks at 5 evenings a week in Red + Infrared for a total of 40 sessions, and it came out at 57/100 in my TheraFace Mask review.
The Glo is also the newer of the two. It came out in October 2025, more than 2 years after the TheraFace Mask, so the cheaper LED mask is the more recent design.
Number of LEDs on the TheraFace Mask vs. TheraFace Glo
In chips, the TheraFace Mask has 648 LEDs against 504. But Therabody builds both LED masks from what its FAQ calls “tri-wick” emitters, where each light point holds 3 chips: one red, one infrared and one blue.
So the TheraFace Mask has 216 light points and the Glo has 168, and that matters because a red session only lights the red chip of each point. What your face gets from the Therabody Mask is therefore 48 more points of light than the Glo.
This figure is key to assessing the LED mask’s coverage on your face: the higher the density of light points, the better. But the distribution must be even and cover all areas of the face, which the Theraface Mask does not do…
Irradiance of TheraFace Mask vs TheraFace Glo
How much light reaches the skin, in mW/cm²? I evaluate this value, as well as how the information is presented, the conditions under which it was measured, and the total dose received in a single session. If the brand does not communicate it, I give it a severe rating.
Read my irradiance guideMost comparisons I’ve read hand the win to the TheraFace Mask at this point, because 648 is bigger than 504. But LED density does not measure the irradiance, which is the amount of light received by the skin.
Yet Therabody’s own FAQ publishes the total light each device emits, and it doesn’t support that. In red, the whole Mask puts out 946 mW and the whole Glo 709 mW.
If I divide each figure by the number of light points, I get about 4.4 mW per point on the Mask and 4.2 mW on the Glo: the LEDs are practically the same, and the TheraFace LED Mask simply has 48 more of them.
And that gap is then closed by the Mask’s preset which gives each color 3 minutes and the Glo’s gives it 4, so both deliver 170.28 J of red per session and 618.16 J over the full preset, 9 minutes on one and 12 on the other.
Therabody says it itself: “the total light dose of both TheraFace Mask models is identical”.
So, to sum up: the TheraFace Mask Glo makes up for its lack of LEDs with a longer session duration. But where I see a problem is that its LED array is more complete than the TheraFace Mask’s, which doesn’t cover the center of the face…
So if I had to choose between the two on this point, I’d go with the TheraFace Mask Glo.
TheraFace Mask vs Glo: which one covers the face better?
This is where I’d pick the Glo, even with fewer LEDs. On the TheraFace Mask the array is split into 2 halves: the cheeks and the sides of the forehead are packed with light points, and between them a strip with no LEDs runs down the middle, from between the eyebrows over the nose and lips to the chin.
The Glo has 48 fewer points, but it spreads them across the whole face, nose bridge and upper lip included.
Even the Glo’s sales page makes the point. It promises coverage “unlike many LED masks that leave wrinkle-prone areas, where signs of aging often appear first, uncovered“, and it names the eyes and the mouth. The mouth is precisely what Therabody’s $649.99 model leaves in the dark…
Personally, I want light on the middle of my face first, since the forehead lines, the folds beside the nose and the lip area are all there. So an even spread of 168 points is worth more to me than 216 points with a hole in the center.
The issue of the distance between the skin and the LED
But both LED masks have a design flaw, since the LED array is held at a distance from the skin… They are both rigid shells that rest on a thick strap at eye level.
This design keeps the mask away from my face, leaving a gap of more than one centimeter between the LEDs and the skin. Every millimeter of distance results in a loss of light intensity…
I had the same issue with the Shark Cryoglow (my review), which is also setting the LED mask too far from my skin.
Vibration and battery on the TheraFace Mask and the Glo
The TheraFace Mask carries 17 vibration motors, 8 around the eyes and 9 on the top and back of the head. The Glo keeps only 2, both in the headstrap, so nothing buzzes against the face. That made the Glo’s massage less annoying to me, but it still disappointed me, and honestly I think Therabody should remove it altogether. Mixing red light therapy with other technologies is not a good take.
The Mask wins on battery, with about 120 minutes of light alone or 60 minutes with vibration, against up to 60 minutes for the Glo, which is 5 preset sessions. Both charge over USB-C, so no big differences honestly between both here.
Proof: what Therabody publishes for the TheraFace Mask and the Glo
What the brand clearly displays and what I check in the FDA file: wavelengths (in nm), emitted dose, FDA clearance number, product study, safety tests, warranty.
Read my proof guideThe FDA database holds a single Therabody LED mask file, K230293, and its summary describes a device with 648 LEDs and 17 vibration motors, which is the TheraFace Mask.
The Glo’s page also shows an “FDA Cleared” badge, but I found no file under its name, and its entry in the FDA’s device registry lists no clearance number. So for now I can’t verify the Glo’s clearance.
Therabody advertises “the largest clinical study of any LED mask on the market“, and it was run on the Glo: 104 participants over 12 weeks at Eurofins CRL, with a Cutometer and VISIA-CR imaging.
The TheraFace Mask only has its 2023 study on 31 participants, with no laboratory named. Participants were paid in both, so there are many biasis here in the results…
| What the brand publishes | TheraFace Mask | TheraFace Mask Glo |
|---|---|---|
| Wavelengths in nm | ✓ 633, 830 and 415 nm | ✓ 633, 830 and 415 nm |
| FDA clearance verifiable in the database | ✓ K230293, filed by Therabody, Inc. | ✗ No file under the Glo’s name |
| A clinical study on this exact model | ✓ 12 weeks, 31 participants | ✓ 12 weeks, 104 participants |
| Study documented with a named laboratory | ✗ No laboratory given | ✓ Eurofins CRL |
| Photobiological safety declared | ✓ IEC 62471 in the 510(k) summary | ✗ Not stated in the Glo’s manual |
| Warranty documented | ✓ 1-year limited warranty | ✓ 1-year limited warranty |
Is the TheraFace Mask worth $270 more than the Glo?
No. At $649.99 against $379.99, the extra $270 pays for 48 light points on the sides of the face, 3 minutes saved per session, 15 more vibration motors and a longer battery, BUT it costs you the light in the middle of the face. I gave the TheraFace Mask 1.5/5 for Value in my review, and the Glo’s price was one of the reasons.
That doesn’t make the Glo a good deal in absolute terms. It’s still a rigid shell that holds its LEDs away from the skin, and for $90 more the CurrentBody Series 2 (my review) is a flexible LED mask that I found more comfortable to wear, or the Nooance Aurion X252 (my review) is a rigid cordless one with better specs and shell.
Who shouldn’t buy the TheraFace Mask or the Glo
Skip both if you recognize yourself
- You want the LEDs close to your skin. Both LED array sit over 1 cm off your skin.
- You’re paying for the 648 LEDs. You can find other LED masks with more luminous points at that price (Nooance Elite X600).
Am I still using the TheraFace Mask or the Glo?
Updated November 2026. No, neither. I do not recommend either of those TheraFace LED masks.
The masks I do recommend lead my ranking of the best LED masks, and the Glo and the Mask are both in my LED mask picker for the comparison on numbers.
What I’d expect from Therabody’s next LED mask
The Glo is Therabody’s most recent LED mask, and it doesn’t have the empty strip of the TheraFace Mask. But it kept the rigid shell and the light away from the face, and it has fewer light points than the model before it.
From a new LED mask I’d expect the opposite: a semi-flexible 3D shape like the one on the Nooance Elite X600 (read my full test and review here), more light points, and a shell worked to contour to the face so that the light is directed precisely onto the skin.
TheraFace Mask vs TheraFace Mask Glo: your questions
Is the TheraFace Mask Glo newer than the TheraFace Mask?
Yes. The Glo came out in October 2025, while the FDA cleared the TheraFace Mask in June 2023. The Glo is the cheaper model, but it isn’t the older one.
Is the TheraFace Mask Glo FDA cleared?
Therabody’s page says it is, but I couldn’t verify it. The only Therabody LED mask file in the FDA’s 510(k) database is K230293, and its summary describes a device with 648 LEDs, which is the TheraFace Mask. Either way, FDA cleared isn’t FDA approved.
Why does the Glo take 12 minutes when the TheraFace Mask takes 9?
Because it has 168 light points instead of 216. Therabody runs each color for 4 minutes on the Glo instead of 3, so both LED masks reach the same total of 618.16 J per preset session, a figure published by the brand.
Is the TheraFace Mask stronger than the TheraFace Mask Glo?
Not per LED. Therabody publishes 946 mW of red for the whole Mask and 709 mW for the whole Glo, which comes to about 4.4 and 4.2 mW per light point. The Mask has 48 more points, and the Glo makes up for it with 1 more minute per color.
Test log
- Exact models
- Therabody TheraFace Mask, white, FDA clearance K230293. Therabody TheraFace Mask Glo, white
- How I got them
- Both paid for on therabody.com, without an affiliate link or any contact with the brand
- TheraFace Mask
- 40 sessions over 8 weeks, 5 evenings a week, 9 minutes each in Red + Infrared. Score 57/100
- Documents read
- Therabody FAQ, both product pages, 510(k) summary K230293, TheraFace Mask Glo user manual (EU and UK edition)
About Emilie
I have tested LED masks since 2023. I buy the devices, use them for weeks, and read the spec sheets nobody reads, because this market runs on numbers most brands never publish. Not a dermatologist, and I say so whenever a question needs one.