Maysama Aura Review: My Testing Revealed a Big Problem

This is the Mace Armor Aura LED mask. It's a second generation mask from this company. And a lot of things have changed with this one. It is now a what I call semioft molded silicon mask. So instead of the older flat design, this one has been contoured, I guess you'd call it, shaped to a person's face. It's just using the red and the near infrared LEDs, but it also incorporates pulsing. Now, this is something that the founder of Mesama is very fond of. I have my thoughts on it. I will share them later. But what I'm going to do first is review this mask using my scoring system and uh we're going to see how well it compares to the rest of the masks out there because there's a lot today. I've reviewed about 30 of them as well. So, anyway, let's go. I'm affiliated with some of the companies mentioned in this video and I will earn a commission if you buy through my links or discount codes. Products were provided to me free of charge and all opinions are my own. This is not medical advice. Okay, so first up we have fit. Now, this mask is quite unique in two ways actually. Uh first, it's got a removable battery. More on that later, but it has this adjustable chin strap down here. Now, we've seen masks that have the chin strap. Uh the current body mask, the series 2 mask, has that builtin. I really like it. The new maid red light ml glow mask, it's a hard shell mask and that has an adjustable pivoting chin strap, which I think is really cool. Now, this mask is a little bit different because it is adjustable. So, there's Velcro there so you can attach it, which means you can adjust the fit, which is great. Uh, more on the chin strap later because there are some things I don't like about it. But anyway, in terms of fit, it is pretty good. It's rather snug. Uh, fits well to the face. I do feel a little bit of pressure on the nose. Now, remember, I do have a larger nose and of course I am a guy. Shock horror. Um, so Mama was saying that 98% of their customers are female and this was designed for females, which makes sense. So, as I always do, I let my wife try it. She used it for a few sessions. She liked it, but after a few minutes, she actually said, I hadn't heard her say this about any other masks. She said she felt a little bit claustrophobic, which surprised me because I thought this was quite comfortable to wear. Anyway, that was her feedback. The only big issue for me, like I said, was the uh nose pressure. Yeah, I've got a larger nose, so it probably won't affect you. And I guess because of the nose pressure and the way this is shaped, like it's it's quite close with the nose down here. I did feel a little bit of restriction when I was talking and breathing. Uh the talking more because of the chin strap, the breathing just because of how it's designed around the nose. Overall though, it was pretty comfortable to wear. It stayed in place, easy to put on. So, I'm giving it a score of 12 1/2 out of 15 for Fetch. Okay. Now, what about operation? Well, to be honest, it's it's great. I mean, it's really great. First thing is, as we saw before, the battery is built in. So, there's no chords. I love that. Uh, on the other side, you have the controller. Now, the controller here is pretty basic, which is a good thing. You've got P for pulsing, you've got a timer button, you've then got the power/ mode button. So, when you turn it on, you simply hold down the power button for one or two seconds, and there we go. It starts running. It defaults to 6 minutes. Now, there is a little built-in timer here. It also makes an audible beep, which is great. You can change uh whether you want pulsing on or off. So, at the moment, it is pulsing, hence why it's got the green light there that turns off the pulsing. And you can adjust the times as well. 1 3 6 or 10. It's all straightforward, simple. I mean, the buttons make sense. I like it. It comes with both an instruction manual and a quick start guide. And it's all been designed really well. Look, it's silicon. It's flexible. Great for travel. I think the fact that you can remove the battery is handy because you can take this away to your charging port and you don't need the mask with you as well. In fact, you can actually buy spare uh batteries. I think they're about $30 odd dollars. I suggest you do that because I just think it's a good idea and if one goes flat, you've always got to spare. Uh or if you go away traveling. But it is USBC, so it's super simple to charge. And uh it does come with a travel pouch as well. So therefore, operation, I'm giving it a 10 out of 10. Honestly, it's great. Like really good. So that means for this round, I'm giving it a score of 22.5 out of 25. Yeah, it's really good score. So well done. Let's go. Okay, so now we look at wavelengths. Now, this mask has two wavelengths, 630 nm and 830 nm neon infrared light. These two are probably they're really good wavelengths. In fact, if I had to design a mask that only had two wavelengths, I'd be tempted to run with these two actually. Um, yeah. So, look, no complaints there. In terms of skin rejuvenation, anti-aging, all the benefits you want from an LED mask, you're going to get them with these two wavelengths. However, one could argue that it would be nice to see 660 in there, maybe 810, maybe a higher wavelength um near Freid as well. Um or even an amber at 590. But look, I don't want to take this away from a summer because they have used two wavelengths that are credible. They're going to work. We know that. So, I'm giving the Aura Mask a score of six out of 10 for wavelengths. By the way, I should mention I validated the wavelengths using my spectrometer. And yeah, they all do match the marketing claims, which is good to see. Okay, now we have the power round. And this is where this mask it fell down a little bit because it's unfortunate because in the manual, I don't know if you can see here, but uh it states that the optical power is 26 m over centime squared and the pulsing figure was 41. But anyway, we're going we're going off the uh continuous wave reading of 26 m. I mean, that's that's quite high. It's you know, it is what it is. However, when I test it with my spectrometer that I have here that I've been using for years and aligns really well with um independent lab testing, I am not getting those figures. Uh in fact, I had figures way way less than that. Nearly like 10% of that value. Now, I took a bunch of readings and it came out with an average of 5.5 m over centime squared. Now, I I wanted to show you that because the number is well off and yeah, that's surprising. It's well off the claim 26, right? It means we're getting an average jewels over centime squared figure of 1.98, effectively two two jewels. This is low. Um, as you can see on screen, we've determined the optimal dose for skin anti-aging benefits to be between 5 and 9 jewels over centime squared. This came out just under two. So, it's on the lower side, which is very frustrating. Um, because so far it's been a great mask, right? So, it means for this part of the review I've got to give it a score of 3 out of 15 based on the template that I use. But again, it's not end of the world because maybe you just need to set it to 10 minutes and just do two 10-minute rounds. It does become a 20-minut session, though, and that's a long time wearing a mask, especially when my wife said she started feeling claustrophobic in this after about 3 or 4 minutes. So, I don't see her doing 20 minutes in this thing. Okay, so for round two, the Aura mask is getting a score of 9 out of 25. Yeah, it takes a big hit here, doesn't it? Now, by the way, if you are looking for masks that have the optimal power figure, be sure to go over to my mask shopping tool. I'll put a link to it down below. It's where I've put the data for 30 something masks now I've tested in the last 18 months. You can go in there and sort by any metric you can imagine. Does it have blue wavelength? What is the price range? What do I score really high on comfort? So, uh it's free to use. Links are down below. Check it out. It's kind of fun to use. All right. Now, we're looking at coverage quality. So, first up, I look at LEDs. Now, this mask has 155 LEDs. You can see them all shining here. And each LED is dual chip. What that means is every little spot you see here actually has two chips in it. One chip is putting out the red that you see. Another one is putting out invisible near infrared. That means there are a total of 310 LED chips in this mask. What does that mean? Look, some of the best masks I've tested in terms of LED count are around the 7 800 figure, even higher. Some of the worst masks are, I think, 100, low 100. So, look, it is on the lower side. Uh, but it's still adequate. It just means with less LEDs, you have less light coverage. So, pretty much when I was taking those ratings before, that was right over the LED. I was seeing anything from what two and a half to maybe I think the highest read I saw was like an 8 m over centime squared but the second you move in between it drops right down to one or less. So ideally a mask would have a lot of LEDs. Now misama do say how this has been designed for optimal skin contact and you don't lose light to reflection. Yeah that's true but I mean it's true for every mask out there that fits snugly on the face which most of them do. The thing I like to reward here is how many LEDs. So, look, 310 is good. I'm going to give it a eight out of 10 because 500 LEDs would be even better. I simply measure the coverage of the LEDs in various areas on my face. And yeah, I do my best. So, pretty much what was good here, it was good coverage up around the forehead, cheeks. In fact, the nose has good coverage, nose bridge, and the nose itself. Uh there is decent coverage in the lips because uh as you can see it is quite a small mouth opening. But when you turn it around you'll see that the LEDs don't come right up to the base of the lips. So let me show you with it on the LED is about here. So you're not actually getting direct coverage on the lips. Still it's okay. Uh the chin of course we're getting coverage on the chin. However, if you look at this the chin strap, what do you notice? That's That's zipped up for me, right? You've got a heap of LEDs on this side and nothing over here because that is Velcro. See what I mean? So, yes, you do have a chin strap, but you're only getting coverage on half your chin. So, I'm giving it some points there, but not a perfect score. And the other weak point is probably around the eyes. Uh, look, it looks good, but remember, just because there's silicon there doesn't mean there's LEDs. So for reference, the LED is there. Okay. So effectively, you're getting the LEDs way down here. I would like to see one even further up. So it's good, but it's not getting top scores for eye coverage, but it still does get a good score here. And the total I'm giving it is 13 out of 15. Remember, if you want to geek out on all my scores, uh I share the whole scorecard. I share a lot of my raw data uh over in that mask shopping tool. You can click on the mask and pull it up. So, go have a look at that. It even shows all my comments that may not make it across in this video. So, an 8 plus a 13 means this round the mask is getting a 21 out of 25. Okay. And now we come to price. Now, the retail price is $575 at least at the time of filming. I've been given a discount code and link. It is all down below. So, using those discounts, you can get this shipped to your door in the USA for $519. $519. Shipping is only $2, which is kind of cool. Uh, yeah, it's a it's on the expensive side for masks, but that's where the premium masks uh are sort of priced at. I should mention as well, at the time of filming, the mask is only being sent to the US, UK, and Europe. There is no shipping to Australia or Canada or other locations, which is a bit of a bummer, but it may change. So, with this price, I'm giving it a score of 10 out of 20. All right. Now, we have peace of mind. Now, this mask comes with a 2-year warranty. That is good because anything with a battery, you know, you want you want the longer warranty period. Um, it is good, though. You can pop them off and replace them. So, if your battery does die, uh, I guess it's good from a company point of view as well. they can just send you a replacement one of these instead of a full mask. Saying that, I did notice some manufacturing defects. See up around here when I took the battery off, I was like, "Oh, that's all come loose." So, I wonder if over time that would get worse. Anyway, 2-year warranty. It's good. Could be better, but 2 years is good. As for returns, they've got a 30 days return policy, but there is a 10% restocking fee, which could be better. And then finally, Mesama was founded in 2020 and entered the LED space in 2023. So, they've been around for a while. I've reviewed um the mask product before the Mason Primer. U so yeah, I know the company. I have spoken to the founders. Actually, I'm meant to be doing an interview with the founder very soon as well. Why am I interviewing here? We're going to go through something I haven't really talked about yet, and that is the pulsing. Now, before I tally up the scores and and give my final recommendations, I do want to talk about this. So, this mask uses pulse light. It's very fast pulse light, so you cannot see it as in you don't see the flashing. If some panels pulse at say 5 or 10 hertz or something, you you see it. You don't see this. It's pulsing at something like 1200 Hz, which is extremely quick. I have covered pulsing in the past and um Bev the founder has actually said hey look I don't agree with your views and stuff on the pulsing and uh I'd love to talk to you more about it which is what we're going to do in that interview. So look I don't see this as go buy this because it's got pulsing in it. However may some believe it is a big um selling point and a big additional feature. That's my school of thought on it at this point in time. One other thing I want to mention because there's a lot of features about this mask on their website that I haven't really touched on. One of them is the smart dosing. I thought, "Oh, this is really cool." But all it is is uh it's got three modes, right? Red and near infrared, red only or near infrared only. Now, as you change the mode, the preset timer will change. So, what it means is if you're only using red instead of red and infrared, the timer goes from 6 minutes up to 10 minutes because you need more energy because you've turned off half the lights. That makes sense. I mean, it's it's pretty Yeah, I feel like it's been hyped up a little bit, but anyway, that that's kind of cool. However, as we noticed with my testing, I don't know if their smart dosing is built on solid figures because yeah, there was a big discrepancy there. So, that is a bit of a concern. One thing though that did intrigue me was the smart dosing doesn't account for pulsing because if you pulse a light it means it goes on off on off on off right even state this on their website saying how pulsing allows the cells and tissue to cool ever so slightly in between light pulses effectively what you're doing when you're pulsing light is you're delivering less energy in the same amount of time so I Thought when I turned pulsing off the timer would also go up, but it didn't. But anyway, okay. So, let's tally up the score here. Now, it ends up with a total of 65 out of 100. This puts it just into the silver class. And if I pull up the shopping tool over at Light Therapy Insiders, I see that it ranks about 13th. Uh, so it's midpack with all the masks I have tested. I feel like maybe the score is a little bit too harsh because, yeah, it does fit well. It does a good job in terms of operations. Good coverage as well. It just it was let down with that power reading. Now, I am going to do a big comparison series. I did one in 2025. I'm going to do another one in 2026 with all of these new masks cuz there are a lot on the market. I've also invested a lot of money in a professional, very professional, I mean, this is kind of professional, but proper integrating sphere that is going to capture all the light and it's going to tell me without having to move the device around. It's going to tell me exactly how much light is being emitted. So, I'll be working that into my comparison and I will overhaul the scoring system to make it a little bit more fair based on what I have learned over the last 18 months of reviewing masks. Still good mask. Could be better. Probably a little bit too expensive for the lack of power, but again, it is welldesigned and has some good features. What could you get instead? Well, if you're wanting to stick with soft shell masks that have the under chin strap, then the obvious option is the current body mask. This is the series 2 mask. It also was a silver, has a few more LEDs, has a few more wavelengths in there. The chin strap isn't adjustable, but it is a little bit cheaper and it is comfortable to wear um with really good reviews as well. So, check that out. If you're happy to go to a hard shell mask, as in you don't expect to travel with it and you don't have little kids that may jump all over it or pets, uh, then I'd suggest the Morite MTO glow mask. That's that's got a lot of LEDs. And because it sits off your face, you actually get really good coverage. Like really good coverage. Plus, it's got some blue light in there. It's not the best blue light for acne, but it is in there. Um, and it's got a chin strap. All right. So, those are two really good options. But if you want pulsing then yeah I mean go with this. Okay. And if you're still on the fence with pulsing hang around for my interview which will be out in the next month or so. Okay. So what happened? Obviously my numbers were quite low and I reached out to me because they had on their website that they had lab data and obviously their claim numbers were a lot higher. So I wanted to see this lab data. Turns out the lab data was actually just from their factory, which I never really rely on because it's very easy to fudge and a factory wants to put out good numbers for their clients products, right? But Mama were very keen to figure out what was actually going on with their mask, which is amazing and good job, Mama. So, what they did is they sent their mask to Light Lab International, which is, I guess, the go-to lab for all things red light therapy testing. and they asked Light Lab to do thorough testing and and determine exactly what was going on with their mask. Now, testing red light therapy products is very complex. Testing red light therapy masks is something that like I don't even know where to begin in terms of how to test it. So, it is a it's a tricky thing to do. Now, Mama did the full test and they're sharing all their lab tests over on their website. I'll put a link to that down below so you can go and geek out and and crunch the numbers if you wish. But what does it all mean? Well, they were concerned how low my testing numbers were. So, they wanted Light Lab International to see if my numbers were correct. Again, it's very tricky to test a mask, but still the numbers came back from Light Lab International. They got three key numbers. The first one is their total radiant flux. This is the total amount of light that's put out from this mask. and it came out to be 484 m. Now, look, this is not something I've tested or reported on in the past. So, without comparison, it's a little bit meaningless and uh it's a little bit hard to use. However, Light Lab International also did some calculated radiance figures. I say calculated because it's very hard to do very accurate uh radiance measurements with a spectrometer. Given the shape of the mask, given there's lots of readings, it's very tricky. So anyway, I won't get into all the details, but pretty much they came up with two figures. The first figure was the average radiance across the whole entire mask. And this figure was 1.46 m over centime squared, which is very low. I mean, yeah, that's a very low number. Uh, and it's obviously lower than my tested number where I test more over the LEDs, not right over them, just sort of around them. uh but not the blank white spaces because my readings are very very low. So that's the first number. The second number was a figure directly over the LED. Now this figure came out to be 63.7 m over centime squared. Now remember this is right above the LED on the mask. As soon as you move away from the LED that number is going to drop off. Now 63 m is quite a high number. I mean we see there's numbers from LED panels at 6 in though. So if you get close to a panel, it's going to be in the hundreds. But still, it's it's a decent number. However, the key thing to note is that only 2% of the total area of the mask was putting out this figure. 2% 2.2% to be more precise. The rest of that area of the mask, 97% is putting out a very low figure because there's no LEDs there. So you're just getting the light bleeding across, which is why the average across the mask is only 1.46 m. So what does this all mean? Well, you see this is the problem with masks. Right over the LED, you're getting a lot of energy. You're getting a ton of energy in this place. 63 m. The moment you move away from that half a centimeter, a couple millimeters for instance, it drops right down close to zero. You get a little bit of light leakage, but it's nowhere near 60. And this is why coverage and the amount of LEDs in a mask is so critical. Higher LED counts and better coverage is I mean, it's superior. It's going to lead to a much better blend of light on the face, which is why I still think like off the face masks and even panels are going to deliver a much better balance blend of light on the face rather than all these dots all over your face. But anyway, I wanted to share this data with you. What I want to do in 2027 is try and come up with a standard on how we can test masks in a much more accurate way, in a way that's transparent and and fair so you can compare from one mask to another. It's a massive undertaking. I don't even really know where to begin. But hey, look, that's the update. Credit to Mama for um doing all of this and sharing all the data. I wish more companies did this. Hopefully, they will. Uh what does it mean for you? Look, I still think my recommendations stand um even with this extra information because as you can see, it's right above the LED. It's powerful, but that's only 2% of the whole entire mask. So, um, yeah, hopefully that helps.