660nm red light and 850nm near-infrared together for $149 — $20 less than the Solawave, with deeper wavelength coverage. BON CHARGE flew under the radar. Here's our honest take.
NIR Combo Pick #3 Overall"I can really feel it waking up my skin!"
"My redness and pimple marks are gone on my face!"
BON CHARGE is an Australian wellness brand best known in red light therapy circles for their panels and blue-light blocking glasses. The Red Light Face Wand is their entry into the handheld facial wand category — and on paper, it punches above its price point.
The wand delivers 660nm red light and 850nm near-infrared simultaneously, with sonic vibration and heat therapy as supplementary modalities. This four-element combination (red + NIR + vibration + heat) matches the Solawave's 4-in-1 feature count at a lower price — and adds NIR depth that the Solawave doesn't offer.
The primary limitation is simple: BON CHARGE is relatively new to this category, doesn't publish irradiance data, and has only 58 on-site reviews to substantiate the 4.9-star rating. The on-site score almost certainly reflects selection bias — people motivated to write reviews skew positive. The real sample is small enough that even a handful of negative experiences would drag the average significantly.
That said, the hardware itself is genuinely well-specified for the price. The dual-wavelength combination is meaningful, and BON CHARGE's parent brand has established credibility in adjacent wellness products.
The Solawave — the category's bestseller — uses 660nm red light and galvanic microcurrent. What it lacks is near-infrared. The BON CHARGE wand at the same $149–$169 price range adds 850nm NIR to the stack.
Here's why that matters: 660nm red light penetrates roughly 2–5mm into the dermis, stimulating surface skin cells and superficial fibroblasts. 850nm NIR reaches 5–10mm into tissue — deeper than most consumer red light wands can reach. At those depths, you're stimulating mitochondria in the deeper dermis and sub-dermal layers, where structural collagen is produced and blood microcirculation occurs.
Whether this depth difference produces meaningfully better cosmetic outcomes for the average user is genuinely uncertain — the existing clinical literature on wand-class devices (versus panel-class devices, which have far more dose data) is thin. But from a physics and biology standpoint, if you want to try to reach deeper tissue, 850nm NIR gives you a better shot than 660nm alone.
These two wands compete directly at the same price point and feature count. Here's the comparison that matters:
| Feature | BON CHARGE Wand ($149) | Solawave Wand ($169) |
|---|---|---|
| Red Light | 660nm ✓ | 660nm ✓ |
| Near-Infrared | 850nm ✓ | None ✗ |
| Supplemental Tech | Sonic vibration + heat | Galvanic current + vibration + warmth |
| Galvanic Microcurrent | None ✗ | Yes ✓ |
| Irradiance Published | No ✗ | No ✗ |
| FDA Cleared | Yes ✓ | Yes ✓ |
| Power Source | Rechargeable battery | Rechargeable battery |
| Amazon Available | No ✗ | Yes ✓ |
| Review Count | 58 (brand site only) | 10,000+ (Amazon) |
| Price | $149 | $169 |
The key trade-off: BON CHARGE gives you NIR depth and saves $20. Solawave gives you galvanic microcurrent (better for serum penetration) and has vastly more community validation. Which matters more depends on your skin goal. Structural anti-aging? BON CHARGE. Enhanced skincare absorption? Solawave.
We want to flag this clearly: a 4.9-star rating from 58 reviews is not the same as a 4.4-star rating from 10,000 reviews. Small sample sizes are statistically volatile — 58 reviews can easily reflect a launch-period wave of enthusiastic early adopters, customers incentivised to leave reviews, or simply the natural skew of people who only write reviews when they're happy.
This doesn't mean the wand is bad. The hardware specs are real and the wavelengths are verifiable. But it does mean we can't weight the on-site rating heavily in our assessment. Until BON CHARGE accumulates at least a few hundred independent reviews across multiple platforms, the community sentiment score stays conservative in our rankings.
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Wavelengths | 660nm red + 850nm near-infrared |
| Supplemental Tech | Sonic vibration, heat therapy |
| FDA Status | FDA-cleared |
| Power Source | Rechargeable battery (USB-C) |
| Irradiance | Not published |
| Price | $149 (boncharge.com direct) |
| Returns | 30-day return window (brand direct) |
| Where to Buy | boncharge.com (direct); select international retailers |
660nm + 850nm NIR · Sonic vibration + heat · FDA-cleared · $149
Shop at BON CHARGE → See All Wand Rankings →