A 15-year executive chef and food and beverage director who now vets the cold plunges, saunas, and red light therapy gear worth your money.
Alexander Liendo spent 15 years as an executive chef and food and beverage director in high-end kitchens. The job was a daily exercise in judging quality: equipment, materials, suppliers, and whether a product did what its maker claimed.
A meniscus tear and burnout ended that career. Recovery is what put him in the market for this gear in the first place, and what showed him how hard it is to get a straight answer about any of it: inflated specs, prices that move, and roundups that read like they were written from the same press kit.
He founded The Well Vetted to apply a chef’s standard to that gear: how it is built, whether it justifies its price, and who it is actually right for. He vets every cold plunge, sauna, and red light device the site covers, and writes the comparisons and buying guides himself. That vetting is desk work, not hands-on testing: he does not buy or physically use the products, and the methodology sets out exactly what it does and does not cover.
What Alexander looks for
The five-step process is on the methodology page. These are the four things it is looking for in every product.
Build and materials
How a product is made, what it is made of, and whether it survives daily use.
Real value
Whether the price is justified by what you actually get, measured against the real alternatives.
Honest fit
Who a product genuinely suits, and who should save their money and buy something else.
Verified specs
Dimensions, warranty, and pricing checked against the manufacturer’s own documentation rather than the sales listing, with the gaps between the two stated.