Shark CryoGlow vs Omnilux: The $349 Mask Has the Better Paperwork

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Omnilux will tell you exactly what its mask emits and how much of it. Shark will not tell you either. Shark is the one with the FDA clearance that names the product on the box. We own and use a red light panel at home, not either of these masks, so everything below comes from both manufacturers' live spec and pricing pages, the FDA's own 510(k) and adverse-event databases, and retailer review counts, all pulled the day this was written. Where a figure comes from a brand rather than an independent source, we say so. See about BankrollZen for where our hands-on stops.

Last reviewed: September 2026

Quick Comparison: Shark CryoGlow vs Omnilux

Mask	Best For	Price	Coverage	Wavelengths	Irradiance (mW/cm²)	Rating
Shark CryoGlow (FW312)	Most buyers — wrinkles and acne on one clearance	~$349	Full face + clip-on under-eye chill pads	Not published by Shark	Not published	4.5/5
Omnilux Contour Face	Knowing your dose, anti-ageing only	~$395	Full face, 132 LEDs	633 + 830nm	~30 (brand-stated)	4.7/5
Omnilux Clear	Mild-to-moderate acne, Omnilux side	~$395	Full face, 132 LEDs	415 + 633nm	44 (brand-stated)	4.1/5
Omnilux Men	Thicker skin, deepest band of the range	~$395	Full face, 132 LEDs	633 + 830 + 1072nm	~30 (brand-stated)	4.5/5
Omnilux Contour Neck & Décolleté	Neck and chest	~$395	Neck/chest, 108 LEDs	633 + 830nm	~30 (brand-stated)	Not rated
Shark CryoGlow Plus (FW350)	Wider coverage round the eyes and mouth	~$380	Full face	Not published	Not published	Not rated
CurrentBody Series 2	The obvious third option	~$450	Full face, 236 LEDs	633 + 830 + 1072nm	30 (brand-stated)	4.6/5

Prices and specs last checked 24 September 2026 against sharkninja.com, omniluxled.com and the linked Amazon listings, and they move. Confirm the current price on the brand's own site before you buy. Irradiance and wavelength figures are manufacturer-stated; neither brand publishes an independent measurement. Ratings are ours.

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The Number Shark Does Not Print

Every serious comparison of LED masks comes down to dose: how much light energy actually reaches your skin in a session. It is a simple sum. Irradiance, in milliwatts per square centimetre, multiplied by session length in seconds, gives you fluence in joules per square centimetre.

You can run that sum on Omnilux. The Contour Face page publishes an output of roughly 30 mW/cm², and the treatment is 10 minutes. Thirty milliwatts across 600 seconds is about 18 J/cm² per session. That is our arithmetic on two Omnilux-published figures, not a number Omnilux prints, and you should treat it as such. But the inputs are both there on the page, and you can check them yourself in about a minute.

You cannot run that sum on the Shark. We read SharkNinja's own FW312 product page on 24 September 2026, top to bottom. It gives you the treatment lengths: 6 minutes for Better Aging, 8 minutes for Skin Clearing, 4 minutes for Skin Sustain. It also gives you the peak wattage of 35 W, the amperage, the weight, the cord length and the dimensions. It does not give you a wavelength in nanometres anywhere, and it does not give you an irradiance figure anywhere. Third-party outlets have reported the CryoGlow's bands as 415, 630 and 830nm; we could not confirm those numbers against anything Shark publishes, so we are not putting them in the table as fact.

That matters more than it sounds. Red light therapy has a biphasic dose response: below a threshold nothing happens, and above an optimum the effect tails off again rather than climbing. It is the whole reason Omnilux describes its ~30 mW/cm² as chosen for cell stimulation rather than engineering the biggest number it could. Without an output figure, there is no way to tell whether a 6-minute Shark session lands near the same territory as a 10-minute Omnilux session, well short of it, or past it. You are trusting Shark's clinical testing instead of checking the physics, which is a different kind of buying decision.

Our guide to red light therapy wavelengths covers why 633 and 830nm keep showing up on the masks with the deepest research behind them, and what the other bands are actually for.

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What Each Mask Is Cleared to Do, Actually Checked

Both brands print "FDA Cleared." We searched the FDA's 510(k) database on 24 September 2026, and this is where the cheaper mask wins outright.

Shark has one record and it names the device. K242796, "CryoGlow (FW3XXXX)", filed by SharkNinja Operating, LLC, decision date 27 November 2024. The classification product code is OHS, "Light Based Over The Counter Wrinkle Reduction," with a subsequent product code of OLP, "Over-The-Counter Powered Light Based Laser For Acne," indicated for mild to moderate acne vulgaris. One clearance, one device, two indications. You can pull it up by K number in under a minute.

Omnilux has eight records and the Contour Face is not one of them. The most recent is K210948, "Omnilux CLEAR", cleared to GlobalMed Technologies on 24 June 2021. The other seven run from 2003 to 2009 and belong to the old Photo Therapeutics clinic machines: Omnilux Revive, Plus, Blue, Red, New-U, Clear-U. Nothing in the database is titled "Omnilux Contour Face."

Read that the way we read it in our Solawave vs Omnilux comparison: a name miss is not proof of absence. Home LED masks are routinely cleared under a contract manufacturer's model designator with no retail brand in the title at all. The Contour Face may well sit inside a record like that, and the FDA clearance badge on the page may be entirely proper. But a buyer who wants to verify the claim can verify Shark's in a minute and cannot verify Omnilux's at all, and that asymmetry runs the opposite way to the price.

The adverse-event counts, and what they are not

The FDA's MAUDE database holds 69 reports filed under the brand name CryoGlow and 6 under Omnilux, as of 24 September 2026. Of the 60 CryoGlow reports we read, 31 carried boilerplate stating the event happened to a similar device in a foreign market and was reclassified as US-reportable, 14 mentioned a burning sensation, 9 mentioned redness, and a handful mentioned swelling, rash, puffiness or blistering.

Do not read that as a safety verdict, because MAUDE will not support one. Reports are unverified, mostly filed by manufacturers, and the count tracks sales volume and a company's reporting diligence at least as much as it tracks device risk. SharkNinja sells at Amazon scale with a corporate compliance function; Omnilux does not. What the number is good for is this: if you have reactive skin, the CryoGlow's report pile is dominated by heat and redness complaints rather than device failures, which is worth knowing before you put a warm mask on your face nightly.

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Shark CryoGlow (FW312) — ~$349

The FW312 is Shark's first LED mask and it is doing more jobs than the Omnilux at a lower price. Four modes: Better Aging (6 minutes, red and infrared), Skin Clearing (8 minutes, blue, infrared and red), Skin Sustain (4 minutes, red, blue and infrared) and Under-Eye Revive, a 5-to-15-minute cooling-only treatment with three temperature levels driven by clip-on chill pads. Shark calls the cooling InstaChill and the LED sequencing iQLED.

The clinical support is specific and Shark states its own limits: the Better Aging claim comes from a 12-week study with 60 subjects at one use a day in that mode, and the Skin Clearing claim from a 12-week study with 59 subjects in that mode. Those two add to the 119 participants quoted as "clinically tested by an independent third party" on the Amazon listing, which is a rare case of a brand's marketing arithmetic actually reconciling.

The observation worth having: Amazon's own review-aspect breakdown on the listing is unusually blunt for a product rated 4.4. Effectiveness gets 231 mentions (186 positive, 45 negative) and skin improvement gets 113 (87 positive, 26 negative), but battery life is the one aspect that reads negative overall, at 28 mentions with 20 of them critical, and value for money sits in Amazon's own "mixed" column at 68 mentions. A cordless mask that people like and whose battery they complain about is a specific, fixable annoyance rather than a bad product. But if your routine is four sessions a week for a year, plan on the charging stand, which Shark sells separately at ~$89.99.

Pros

• Cheapest of the two headline masks at ~$349, and the only one covering acne and wrinkles on one clearance
• 510(k) K242796 names the device, so the FDA claim is checkable in a minute
• Under-eye cooling has no equivalent anywhere in the Omnilux range
• 6-minute anti-ageing session against Omnilux's 10: adherence is the thing most people actually fail at
• Two-year limited warranty, matching Omnilux

Cons

• No published wavelength and no published irradiance, so dose cannot be calculated
• 69 MAUDE reports, skewed towards burning and redness, against Omnilux's 6
• 28 battery-life mentions on the Amazon listing, 20 of them critical; the charging stand is another ~$89.99
• The 60-day money-back guarantee is a SharkNinja.com benefit, and buying via Amazon puts you on Amazon's return policy instead

Best for: anyone treating both blemishes and fine lines who would rather have one device than two, and anyone who wants the FDA claim to be verifiable.

Check price →

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Omnilux Contour Face — ~$395

Flexible silicone mask, 132 LEDs arranged as 66 dual-chip bulbs carrying red at 633nm and near-infrared at 830nm, ~30 mW/cm² output, 10-minute treatment, two-year warranty, HSA/FSA eligible. Omnilux points at the platform's history rather than at this device's specs: over 20 years of the Omnilux technology and 40-plus peer-reviewed clinical studies across skin rejuvenation and acne. That is a brand claim about a family of devices, including clinic machines, not about the mask in your hands.

The observation worth having: Omnilux's return policy is the harshest in this comparison and it is buried in the FAQ rather than stated next to the price. Returns are accepted within 30 days only if the product is unopened, with the packaging seal intact, verified by photo. No opened product comes back. For a $395 device whose results are individual, unpredictable and take weeks to show up, that means you cannot try it and change your mind. You can only change your mind before you have tried it. Shark's own storefront gives you 60 days and your money back.

Pros

• Publishes both the wavelengths and the output, so you can calculate your own dose (~18 J/cm² a session by our arithmetic)
• 633 and 830nm are the two bands with the densest published research behind them for skin
• Two-year warranty, HSA/FSA eligible
• Flexible silicone sits closer to the face than a rigid shell

Cons

• ~$46 more than the CryoGlow and treats one concern rather than two
• Not named in the FDA 510(k) database: the clearance may exist under a manufacturer's model number, but you cannot check it
• 30-day returns, unopened only, verified by photo
• 10-minute session, nearly double the Shark's anti-ageing mode

Best for: buyers whose only concern is fine lines and firmness, and who want to know exactly what their skin is receiving.

Check price →

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Omnilux Clear — ~$395

Same 132-LED construction, same price, different bands: blue at 415nm with red at 633nm, and a published output of 44 mW/cm², the highest figure either brand puts in writing. Aimed at mild-to-moderate acne vulgaris, and Omnilux is explicit that Clear and Contour must not be used at the same time; it recommends finishing a six-week Clear course first.

This is the row that decides the money. Matching what one ~$349 CryoGlow does across acne and ageing means buying Clear and Contour Face: ~$790, and two six-week protocols you cannot run in parallel. If you only have blemishes, Clear against the CryoGlow is a fair fight on price. If you have both, it is not close.

Pros

• Highest published irradiance in this comparison at 44 mW/cm²
• The only Omnilux device actually named in the FDA database (K210948, June 2021)
• Purpose-built for acne rather than an acne mode inside an anti-ageing mask

Cons

• Cannot be combined with Contour, so treating both concerns is sequential and costs ~$790
• Same unopened-only 30-day return policy
• Blue light is the most skin-sensitive band here; see our red light therapy for acne guide before spending

Best for: acne alone, on the Omnilux side of the fence.

Check price →

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Omnilux Men — ~$395

Adds a third band at 1072nm to the Contour's 633 and 830nm, at the same ~30 mW/cm² output and the same 132 LEDs. Omnilux's stated reasoning is that men's facial skin is around 25% thicker, and 1072nm penetrates deeper than either of the other two. The brand also confirms in its own FAQ that women can use it: there is nothing gendered about the wavelength.

Best for: thicker skin of any kind, or anyone who wants the deepest published band in the range and does not need blue light.

Check price →

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Omnilux Contour Neck & Décolleté — ~$395

108 LEDs as 54 dual-chip bulbs, 633 and 830nm, ~30 mW/cm², shaped for the neck and chest. Neither Shark mask covers this area at all, so it is an addition rather than an alternative. And at the same $395 as every other Omnilux device, it is the row that shows how the brand prices by product rather than by component count.

Best for: neck and chest, once the face is sorted.

Check price →

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Shark CryoGlow Plus (FW350) — ~$379.99

Shark lists a second CryoGlow on its own site at ~$379.99, model FW350, carrying a 4.6 rating across 697 reviews and a compare chart claiming wider coverage around the crow's feet and the lines near the mouth. We have not examined it in the detail we have given the FW312, and it does not publish wavelengths or irradiance either, so treat the row in the table as a pointer rather than a recommendation. It also has no Amazon listing we could verify, which is why there is no link on it here. If you are choosing between the two Sharks, the FW312 is the one this comparison is about and the one at ~$349.

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CurrentBody Series 2 — ~$450

Worth a row because it is the mask most people are also looking at. 236 LEDs, 633, 830 and 1072nm, 30 mW/cm² brand-stated, ~$449.95 on the Amazon listing we link. It is the most expensive option here and the most LEDs, and we have written it up properly against Omnilux in Omnilux vs CurrentBody, including the part where CurrentBody's review widget showed an identical score on two different models.

Best for: wavelength coverage above all else, with the budget to match.

Check price →

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How to Choose Between Them

Start with how many things you are treating. One CryoGlow covers wrinkles and acne on a single clearance for ~$349. Covering the same ground with Omnilux costs ~$790 and two sequential six-week courses. That gap is larger than any spec argument in this article.

Then decide whether you need the numbers. If it will bother you that you cannot calculate your own dose, buy the Omnilux, because Shark does not publish the figures and no amount of reading will produce them. If you are content to trust a 119-subject clinical programme and an FDA clearance you can look up, the Shark is cheaper and does more.

Weigh the return policy like a spec. These devices take six to twelve weeks to show anything, and the results are individual. Omnilux's 30-day unopened-only window means the decision is final the moment you break the seal. SharkNinja's own store gives 60 days and your money back, but only if you buy there. Check which window you are getting before you click, because it is the one term that decides what happens if the thing does not work for you.

Session length is an adherence spec, not a trivia spec. Six minutes against ten sounds like nothing until it is a Tuesday in February. The mask you actually wear four times a week beats the mask with the better published dose that you wear twice.

Under-eye cooling is genuinely unique here. Nothing in the Omnilux range does it. Whether temperature-controlled chill pads are worth the price gap on their own is a matter of taste. But if puffiness under the eyes is the thing that sends you looking at LED masks, only one of these two addresses it.

For the wider field, our best red light therapy masks round-up covers the rest of the category, and the red light therapy hub has the panels, the research and the protocols.

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FAQ

Is the Shark CryoGlow as good as Omnilux?

On paper it does more for less: ~$349 against ~$395, four treatment modes against one, under-eye cooling that Omnilux does not offer at all, and an FDA clearance that names the device rather than one you cannot locate. Where Omnilux is clearly better is disclosure. It publishes its wavelengths (633 and 830nm) and its output (~30 mW/cm²), so you can work out what your skin receives. Shark publishes neither. "As good" depends on whether you treat that as a missing feature or a missing reassurance.

Is the Shark CryoGlow FDA approved?

No. Neither is the Omnilux. Both are FDA cleared, which is a different and lower bar than approval. The CryoGlow's clearance is 510(k) K242796, decided 27 November 2024, under product code OHS for over-the-counter wrinkle reduction with a subsequent code of OLP for over-the-counter light-based acne treatment. Clearance means the FDA accepted the device as substantially equivalent to one already on the market. It is not a finding that the device works on you.

What wavelengths does the Shark CryoGlow use?

Shark does not publish them. We read the FW312 product page on SharkNinja's own site on 24 September 2026 and it names the colours (red, blue and deep infrared) without a single figure in nanometres, and without an irradiance figure either. Third-party outlets have reported 415, 630 and 830nm, but we could not confirm those against anything Shark publishes, so we do not state them as fact. Omnilux, by contrast, publishes 633 and 830nm for the Contour Face and 415 and 633nm for Clear.

Do you need two Omnilux masks to match one Shark CryoGlow?

For acne and ageing together, yes. The Contour Face treats fine lines and wrinkles; the Clear treats mild-to-moderate acne; they cost ~$395 each and Omnilux says they should not be used at the same time, recommending a six-week Clear course first. The CryoGlow runs both a Better Aging mode and a Skin Clearing mode on one device under one clearance, at ~$349. That is ~$790 against ~$349 for the same two jobs.

Can you return an Omnilux mask if it does not work?

Only unopened. Omnilux accepts returns within 30 days of delivery provided the product is unopened with the original packaging seal intact, verified by photo. It does not accept returns of opened product. Since an LED mask takes weeks to show results, that effectively means no trial period. SharkNinja's own storefront offers a 60-day money-back guarantee on US orders, but buying the CryoGlow through a third-party retailer puts you on that retailer's policy instead.

How long does each mask take per session?

The Omnilux Contour Face treatment is 10 minutes. The Shark CryoGlow's Better Aging mode is 6 minutes, Skin Clearing is 8, Skin Sustain is 4, and the cooling-only Under-Eye Revive runs 5 to 15 minutes at three temperature levels. Both brands assume roughly daily use during an initial course. The shorter session is not a performance advantage on its own, since dose is intensity times time, but it is the kind of difference that decides whether a device stays in a routine.

Which is better for under-eye puffiness?

The Shark, and it is not a close call, because Omnilux does not compete in that lane. The CryoGlow's clip-on chill pads run an Under-Eye Revive treatment for 5 to 15 minutes at three temperature-controlled levels, and it can be run with the lights off entirely. Omnilux's range has no cooling function on any device. Shark claims visible tightening in one use; that is a brand claim about appearance, not a treatment for whatever is causing the puffiness.

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Our Verdict

If we were spending our own money today, it would go on the Shark CryoGlow at ~$349. It is the cheaper device, it covers both of the things people actually buy LED masks for, and it is the only one of the two whose FDA clearance we could pull up by name in a minute. The 60-day money-back guarantee on Shark's own store is worth more on a product like this than any spec on the page, because the honest position on home LED masks is that results are individual and nobody can tell you in advance whether you will be one of the people it works for.

The case for the Omnilux Contour Face is narrower and real: it publishes its wavelengths and its output, which means you can do the arithmetic instead of trusting a brand. If that is how you buy things, the extra ~$46 buys you information Shark will not sell you at any price, and you should go in knowing the box cannot be opened and returned.