The North Shore Nova 6 Sauna Review
Ryan Humphries
Game of Thrones may have captivated audiences over the last few years but 2024 may officially be the year of Ice & Fire.
If you’re in the fitness world, you likely have a favorite podcast or two. Maybe you listen to Andrew Huberman, Rhonda Patrick, Peter Attia, or maybe you’re a Rogan aficionado.
Regardless of who you tune into, you’ve likely heard at least one of these humans talking about the benefits of saunas and cold plunges.
If you’re anything like me, your Instagram feed is now inundated with advertisements for both…or it will be now 😉
You can only hear about the benefits of saunas for so long until you get curious enough to find one. Extended life? Increases in growth hormone? Improved cardio? Improved mental health? Decreased risk of dementia? Faster recovery? Sign me up!
However, finding a good sauna proved a little more difficult than I bargained for.
After spending hours online reading reviews and looking at pricing, my dreams were shot down fairly quickly. I was intent on finding a sauna but I also didn’t really want to drop $$$ on a wooden barrel sauna (although they are amazing). They kind of look like hobbit holes, but they cost about as much as a mithril undergarment 🙂
So I started looking around locally. I went to a few big box gyms thinking that I’d totally pay a monthly membership to use a sauna… Well, let’s rephrase that, I would pay a monthly membership if I could find a sauna that was clean, uncrowded, and actually hot. Unfortunately, none of my local gym chains met those criteria.
Next up, I found a full-on Sauna business! It was only seven minutes from my house and I was stoked. They advertised five or so different rooms and they had pools as well. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say that I saw things in those rooms that I can’t unsee. This was NOT the place I was looking for.
Although I don’t love that Big Brother is always watching, he’s also listening…and sometimes he shows me things in my Instagram feed that I like 🙂
Low and behold, these portable, wood-fired, sauna tents started popping up in my feed and I was more than intrigued.
Initially I reached out to Sweat Tents and they were kind enough to provide the Engearment team with their four-person set-up. I did a thorough video review you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFgSusK0Auk
Although the original Sweat Tent is a solid product, it’s also a bit small (They’ve since created an XL version which we haven’t yet tested).
At Axistence (our gym in Southeast Denver) we’ve held several “Fire & Ice” events using the Sweat Tent and although the events were great, the Sweat Tent proved too small for our needs. Getting four people in a 4-person sauna tent with a wood burning stove is doable, but not optimal.
Getting curious about what else was out there, I started looking at larger variations.
Enter North Shore Sauna…
Chad, the owner, is an awesome guy. After connecting over a few emails, he offered to let us (myself and the Engearment team) review the North Shore NOVA 6 Premium, their 6-person portable sauna tent (with stadium seating). Chad, a fellow veteran and sauna enthusiast, grew up with Finnish roots. Sauna was something he and his family did on a weekly basis. He shared that his family and their friends would regularly get together at each other’s saunas for a good sweat. What a cool way to spend an evening! My family bonding was watching Married With Children and eating pizza rolls. Those Fins may be on to something!
Side note, the mission of North Shore Sauna is to make the authentic sauna experience more accessible. And yes, portability is an aspect of accessibility but also, they’re one of the only sauna tents I’ve seen with a door large enough to be ADA compliant, making it TRULY accessible for anyone.
The NOVA 6 arrived quickly! Half of it came in on a Thursday night, and the other half came in the next morning.
The team was stoked to set it up, so I had a lot of help. I could have done it all myself, but having a community of people who are also stoked about saunas really helps! (We’ll come back to the community thing later…)
Engearment founder Sean Sewell and I set up the tent in less than 5 minutes. The benches were also super easy to put together (and they smell great!). Western Red Cedar for the win!
I didn’t know how much the stadium seating would make a difference, but the ability to sit 30” above the floor and have your feet 16” off the ground delivers an exceptional experience similar to what you’d find in a traditional wood sauna.
The tent is made from 300D Oxford Polyester. What does that mean? Think about it like this, polyester is used for a lot of tents…but not all polyester is created equal. Just like not all jeans are created equal. You could buy two pairs of denim jeans (one from WalMart and one from Diesel)….both of them are technically “jeans” right, but one is of a superior quality. The fabric on the NOVA 6 is the Diesel of Sauna tents.
As impressed as I was with the tent and the seating, the kingpin of the whole operation is the stove. Artfully designed, it’s also a tank! Side note, please read the directions when putting it together…. I got so excited, I thought I could figure it all out on my own, and I did eventually…but there were some loud F-bombs when I realized that I didn’t do it in the right order. If you do it as the directions say, it’s simple.
The Premium Package is just that, PREMIUM…..actually, the word I would actually use is luxurious. If you’re curious as to the other versions of this same model, I’ll list them below.
There are currently three versions of the NOVA 6 (all with different options):
- NOVA 6 Starter Package (Tent, Stove, Rain Cover)
$1488.00
- NOVA 6 Pro Bundle (Starter + Leather gloves, Sauna Box/Stones, 1 Bench)
$2,266.96
- NOVA 6 Premium (Pro Bundle + Extra Bench, Fireproof Mat, Wood Carrier, Bucket & Ladle)
$2,895.94
Although I don’t think you could go wrong with any of these options, the extra seating, the fireproof flooring, the wood carrier and the bucket and ladle have all been CLUTCH! The Premium takes care of every detail you could think of. Trying to recreate an authentic sauna experience in a tent is not easy…but the attention to detail with the NOVA 6 Premium is what I would call a “Mission Accomplished”.
There’s another aspect aside from the quality of this tent that I need to write about and that’s the size. However, in order to talk about why I think that’s important, I’m going to detour just a bit… The research coming out of Finland shows that men who used a sauna 3-4x per week for 15-20 minute sessions had a 40% decreased risk in cardiovascular events! Read that again. (1) Although correlation doesn’t always equal causation, those are numbers that can’t be overlooked.
Although these longevity effects could indeed be explained by heat shock proteins, growth hormone release, and cardiovascular effects, I personally think there’s another factor we need to consider. In his Ted Talk “How to Live to be 100” Dan Buettner talks about the correlations between populations of humans who live into their 90s and 100s in good health. Regardless of diet or genetics, COMMUNITY was one thing that all of these populations had in common. (2)
Think about that. COMMUNITY was one of THE biggest determinants of how healthy and how long these people were living.
Now I want you to think about the last time you and 5 of your friends sat down and really had a communal conversation. No food, no drinks, no screens. For me, those moments usually only occur when I’m camping and sitting around the fire. And even then, there’s usually food or drinks or maybe somebody taking pictures.
The sauna is a place where we can gather together and just BE with each other. Call it woo woo if you want but every person who’s had a session in the NOVA 6 says the same thing. There’s something very special about being present in a group setting (especially when you’re pouring sweat).
I mention this aspect of community around the NOVA 6 specifically because I believe the tent is big enough to where you can get that community feel, where some of the smaller versions of sauna tents just can’t reproduce that.
Although priced slightly higher than a few other tents on the market, the attention to detail makes the NOVA 6 Premium Package more than fair deal. It’s also still only a fraction of what the barrel saunas cost. It’s like someone said “Hey, I bet you can’t recreate a true sauna experience in a tent” and then North Shore Sauna said, “Hold my bucket and ladle!”
As more people come to understand how awesome the sauna can be, and as more companies get into the sauna market, I imagine we’ll see more and more sauna options. In the meantime, if you’re looking for an exceptional sauna experience, the North Shore Sauna NOVA 6 delivers just that.
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/sauna-use-linked-longer-life-fewer-fatal-heart-problems-201502257755
- https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100?language=en
Ryan Humphries
Growing up in southeast Missouri, Ryan spent most of his days playing in the woods, swimming in creeks, capturing wildlife, and dreaming of adventure. His asthma kept him from playing a lot of sports as a kid, but it didn’t stop him from achieving the ranks of both Eagle Scout and a Black Belt in Taekwondo by the age of 16.
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