Obqer 2 Person Steam Sauna Review: More Steam for Less Money

The Obqer 2 person steam sauna is a good buy if two of you want steam sessions at home and you have a room where a 120 x 90cm tent can stay standing. At £212.99 it's the cheapest fully kitted couples steam tent we've reviewed: two 1200W generators, two chairs, two remotes, two floor mats. It's still a fabric tent that pumps steam in from boxes on the floor, though, so manage your expectations about heat, and check your sockets before you order.

Obqer has no UK website we could find, which means the Amazon listing is the only spec source, and it's thinner than we'd like on one point in particular: there's no quoted maximum temperature. Everything else adds up to a sensible design that undercuts the rivals on price while giving you more steam power, not less.

Who it is for

Couples, housemates, or anyone who sauna-ed with a friend at the gym and wants to keep doing it at home. The two generators each have their own remote, so one of you can sit on level 4 while the other cranks it to 9, which removes the most common argument about shared saunas.

It isn't for anyone short of floor space. A 120 x 90cm tent at 180cm tall takes up roughly the area of a shower enclosure plus some, and it's not something you'll want to fold down after every use. If it has to come out of a cupboard each time, you'll stop using it within a month; that's the most common story with tent saunas of every brand. A garage, a spare room with a hard floor, or a conservatory is the realistic home for it.

Solo users should also look elsewhere. A single person tent costs around half as much and heats up faster, and our best home sauna UK guide covers those.

Check the Obqer 2 person sauna price on Amazon£212.99

What you get in the box

The kit list is where the Obqer earns its score. For £212.99 you get the tent and frame, two 2.6 litre steam generators, two steam boxes (the diffusers that sit inside the tent and release the steam), two remotes, two floor mats, two chairs and a manual. SereneLife's two person tent, by comparison, comes with a single chair and a single 1600W generator at around £175, so the second person is perching on whatever you bring in from the kitchen.

The frame is rust-resistant steel tubing, which matters more than it sounds in an enclosure that'll be wet for half an hour at a time. Cheaper tents with plain painted tubes start showing orange at the joints after a few months of steam. The fabric is a five layer insulated, waterproof material; Obqer doesn't specify what those layers are, and we'd treat "five layer" as a marketing count rather than a performance figure until owners have had a winter with it.

Three windows is unusual. Most two person tents have one, if any. If you've tried a fully enclosed tent and found it a bit like sitting in a bin bag, the extra light makes a real difference to how long you'll comfortably stay in.

Power, heat and the two plug problem

Two 1200W generators is the right answer for a tent this size. One generator struggles to fill a two person volume evenly, and you end up with a warm side and a lukewarm side. Two, one per person, gets the whole tent up to temperature in Obqer's quoted 15 minutes or so, which is about what we'd expect from the numbers.

The cost is the plug situation. 2.4kW is roughly a big kettle running continuously, and while one UK socket is rated for 3kW (13A at 230V), you don't want both generators on a single four-way extension lead for half an hour. Put each generator on its own wall socket. Most UK homes will handle that without drama, but check before you choose a room, because a sauna tent parked next to a single double socket that already runs the TV and a router is going to cause problems.

What Obqer doesn't tell you is the maximum temperature. Steam tents of this type generally settle somewhere around 45C to 55C at head height, and the Manastin quotes 54C, but we can't confirm the Obqer's figure, so don't buy it expecting a number. It'll feel hot, because wet heat at that level is intense on bare skin. It won't feel like a Finnish sauna at 80C to 90C.

And since steam rises, the top of the tent is noticeably hotter than the bottom. Owners of every two person steam tent mention cool feet, and with the steam boxes on the floor it's partly fixable: put them closer to your feet and lower legs, and keep your feet on the mats rather than the bare floor.

Condensation and where to put it

Every steam tent drips. The fabric is waterproof, which means the water has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is the floor. The supplied floor mats help, but they aren't a tray. On carpet or laminate you want a waterproof layer underneath: a cheap shower curtain, a car boot liner, or a rubber gym mat all work. Tile or vinyl is easier.

After each session, unzip the door, prop it open and let the inside dry before you close it up. Skip that and the tent will smell musty within a fortnight, whatever the fabric's made of. Empty and dry the generators too, rather than leaving 2.6 litres sitting in each one until next week.

The chairs are folding stools. They're fine for a 15 minute session and get uncomfortable well before the 90 minute timer runs out, which is no bad thing, since nobody should be in steam that long.

Setting up any steel tube tent takes a bit of patience the first time, so lay out the tubes against the manual before you start joining them. If you're new to this style of sauna, our guide on how to use a portable steam sauna runs through setup, timings and cleaning step by step.

What the research does and doesn't say

The health studies people quote about saunas mostly come from Finland. The best known is a cohort of 2,315 middle-aged men followed for about 20 years, which found that those who used a sauna 4 to 7 times a week had a lower risk of fatal cardiovascular events and death from any cause than those who went once a week (Laukkanen et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015). That's an association in men using traditional hot, dry saunas, not proof that a home steam tent will do the same thing. Frequent sauna users in that study may well have been healthier in other ways too.

The evidence for recovery after training is weaker than the marketing suggests. A 2025 systematic review of post-exercise heat exposure pulled together 14 studies and found mixed acute effects: some showed better recovery, some showed no effect, and one showed a worse one. Repeated sessions after training may help running performance in hot conditions, but the authors concluded the evidence wasn't strong enough for firm conclusions (Ahokas et al., Sports Medicine Open, 2025).

So buy it because steam after a hard session feels good and gives you a reliable wind-down routine. That's a perfectly good reason. Our guides to using a sauna after a workout and sauna versus steam room go into the differences in more depth.

Safety

Two people in a small, hot, humid tent is fine if you're both sensible about it.

• Start at 10 to 15 minutes, on a mid heat level, and build up gradually.
• Drink water before and after. Steam makes you sweat heavily even when it doesn't feel as fierce as dry heat.
• Get out straight away if you feel dizzy, sick or confused, and know the signs of heat exhaustion and heatstroke.
• Don't use it if you're pregnant, have a heart condition or uncontrolled blood pressure, or have been drinking, unless your GP has said it's safe.
• Keep children and pets away from the generators, which get hot and contain boiling water.

The dry-run and overheat protection on the Obqer generators is welcome, because a generator that boils itself empty is the most likely way a cheap steam tent fails. It doesn't replace common sense about where the hot units sit and who can reach them.

How it compares

Against the Manastin 2 person steam sauna, the Obqer is about £40 cheaper and has slightly more generator power (2 x 1200W against 2 x 1000W). The Manastin is a touch larger at 123 x 94cm, has a satin cotton shell we liked, and publishes a 54C maximum, which the Obqer doesn't. Unless you need those extra few centimetres, the Obqer gives you more for less.

Against the SereneLife 2 person steam sauna at around £175, the SereneLife is cheaper and only needs one socket, because it runs a single 1600W generator. But you get one chair and one heat setting for two people. For a genuine couples setup, the extra £38 for the Obqer buys a second chair, a second generator and independent controls, which is worth it.

If you're using it alone most of the time, neither two person tent makes sense. A single tent like the SereneLife portable steam sauna does the job for about half the money.

See today's Obqer 2 person sauna price

Recommended reads

• How to use a portable steam sauna
• Manastin 2 person steam sauna review
• SereneLife 2 person steam sauna review
• The best home sauna in the UK
• Sauna after a workout
• Sauna vs steam room
• Recovery reviews and guides