Kineon Review: My Honest Test on Knee Osteoarthritis Since December 2023

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Updated October 14, 2026

I have diagnosed osteoarthritis in my knee, confirmed on imaging and I got this device in December 2023 to do something about it. So this Kineon review is not a two week impression written from a loaner unit. It is what I think after living with the same MOVE+ Pro through a couple of winters, a hamstring injury, several knee osteoarthritis flares and a lot of heavy squats.

I lift five days a week and I am in the menopausal transition, which is a combination that asks a lot of a knee that already has wear in it. What follows is what has held up, what I would tell a coaching client and the one thing about this whole category that almost no review will say out loud.

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Quick Verdict

What the Kineon MOVE+ Pro Is

The Kineon MOVE+ Pro has three small modules that ride on a strap you wrap around a joint. Each module puts out two kinds of light at once: deep red at 660 nanometers from LEDs and near-infrared at 808 nanometers from actual laser diodes. You press a button, one module wakes the other two and you get a five, 10 or 15 minute session with the light sitting directly against your skin.

A note on the name, because it trips people up. My unit came boxed as the MOVE+ Pro, which is what you will see in my photos. Kineon currently sells it as the MOVE+ LED & Laser. You will also see a YouTube video calling it the Move+ 2.0, which is a reviewer’s label rather than a product Kineon sells and plenty of people simply type Move Plus. Every Kineon review you find under any of those names is describing the same device family.

The category is called photobiomodulation and it’s a well studied category. The short version of the mechanism is that these particular wavelengths get absorbed by mitochondria, which then produce more ATP, which supports repair and blood flow in the tissue you pointed the light at. That much is settled cell biology. Whether it changes how your knee feels is a separate question and the rest of this review is about that question.

Here is what is in the box and what the hardware does, checked against Kineon’s current published specifications rather than my memory of the manual.

Two details there are worth pulling out here. The first is that the extender strap is a separate purchase. If you are buying this mainly for a hip or a lower back rather than a knee, budget for it. Mine is an older version and the current one looks different, so check what fits your unit before ordering.

The second is the strap generation. Kineon now ships a Strap 3.0 with quick-release clips. Mine is the older buckle design, which you can see in the dated photos further down. Any complaint I have about fiddling with the strap is a complaint about 2023 hardware and may not apply to a unit bought today.

The Thing No Recovery Device Review Will Tell You

Here is the problem with every review of every recovery device, including this one. I cannot run a controlled trial on my own knee.

When my hamstring settled down after I tweaked it deadlifting in January 2025, I have no way of knowing whether the light did that or whether six weeks of sensible loading did that. There is no version of me who skipped the device so I can compare. I only got the one timeline and this is the same thing that applies to any product of this type. Did it get better because of time and natural healing or would it have taken even longer to heal without the photobiomodulation therapy?

This applies to my sauna, my magnesium, my sleep tracking and everything else in the recovery drawer. Researchers can compare a treated group against a sham group across dozens of people. You, sitting on your couch with a sore knee, cannot. So when a review tells you a device cured someone’s plantar fasciitis in two weeks, that is one person’s single timeline, not evidence the device caused it. As an example, most plantar fasciitis and other injuries improve with rest and time.

I am spending three paragraphs on this because the search results for this product are close to uniformly glowing and I think that is doing readers a disservice. What I can tell you is narrower and more useful: the published evidence for this specific intervention on this specific joint is reasonable, the wavelength Kineon chose is the one that performs best in that research, the device has not broken in nearly three years and I keep using it. Anytime I have a body part in pain or strain, I choose the Kineon as one of my recovery tools. Those are all checkable claims. “It healed me” is not.

One more thing in this vein. Kineon’s own marketing says customers report an 80 percent reduction in pain. Using it daily when you have chronic pain is different than using it for an acute flare up or injury.

What the Research Shows for Knee Osteoarthritis

Because I have a diagnosis rather than a vague ache, the osteoarthritis literature is the part I care about most. It is stronger than I expected and more qualified than the marketing suggests.

The most directly relevant trial is a 2025 double-blind randomized controlled study in Lasers in Medical Science, which put 65 people with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis into photobiomodulation, sham or no-treatment groups. Around 84 percent of the participants were women, which is unusual and makes the findings more applicable to many of the people who read this site. The treated group showed significant reductions in pain and improvements in stiffness and function. The sham and control groups did not move.

For a wider view, a 2025 network meta-analysis in PLoS One pooled 139 randomized trials covering 9,644 knee osteoarthritis patients across twelve different treatments. Low level laser therapy landed in the upper tier for pain both at rest and during activity. However, a knee brace, hydrotherapy and plain exercise all scored slightly better overall. Light therapy is a legitimate part of the conversation, but maybe not the best thing you can do for an arthritic knee. If you are choosing between this device and starting a structured strength training program, start with the training.

The wavelength detail is where Kineon earns some credit. A 2023 trial in Scientific Reports compared 808nm against 660nm against a sham in knee osteoarthritis patients and found the 808nm group gained significantly more knee extensor strength than either. The 808nm laser diodes are exactly what this device uses, so the hardware matches the wavelength with the best joint data rather than the wavelength that is cheapest to build.

Kineon’s own site leans on an unnamed 2019 meta-analysis and so do several of the reviews ranking for this device, so it is worth saying which paper that is and what it found. It is a 2019 systematic review in BMJ Open pooling 22 placebo-controlled trials and 1,063 knee osteoarthritis patients. Pain was meaningfully lower than placebo at the end of treatment and stayed lower at follow-up, with the effect peaking two to four weeks after treatment stopped and the benefit held for wavelengths between 785 and 860nm, a window that includes the 808nm Kineon uses.

Two things the brand does not mention when it cites this paper: it opens by noting that laser therapy is not recommended in the major knee osteoarthritis treatment guidelines and it has since been superseded in scope by the 2025 analysis of 139 trials I described above. The finding is real but not the most recent.

On the training side, a 2021 meta-analysis in Sports Health pulled together 24 randomized trials in athletes and found that laser therapy applied before exercise improved lower limb strength at 24, 48 and 96 hours and even at eight weeks, alongside lower creatine kinase and interleukin-6. Worth knowing if you lift and worth noting that the benefit showed up when the light came before the session rather than after.

Now the honest counterweight. A 2024 review in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology looked specifically at acute and subacute injury and concluded that results for deeper tissue damage are inconsistent, partly because laser settings vary so much between studies that comparing them is difficult. Surface wound healing and pre-exercise conditioning have better support than treating a fresh muscle tear. Which is just to say that using it for the hamstring thing I did in January 2025 is the least evidence-backed way I use this device.

The gap in the research that affects women like me

Joint pain during the menopausal transition is common and badly served. A 2024 cohort study in Pain followed 609 women through the transition and found that musculoskeletal pain rose in both prevalence and severity as they progressed, with the late transition acting as a trigger point for new pain. A 2024 review in Maturitas from a Mayo Clinic team goes further, linking falling estrogen to joint stiffness, cartilage changes and greater susceptibility to osteoarthritis itself. So this is not aging generally and it is not imagination.

What does not exist, as far as I can find, is a single photobiomodulation trial in perimenopausal or postmenopausal women looking at hormonally driven joint pain. That is a real hole. Everything I described above is extrapolated from mixed or general populations.

I am a NASM certified personal trainer and I have written about health for two decades, but I am not a physician and none of this is medical advice for your knee. If you have joint pain that has not been looked at, get it imaged before you buy equipment for it.

How I Have Used It Since December 2023

The photo below is from January 11, 2024, about a month after the device arrived. You can see the older buckle strap and the pink glow of the red LEDs at skin level, with the laser diodes doing the work you cannot see.

Where the modules go on my knee

Since people ask, here is the placement in that photo. One module sits directly over the medial joint line on the inside of the knee, which is where my osteoarthritis is and where it hurts. The second sits over the lateral joint line on the outside. The third goes just above the kneecap over the quad tendon, or just below it over the patellar tendon if that is what is complaining that week. The strap runs behind the knee, snug enough that nothing slides when I bend it. I keep the modules on bare skin, not over leggings, because the whole point of a wearable is that the light sits at skin level.

My pattern has stayed roughly the same ever since. Every evening when the knee is complaining, less when it is quiet. I use the fifteen minute setting almost always, on bare skin rather than over clothing, strapped tight enough that the modules do not slide when I shift on the couch.

The timing is the whole reason I still use it. It is part of my evening wind down, alongside the rest of my devices like my vagus nerve stimulator and my compression boots. If I had to give it a dedicated slot in my schedule I wouldn’t use it nearly as much just due to convenience. Always habit stacking for the win!

The shot above is from August 2024 and the one below is October 2024, a close look at a single module lifted off the strap. That detachability matters more than I expected. A wrist or an ankle does not need all three modules wrapped around it, and being able to pull one off and hold it against a smaller joint has come in useful more than once.

The knee that has the diagnosis

The osteoarthritis is what I bought this for. It flares occasionally, sometimes with a reason and sometimes seemingly out of the blue. The photo below is February 2025, on the arthritic knee, more than a year into ownership.

My subjective results: on the evenings I use it, my knee feels looser afterwards and I sleep without noticing it. Whether that is the light, the fifteen minutes of sitting still, the warmth or all three together, I cannot separate. I have kept doing it for nearly three years, which tells you something about how I weigh the cost against the uncertainty, but it is obviously not conclusive proof that it works.

I have also used it on both knees at once by extending the strap, and on a shoulder when overhead pressing volume catches up with me. The shoulder fit is the weakest of the three. A shoulder is not a cylinder, so positioning takes fussing and the modules drift during a session in a way they never do on a knee.

Durability After Nearly Three Years

This is the part of a Kineon review you cannot get from a thirty day test and it is where I have the most useful thing to say.

• All three modules still work. None has ever failed, dimmed or needed replacing.
• No battery degradation I can detect. A charge still carries me through several sessions the way it did in early 2024.
• The strap, the velcro and the buckle have held. No fraying, no loosening, nothing stretched out.
• The travel case and its zips are intact.
• I have never contacted support, because I have never needed to.

That matters specifically because if you go read the public reviews of the earlier MOVE+, the recurring complaints are batteries draining while the unit sits unused and individual modules dying. Those are the exact two failures I have not had. I am one owner and one unit, so this is not a reliability study, but it is a data point from the longest window anyone reviewing this device is working with, and it points the opposite way from the loudest criticism.

The build quality reads as appropriate for the money. The modules feel solid, the strap is sturdy without being stiff and the hard case means it survives being thrown in a suitcase, which mine has been several times.

Kineon Compared to My Sauna and My Theragun

I own all three, so this is a comparison I can make from the same body rather than from spec sheets.

If I could keep only one for general health it would be the sauna and the research base there is broader than for anything else on this list. I have written about that separately in my guide to infrared sauna benefits. But the sauna takes longer and it’s more of a commitment. On a Tuesday after work and lifting and dinner, I don’t necessarily feel like doing that, but I can easily strap something to my knee while I sit or lie down.

The Theragun does a different job well. It puts mechanical pressure into tight muscle. It does nothing for the inside of an arthritic joint, which is the thing I have. They are not competitors and I use both.

For one targeted joint, the Kineon is the one I would keep. The reasons are boring but real: the research supports it, it’s easy to use and I do notice a difference in the way my knee feels when I use it.

What It Costs, Including the HSA and FSA Angle

The MOVE+ is usually 499 dollars against a 699 dollar list price.

It is HSA and FSA eligible when you buy direct from Kineon. If you have either account, this comes out of pre-tax money, which depending on your bracket is a meaningful discount that costs you nothing to claim. For a lot of people who read this site that changes the math more than any promo code would. It does not apply if you buy through a marketplace, so buy direct if you intend to use those funds.

Spread across nearly three years of ownership my cost per session is now in the low single digits of dollars and still falling. Set that against what I would otherwise spend on the same knee. A chiropractic visit or a physical therapy session for an arthritic knee runs well into the tens or low hundreds of dollars in most of the country, cryotherapy sessions are priced per visit and long term anti-inflammatory use carries its own risks to the gut and the cardiovascular system that I would rather not accumulate in my fifties.

If the device spares you even a handful of paid appointments a year, the math works. If you would not have booked those appointments anyway, it does not, and you should not talk yourself into the purchase on hypothetical savings.

There is also a sequencing point I would make to a coaching client before a sale. If your protein intake is not sorted, you are not lifting, your sleep is poor or you have never had the knee looked at, a 499 dollar light is the wrong next purchase. Those things move an arthritic joint more than any device will. Creatine costs a fraction of this and has better evidence behind it for women in midlife. Get the foundation in place, then add tools.

What about the cheap knee wraps on Amazon

This is the fair question and I want to answer it properly rather than wave it away, because you can buy a red light knee wrap for 40 to 80 dollars and the listings look similar enough at a glance. I have not tested any of them, so what follows is a specification comparison and not a verdict from use.

The consistent difference is that the budget wraps are LED only. They pair a red wavelength around 660nm with a near-infrared LED around 850nm. Many of them don’t even use the right (studied) wavelength.

Kineon runs 660nm LEDs alongside ten actual 808nm laser diodes per module. That distinction is the whole reason I would still choose it for an arthritic knee and it is not marketing on my part: the trial in Scientific Reports I cited earlier is the one that put 808nm ahead of 660nm for knee extensor strength and laser light behaves differently from LED light at depth even at the same nominal wavelength.

What I would not tell you is that a cheap wrap does nothing. The honest framing is that you are paying Kineon for depth of penetration into a joint capsule, a strap system that survived nearly three years of my use and a company that answers the phone. If your problem is surface level soreness rather than something inside the joint, maybe that premium is harder to justify.

The other thing worth weighing is the guarantee and the warranty. Kineon refunds inside 30 days if you have used it daily for three to four weeks, five to fifteen minutes per area and see no improvement. The hardware carries a one year warranty and the company offers support for the life of the device. Most marketplace sellers give you a return window that closes long before any light therapy protocol has had time to show whether it works, and no warranty worth the name. If you are uncertain whether you respond at all, that difference is worth more than it looks.

Who Should Buy It and Who Should Not

Worth considering if

• You have diagnosed knee osteoarthritis or a joint that flares predictably and you want a drug free option to add to what you are already doing.
• You lift and your joints are asking for more attention than they did ten years ago.
• You are in the menopausal transition and joint stiffness has become a regular feature rather than an occasional one.
• You have bought recovery tools before and abandoned them because they demanded too much setup.
• You have HSA or FSA funds sitting there, which changes the real price.
• You are willing to use it consistently for six to eight weeks before deciding, which is roughly the window the trials use.

Skip it if

• You want something that works in one session. That is not what the research describes and it is not what happened to me.
• Strength training, protein and sleep are not yet in place. Fix those first, they matter more.
• Your joint pain has never been assessed by a clinician. Get imaging before equipment.
• You have severe arthritis that needs medical management, where this is at best an adjunct.
• The 499 dollars would hurt. There is no version of this that is worth financial strain.
• You want whole body coverage, in which case a panel or a sauna suits you better than a joint wrap.

How I Keep This Review Current

I’ve had this device since December 2023 and I have used the same unit since, which is why the photos here are dated across 2024 and 2025 rather than staged in one afternoon.

I check the specifications and the price against Kineon’s own product page whenever I update this, because both have moved since I bought mine and the product name has changed once already. I will note it here if a module ever fails, because a durability claim is only worth anything if I am willing to update it when it stops being true. And where I have not tested something myself, such as the current Strap 3.0, I say so rather than describing it as though I had.

Where I land

4.4 out of 5. The hardware has earned that: nearly three years, zero failures, and a wavelength choice that matches the best available joint research rather than the cheapest build. It loses the rest to a limitation that is not Kineon’s fault, which is that neither they nor I can prove to you what it did for my knee and to a 499 dollar entry price you have to commit before you know whether you respond.

If you have an arthritic knee, you intend to keep training on it for another few decades and you know yourself well enough to know you will only use a recovery tool that fits into sitting down in the evening, this is the one I would point you to.