Best Heating Pads for Achy Muscles

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By Korin Miller

Maybe you overdid it in the gym yesterday. Or a long car trip or restless night left you with a lower back ache. If you’re dealing with muscle soreness or stiffness, a heating pad may help. (There are lots of other things you can try, as well, including OTC pain relievers, icing the area and simply resting, though if at-home remedies don’t help, have a talk with your doctor.)

There’s a surprisingly large range of options when it comes to choosing a heating pad. We assessed a dozen popular models with various bells and whistles to find the best ones. Our top pick, the Pure Enrichment PureRelief XL Heating Pad, offers an array of convenient features, including six different heat settings and an automatic shut-off option, while still being easy to use—no need to pore over the instruction booklet when you want some quick relief for a sore neck.

$35 at Amazon

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The Pure Enrichment PureRelief XL Heating Pad has six heat settings (only one other pad in our tests offered that many) and is one of the easiest to use right out of the box—the controller’s buttons are intuitive enough that you don’t need to read the instructions. At 12 by 24 inches, it’s the ideal size to wrap around your lower back or drape over your shoulders, making it a versatile heating pad for people who experience soreness in different areas. You can keep the heating pad continuously running or use the two-hour automatic shut-off option, a useful feature that not all pads offer.

Electric heating pads tend to warm up faster than their microwaveable and cordless counterparts (our recommendations for those types are below). The PureRelief XL reached a temperature of 106 degrees in one minute, making it the second-fastest-heating pad we tested (and the fastest at a moderate price point). That’s notable because while any temperature over body temperature (98-ish degrees, depending on the person) might feel soothing, you really need to hit temperatures of 105 degrees or more to relax sore muscles, says Bryant Walrod, M.D., a sports medicine physician at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. You also need time for the heat to work, and plug-ins like the PureRelief XL do a better job of maintaining a consistent temperature than cordless versions or those you heat in the microwave, he says.

One slight downside to the PureRelief XL: It doesn’t come with any kind of strap to secure it to your body, as many pads do. Still, because of its relatively large size, it’s easy to drape over your shoulders or hold it in place on your back by leaning against a chair.

$80 at Homedics

If the place you like to sit and relax while you apply heat isn’t near an electrical outlet—or if you prefer not to sit at all—a cordless pad may be for you. Homedics’s Cordless Body Wrap straps onto your torso or your legs and arms so you can wear it and still move around freely. Its relatively flat, squarish shape means it fits nicely against your lower or upper back, but it isn’t as easy to drape over your neck or shoulders.

This heating pad warms up fairly fast, reaching 102 degrees in one minute (and continuing to climb after that). But keep in mind, first you have to fully charge it, which takes several hours. Once charged, it runs for up to an hour before needing a recharge.

The Homedics has a massage function, as well, which you can use with or without heat. That’s a nice feature; however, you might find that you’re aware of the massage nodules even when not in use. (In our tests, we found this to be minor—the massagers didn’t cause discomfort, they just made the pad feel less cushy than others we tested.)

$20 at Amazon

A microwavable heating pad gives you the convenience of going cordless, and the only thing you need to do to “charge” it is put it in the microwave. The Huggaroo Original Microwavable Heating Pad is plush and comfortable and is especially useful for your upper body: It’s shaped like a short, collared cape, so it drapes easily over your shoulders and hugs the back of your neck. It weighs 3.5 pounds, and that heft makes it feel like a miniature weighted blanket, adding a soothing pressure to the heat it delivers. While there’s no strap to secure the heating pad around your body, the weight of the pad helps keep it in place.

The Huggaroo needed more than the recommended 90 seconds in the microwave to get hot enough for use. In our tests, where we heated the pad at maximum power, at 90 seconds, it was still below 100 degrees, but at 120 seconds, it had reached 110. Plus, once it got hot enough, it retained its heat for 20 minutes, longer than most microwavable pads we tested. The pad has two other nice perks: It gives off a subtle lavender scent, and you have the option of freezing it so it can serve as a cooling pack.

$249 at Hyperice

The Hyperice Venom Back is an investment at $199, but it made our list—particularly for those with lower back pain or stiffness—for its combination of high heat, compression and three different vibration patterns. The pad is cordless and uses Velcro for a secure fit, so it’s easy to wear as you move around the house. You can position the heating source and the massagers directly on the achy areas of your back and make it as snug as you like. This pad gets hot very quickly, reaching 110 degrees in one minute—the highest temperature in a minute among all our tested pads and a speed you’d expect from an electric heating pad, though this one’s cordless.

Using the Venom Back does require some ramp-up time. For one thing, the digital touch screen on the device’s front is more complicated to operate than the typical push-button controls of other heating pads. Plus, the instructions state that it needs six hours to fully charge (in our testtets, we found that to be accurate—as well as a little frustrating). A bonus for travelers: Included plug adapters ensure you can use it abroad.

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At 17 by 33 inches and with a price tag of only $28, this is a lot of heating pad for the money. The Homech pad is by far the largest of those we tested—nearly half again as large as our 12-by-24-inch top pick. That makes it ideal for use on large areas like the back, pelvis and legs, though its somewhat stiff construction makes it trickier to bend around smaller areas like the neck and shoulders. The Homech pad reached 104 degrees in one minute, offers six levels of heat and has a two-hour auto shut-off capability.

There are a few heating pads that are popular but didn’t make the final cut.

The microwavable Lavabag Original, so named because it’s filled with lava sand, feels somewhat heavy to hold considering its petite size, 7 by 11 inches. Still, it would work fine for neck pain, or aches in small areas of your back or pelvis. It doubles as an ice pack and holds heat well. It takes time to heat up. After 90 seconds, it had only reached 100 degrees—warm, but not quite toasty enough for pain relief.

Sunbeam’s Neck Renue heating pad has a mock turtleneck-like shape that contours around your neck and shoulder and a magnetic closure to help secure it. The fabric is soft and comfortable, and you can flip through four levels of heat. However, it’s a better fit for people with broader necks and shoulders—it’s so roomy that smaller-framed users will need to push it around to actually have the pad touch the areas they want targeted.

Sharper Image’s Infrared Heating Pad looks like a small, slightly fuzzy blanket. The pad uses Far Infrared Ray, or FIR, heat, which is a low-voltage heating system that doesn’t feel hot to the touch. In our tests, it simply didn’t get hot enough. People used to more traditional heating pads and their more obvious heating output may easily get frustrated with this one.

I’ve been a health reporter for 19 years for publications including Forbes, Prevention and Women’s Health and have interviewed a range of experts on topics surrounding aches and pains, muscle soreness, pain relief and pain management. I’ve also personally used heating pads for years during pregnancies and for relief of low back pain, as well as worked with several physical therapists who use heating pads as part of their therapy, to help warm up muscles.

For expert advice on the best models for every category of heating pad, I consulted three sports medicine physicians, two pain management experts and a physical therapist. They offered their opinions on what to look for in a heating pad, and why it matters.

We looked at three main factors for choosing a high-quality heating pad:

In our product tests, we heated the pads on maximum power, testing their temperature after one minute (or, per the product instructions for some microwavable pads, 90 seconds). We then assessed the feel of the heating pads on the shoulders and neck, lower back, pelvis, and quads for 20 minutes at a time, paying attention to how comfortable they were, how easy the controls were to use and whether the pads stayed in place during gentle movement.

To track down the best heating pads, we first looked at the most popular options on the market at major online retailers and product review sites. We eliminated models with bad consumer reviews, along with ones that had relatively high price tags considering how many (or few) extra features they offered. We arrived at a list of 12 heating pads for in-person testing to come up with our top five recommendations.