Review on electro pulse massager-stimulator-accupancture Sunmas SM9187

I've had this unit for very long time, but only found some time a few days ago to test it and dissect the quality.

Original Chinese/HK manufacturers normally call those as Wireless Tens  Massager. I'm not sure if they realize where the name comes from. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a therapy that uses electrical pulses to stimulate nerves and have muscle reaction to it. It is not only good for working out weak and lazy muscles (including our fat bellies) but it has some interesting and well studied, but yet mysterious reaction of certain body parts and even remedy for some viruses.

Normally such devises rely on short electric pulses, discharged between two or more electrodes. Pulses can vary from 25V to all the way of 60  or more volts. Electrodes normally attached to human body to various parts. Electric discharge can be in different shapes and pulses can be from very short (a few milliseconds) to seconds or more. Also duration of those pulses can vary too.

I will write longer article about this subject, but in this material we will only touch base on the Sunmas SM 9187

The size of this unit is very small: 58mm diameter and about 15mm height. It has only one button to turn it on and the rest of manipulations has to be done by cellphone application, connected to it.

For some reason Sunma (and Chinese market) doesn't pay attention on most advantages paths of development in the Electrical Pulse stimulation. They still packing wired and old approach.

I think the Bluetooth or any other wireless via cell phones or computers is the best and most convenient approach for such application.

Last Spring Canton Fair had many manufacturers (including Japanese), who paid very serious attention on this technical approach.

Unfortunately they all jump in to Iphone/Ipad bandwagon. where as most of customer market is in Android segment.

For a while this unit was sitting in my storage because originally the Android soft was not existent for this model, but I was promised by manufacturer it will be available soon.

And they finally made Android application for it.

It took me just a few minutes to install and start using it. The only serious problem is with Chinese approach using "public" services to store and distribute their applications. I spent almost 20 minutes to find another way to download .apk NOT FROM Google play.

Application is very simple to use and English language is very clear to understand. It has a few interesting settings, which I will explore soon.

As usual, my next step was to explore what's inside that model.

180mAh Li-po battery should be ok for a few hours of usage.

Although I have my own opinion on the battery size and usage.

PCBA is very clean and nicely developed for the round shape

On and off button is electronic and that brings up important issue: user MUST charge it every month to make sure it won't be discharged to 0.

I will be testing it more and possibly update this article.

Conclusion: I have used many different Electric Pulse Massages/Acupuncture/Simulators. This one as close as it gets to what I would call "perfect design".

I have a few suggestions for future improvements, which I'm willing to share with design community.

After using it for 3 months, the battery life became very bad! I can only have 2-3 minutes normal working time out it!