Cryo Dry Float Bed vs Electric Cryotherapy Chamber: What's the Difference?
Cold recovery has come a long way from a wheelie bin full of ice. Two of the machines you'll see marketed side by side today are the cryo dry float bed and the electric whole-body cryotherapy chamber. They both trade on the word "cryo," they both promise recovery, and to anyone comparing brochures they can look like variations on the same idea.
They aren't. They cool your body in completely different ways, at completely different temperatures, and they deliver completely different experiences. If you're deciding what to book in for, or what to put on the floor of a studio, it's worth understanding what actually separates them.
What is a cryo dry float bed?
A cryo dry float bed is, at its core, a chilled waterbed you don't get wet in.
You lie down fully clothed on top of a sealed, waterproof membrane. Beneath that membrane sits a tank of water — often well over 100 litres — connected to a chiller unit. As the platform lowers, the membrane wraps around your body and you float, supported evenly from head to toe. It's designed to feel weightless, like a float tank, but without the salt, the shower, or the getting undressed.
For a cold session, the chiller drops the water to a working temperature of roughly 4–6°C. Because your skin is in contact with the cooled membrane rather than plunged into liquid, the cold transfers gradually through conduction. Many of these beds are dual-purpose: warm the water instead and the same unit becomes a relaxation float for a longer, gentler session.
So the honest summary is this: a cryo dry float bed is a horizontal, low-intensity, contact-cooling device built around comfort and weightlessness. Its cold end sits in the same temperature ballpark as a cold plunge — just dry, and far more relaxing to lie in.
What is an electric whole-body cryotherapy chamber?
An electric whole-body chamber works on an entirely different principle: refrigerated air, not chilled water.
You step in and stand upright while the chamber surrounds your body with sub-zero air, chilled well below −80°C by an electric refrigeration system — no liquid nitrogen involved. The cold reaches your whole body at once through convection, and because the air is so much colder than anything a water-based system can safely deliver, the session is short and deliberate: usually two to three minutes.
That temperature gap is the whole story. A dry float bed cools you to a few degrees above freezing. An electric chamber surrounds you with air more than eighty degrees below zero. These are not two settings on the same dial — they're two different categories of cold.
The core difference in one sentence
A cryo dry float bed lays you down and gently draws heat out of you through a cold membrane. An electric chamber stands you up and surrounds your entire body in deep sub-zero air for a short, bracing hit.
Everything else — the posture, the session length, the sensation, the footprint — follows from that.
Temperature and intensity
This is where the two genuinely part ways.
Cryo dry float bed: working temperature around 4–6°C. Cold, but survivable for extended contact. The experience is calming rather than shocking.
Electric chamber: refrigerated air well below −80°C. The point is a short, intense, whole-body exposure that your body registers immediately.
Neither is "better" in the abstract — but if what you're after is genuine whole-body cold exposure, only one of these is actually delivering it. A float bed at 5°C is a comfortable dry cold-water experience. It is not the same stimulus as standing in air at minus eighty-something.
The experience
The two feel almost opposite.
A dry float bed is a lie-down, switch-off experience. You're supported, weightless, and still. Cold sessions are gentle enough to hold for several minutes, and the warm float mode is built for deep relaxation over half an hour or more. People reach for it for calm, rest, and downtime.
An electric chamber is a stand-up, switch-on experience. It's brief, alert, and invigorating by design. You're in, you're surrounded by cold air, you're out in a couple of minutes, and you tend to walk away buzzing rather than sleepy.
Session length and turnover
For a business, this matters as much as the physiology.
A cold session in a float bed runs a few minutes, but a warm relaxation float can run 30 to 90 minutes — and the chiller needs time to bring a large volume of water to temperature between very different modes. It's a slower, more indulgent format.
An electric chamber runs on two-to-three-minute sessions with quick reset between clients. It's built for throughput: more bodies through the door per hour, which changes the maths on a busy studio floor.
Practical and operational differences
If you're kitting out a space rather than just booking a session, a few things separate them:
Water vs no water. A dry float bed carries a large volume of water that has to be chilled, held at temperature, and maintained. An electric chamber is a dry-air system — nothing to fill, chill, or manage.
Posture and footprint. A float bed is a long horizontal unit plus a separate chiller. A chamber is an upright footprint you can tuck into a corner of a recovery zone.
Hygiene. Both avoid the shared-immersion problem of a traditional plunge — the float bed keeps you dry on a membrane, the chamber never involves water at all.
Running profile. A water-based system spends energy heating and cooling a heavy tank, plus filtration and disinfection; an electric air chamber is refrigeration-driven with no water to treat. (More on the money side below.)
What does each one cost?
This is the question most buyers get to eventually, and it's worth being straight about: the two machines overlap on price more than you'd expect.
KRYO KUBE's electric commercial chambers start from A$45,000. That buys a true electric whole-body system — refrigerated sub-zero air, no liquid nitrogen, no water tank.
Dry float beds are harder to pin down, because most sell on a request-a-quote basis rather than a published price. But industry figures put established, branded dry floatation beds at roughly US$17,000–$25,000 — which lands somewhere around A$25,000–$37,000 once converted, before you add shipping, import duty and GST. Budget imported units can sit below that; premium dual-temperature systems that run both hot and cold through a full chiller climb to the top of that band or beyond, landing close to — or above — a chamber by the time freight and taxes are in.
So sticker-for-sticker, a dry float bed isn't automatically cheaper or dearer. Depending on the tier, it can come in under, level with, or over an electric chamber. Which is exactly why price on its own is the wrong thing to compare. The better question is what the money actually buys you:
Intensity per dollar. A chamber delivers genuine whole-body sub-zero cold. A dry float bed delivers a 4–6°C dry cold experience. For similar money, one is a far stronger cold stimulus than the other.
Revenue per hour. Two-to-three-minute chamber sessions with quick turnover move more paying clients through the same floor space than 30–60-minute float sessions. Across a busy day, that gap adds up fast.
Cost to run, not just to buy. A dry float bed carries 400–500 litres of water that has to be chilled, held at temperature, filtered and disinfected — ongoing power, consumables and upkeep. An electric chamber is a dry-air system: no water to treat, no filter cartridges, no tank to manage.
The short version: a chamber and a bed can cost about the same to put on the floor — but they don't cost the same to run, and they don't earn the same per hour.
So which one is right?
It depends entirely on what you're actually trying to offer.
Choose a cryo dry float bed if your priority is relaxation, weightlessness, and a gentle, dry alternative to a cold plunge — a calm, lie-down experience with the option to run warm floats as well.
Choose an electric whole-body chamber if your priority is genuine deep-cold, whole-body exposure delivered in a fast, repeatable, high-turnover format — the real sub-zero stimulus, not a chilled-water stand-in.
They can even coexist. A float bed for wind-down and an electric chamber for the hard cold hit are complementary, not competing, in a well-designed recovery space.
But if someone's told you a chilled-water float bed is whole-body cryotherapy, now you know the honest answer: it's a lovely dry cold-water experience — and it's a different machine to a chamber that surrounds your whole body in sub-zero air.
About KRYO KUBE
KRYO KUBE builds Australia's first 100% electric whole-body cryotherapy chambers — no liquid nitrogen, no water tanks, just refrigerated sub-zero air and a footprint designed for real recovery spaces. If you're weighing up cold-recovery options for a studio, clinic, or home setup, we're happy to talk through what actually fits your space and your clientele.