Collapsible Foot Spa with Heat, Bubbles & Massage — Folds Flat to Store, for Deep Relaxation and Soothing At-Home Soaks

A foot spa you do not have to find a home for

Most foot spas stop getting used long before they stop working. They are a bucket-sized box of plastic that has to live somewhere, and there is nowhere obvious to put one. So it goes in the back of a cupboard, and out of sight is out of use.

This one folds. The concertina walls compress and the whole tub drops to about the thickness of two hardback books, then slides under a sofa or a bed with the lid still on it. Nine inches tall for the twenty minutes you want it. Five for the rest of the week.

Everything else is what you came for: water it heats itself, bubble jets up the sole, a red light under the water, a pumice stone that lifts out of the floor. It plugs into an ordinary outlet.

The size, both of them

A collapsible tub has two sizes and quoting one is how people end up disappointed. Both of these come off the manufacturer's own dimension drawing.

Open: 19.2 in front to back, 15.7 in across, 9.2 in tall.
Folded: 5.1 in tall, on the same footprint.

Read the open figures in that order, because it matters. The 19.2 in is the depth — the direction your feet point — and it is the longest of the three. It is not the height. Listings that write the three numbers in a different order make this look like a nineteen-inch-tall bin, and it is not.

In practice, both adult feet sit side by side on the floor plate, and filled to a normal level the water covers the ankle bone. It stands on the floor in front of a chair; you do not need to lift a leg to get in.

Four models. Three different machines.

The model menu on this page used to mix a color, a control type and a massage mechanism into one line, which told you almost nothing. Here is what actually changes between them.

Short version: if you want the massage to do the work, that is the Purple. If you mainly want a warm soak with bubbles and you are happy to roll your own feet, any of the other three will do it, and the White is the one to pick if you would rather turn a knob than read a panel.

It heats the water. You do not carry a kettle.

There is a heating element in the base, so you fill it from the tap and let it come up rather than pouring in boiling water and watching it go cold. On the touch-panel models you set the target on the panel — anywhere from 95°F to 118°F — and it holds there for the session. The White dial model heats too, but there is no number to set.

Give it time from cold. This is a 500-watt element bringing a full tub up, not a kettle. Most people fill it warm from the tap and let the heater take it the rest of the way.

On the touch models the timer has six steps — 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 minutes. Set it and the session runs out on its own, which is the point: you are meant to stop thinking about it.

Bubbles, red light, and the stone in the floor

Bubble jets run up through the water against the sole — the fizzing, slightly ticklish sensation that makes a foot bath feel like more than a bowl of warm water. A red light sits under the waterline and glows through it.

A pumice stone is fitted into the floor plate for working at heels while they are soft, and it lifts out. On the roller models the massage bars and the plate they sit in come out too, which is what makes the inside of the tub something you can actually clean.

What it is for is simple enough: the end of a day spent standing. Warm water to the ankle, bubbles up the sole, twenty minutes off your feet. People use it to unwind after work or a workout, to ease tension in tired soles, to get warmth and circulation back into cold feet, and to settle down before bed.

Specifications