AYO+ Light Therapy Glasses Review: Lab Tested (2026)

My verdict

AYO+

The AYO+ is the pair of light therapy glasses I actually keep using. It’s light, comfortable, easy to see out of, and delivered about 1,000 lux melanopic EDI on high at my eye. It also comes with the best free app in the category. Buy it for the blue light and the portability. The red light is a nice extra, not red light therapy.

• Pro: Light (34g) and comfortable, even on a wide head
• Pro: The easiest light therapy glasses I’ve worn to see out of
• Pro: A real circadian dose: 511 to 1,011 lux melanopic EDI at my eye
• Pro: Full output with your glasses worn over it
• Pro: Free app with no subscription, plus a fully customizable Biohacker mode
• Pro: USB-C and about a week of sessions per charge
• Pro: Used in a new 182-person study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology

• Con: $299 is a lot for a light therapy device
• Con: The red light is far too weak to count as red light therapy
• Con: Lower brightness settings flicker more (still inside the IEEE 1789 no-risk zone)
• Con: Not for driving or very dark rooms

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See the lab results

Blue, high · measured Sep 26, 2026

1,011m-EDI

Melanopic EDI

113lux

Brightness

2.99%

Flicker

Spectrum

10

463 nm

400450500550600650700750

Wavelength (nm)

Spectrum chart. AYO+, melanopic DER 9.03.

Flicker

01

020406080100

Time (ms)

Chart by time. AYO+.

I’ve owned several pairs of AYO glasses over the last few years, and the AYO+ is the one that lives in my travel bag. I wanted to know how much light it really puts into your eye, so I measured it on a spectrometer headform built from a scan of my own head.

It holds up. If you want to see how it ranks against the rest, my best light therapy glasses guide has the full field.

AYO+ Specs at a Glance

These are the numbers people ask about most. Anything marked “measured” came off my own bench or scale.

What It’s Like to Wear Every Day

I have a wide head. Most glasses-style gadgets leave me with a sore spot above the ears within 20 minutes.

The AYO+ doesn’t. I’ve worn it for 30-minute sessions for years with no temple pressure, and the adjustable nose piece lets it sit where it’s comfortable instead of where the frame wants it.

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The Circadian Blueprint covers setting your body clock with light — the timing, the doses, and which products actually deliver them. Every number came off my own spectrometer.

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Can you see through them?

Yes, and this is the AYO+’s real advantage for me. It’s the easiest light therapy glasses I’ve worn to see out of.

Narrowband blue is less glaring than the white light some glasses use, and less distracting than the turquoise-green of others. I work at a laptop, read and make coffee in them without thinking about it.

There is one situation where they struggle: a very dark room before sunrise. With the light shining at your eyes, your night vision is gone, so turn a lamp on first. That’s true of every pair of light therapy glasses I’ve tried.

Don’t drive in them. If you want light therapy on your commute, the Luminette Drive is built for that job.

Build quality and the two colors

I’ve had multiple pairs over a few years and haven’t broken one. I’ve seen people online say theirs snapped. I can’t tell you why, but opening the arms gently seems like cheap insurance.

The Carbon Black costs $20 more than the White/Blue. I like the look of it better, but that’s the only difference.

Can you wear AYO+ over glasses?

Yes, and the order matters. Put the AYO+ on first and your glasses over it. The light reaches your eye without passing through your lens, and on my headform the output didn’t change.

The other way round costs you. Worn over a pair of completely clear glasses, the AYO+ has to shine through the lens, and melanopic EDI fell from 1,011 to 418 lux. That’s a 59% drop.

If you do wear it over your glasses, never over blue blockers or tinted lenses. The AYO+ puts nearly all its light right where those lenses block it, so you’d be cancelling the session out.

How Much Light Actually Reaches Your Eye

Measured with a plain lux meter, the AYO+ on high reads 113 lux. That number is almost meaningless for these glasses.

To get the real dose, I put the AYO+ on a headform that’s a 3D print of my own head, with a calibrated spectrometer sitting where my eye would be. That tells you what reaches the eye, not what leaves the LED.

Why lux undersells it

The AYO+ emits narrowband blue light peaking at 463nm. The lux scale is built around how bright light looks to you, and your eyes barely register 463nm as bright.

Your circadian system is a different story. Melanopsin, the photopigment that sets your body clock, is most sensitive right around 480nm. That’s why melanopic EDI, the metric that tracks it, comes out about 9x higher than lux on the AYO+.

A single narrow peak at 463nm. Almost no visible “brightness”, plenty of circadian signal.

Melanopic EDI by setting

Here’s what I measured at each preset:

• Low (50%): 511 lux melanopic EDI · 56 lux · 88 µW/cm²
• Medium (70%): 717 lux melanopic EDI · 79 lux · 123 µW/cm²
• High (100%): 1,011 lux melanopic EDI · 113 lux · 173 µW/cm²

Even the low setting clears the 250 lux daytime minimum by a wide margin.

For context, a 2022 expert consensus recommends at least 250 lux melanopic EDI at the eye during the day.^[1] The AYO+ clears that on its lowest preset.

Your face isn’t my face

Every at-eye number here comes from one face: mine. Your nose bridge and how deep your eyes sit change how much of the beam lands in your pupil, so your dose could be higher or lower.

AYO’s app lists 1,400 m-EDI at 100%. I measured 1,011 on my rig. That gap is what different faces and measurement setups produce. It doesn’t mean either number is wrong.

Is AYO as strong as a 10,000 lux light box?

AYO compares its output to a 10,000 lux light box. I wouldn’t lean on that comparison in either direction.

A typical white 10,000 lux box delivers more melanopic light than the AYO+. But lux-to-lux comparisons don’t hold for narrowband light, and the AYO+ works at close range while you walk around, which a light box can’t.

If you’re home every morning with 20 free minutes, a light box is the better value. The best SAD lamps I’ve tested are here.

Flicker

The AYO+ dims with PWM at 2,000 Hz. At full power the modulation is only 3%, but it climbs as you dim: 33% at 70% and 55% at 50%.

Nearly flat at full power, heavily modulated at half. Both at 2,000 Hz.

At 2,000 Hz, all three settings sit inside the IEEE 1789 no-risk zone, so this isn’t a health concern. If you’re flicker-sensitive, run it at 100% and shorten the session instead of dimming.

The AYO App (and Why There’s No Button)

There isn’t a single button on the AYO+. You open the arms, it turns on and runs a default session.

That’s enough if you just want light. Everything else, from brightness to session length to red light, lives in the free AYO app. There’s no subscription, and nothing is paywalled.

From the home screen you set intensity (10 to 100%), duration (5 to 90 minutes) and whether red light is on. Pairing has never given me trouble, and the app shows the battery level, which is how I know when to charge before a trip.

The circadian plan

Below the controls, the app builds a daily plan around your wake time: when to get light, when to eat, when to stop caffeine. It pulls sleep data from Apple Health if you connect it. I didn’t see a Google Fit option.

If you already know your circadian timing cold, you won’t need it. If you’re still learning, this is a genuinely good coach, and it’s free with the glasses.

Habit reminders and Discover

The “fine-tune” section turns goals into reminders: sleep, winter blues, energy and metabolism. Pick one and the app schedules nudges like a morning session or an evening wind-down.

It’s a habit builder more than a program, and I think that’s the right call. Consistency is what makes light therapy work, and most people need the nudge.

Red Light and Biohacker Mode

AYO calls its red light phase “focused on ocular health.” That phrase comes from real research, so I measured it against the studies it points to.

First, what the modes do.

Red light

Red light can run on its own or as a short phase after a blue session. I measured it at 675nm.

A narrow peak at 675nm with essentially no melanopic content.

It has almost zero effect on your circadian system: 0.3 lux melanopic EDI on high. That makes it a fine evening option, since it won’t push your body clock later.

Biohacker mode

Biohacker mode (the Custom button on the home screen) lets you build your own session in up to three stages. Each stage gets its own light type (blue, red or both), intensity and duration, and you can add a fade in and out of up to 30 seconds.

On trips, I usually run blue and red together at full power. Blue plus red measured 988 lux melanopic EDI, about the same as blue alone, since the red adds brightness but no circadian signal.

Here’s what that looks like on my spectrometer for those curious:

How strong is the red light?

The studies behind “ocular health” come from a University College London group. In one, a single 3-minute morning exposure to 670nm light at about 8 mW/cm² improved color contrast sensitivity in people aged 37 to 70 for about a week.^[2] An earlier study used about 40 mW/cm².^[3]

On high, the AYO+ red delivered 0.071 mW/cm² at my eye (380 to 780nm). That’s about 110x below the lower study dose.

AYO+ red on high versus the doses used in the 670nm eye studies. The AYO+ bar is barely visible at this scale.

So the AYO+ red light isn’t built to replicate those results, and I wouldn’t buy it expecting red light therapy. I like having it, and it does feel pleasant after a blue session. But I’d love to see a much stronger red mode in the next version.

How I Actually Use It: Travel and Jet Lag

At home, I don’t use the AYO+ much. I have bright lights and a routine, and that covers my mornings.

On the road it’s different. The AYO+ lives in my carry-on, and it’s the first thing I put on in a hotel room the morning after a flight. Friends have borrowed my spare pair for their own trips.

My routine is simple: full power, blue plus red, about 30 minutes right after waking at the destination. For me it makes waking up easier and helps me get onto local time faster.

It beats a light box for travel on every practical point. It’s 34 grams, charges over USB-C, and lasts about a week between charges. If you cross time zones often, my circadian rhythm guide covers how to time the light on each end of a trip.

For frequent travelers, this is the easiest recommendation in the category. Get the AYO+ here.

What the Research Says About AYO

AYO says its glasses have been used in more than 30 clinical trials. I went looking and found five studies that used AYO hardware and published results. Here’s what they show, strongest first.

The workplace study (2026)

The newest and largest is a 2026 paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology. 182 full-time employees wore AYO glasses for 30 minutes after waking for one work week at 100% intensity and one week at 1%, in random order.^[4]

Participants couldn’t tell the two settings apart, which makes the 1% week a real control. The study dose was 150 µW/cm², close to the 173 µW/cm² I measured on high.

On days after full-strength light, people reported about 11 more minutes of sleep and slightly better sleep quality. That fed into more alertness and less mental fatigue the next day, and better engagement at work. People who already had sleep problems benefited the most.

Two caveats: sleep and work outcomes were self-reported, and AYO donated half the glasses (the researchers bought the rest).

The submarine study (2024)

The U.S. Navy tested AYO glasses on submariners at sea, one of the most light-starved jobs there is. Crew wore AYO for about 40 minutes after waking and blue blockers for about 2 hours before sleep, for up to two weeks.^[5]

Compared with crew using nothing, they had better modeled performance (87% vs 83%) and faster modeled circadian adjustment. Sleep efficiency and total sleep trended better but didn’t reach significance. There was no placebo group, and the glasses were paired with blue blockers, so you can’t credit the AYO alone.

The sleep-stage study (2025)

A University of Arizona team compared blue AYO glasses with a red-light placebo version in 36 military service members, two weeks each, with sleep tracked every night by an at-home EEG headband.^[6]

Morning blue light cut time in the lightest sleep stages, increased the share of REM sleep, and got people into REM faster. Total sleep time didn’t change. This is a conference abstract, so treat it as early results.

The studies used roughly what the AYO+ delivers on high.

The trials that found little

Two smaller trials in clinical groups were less impressive. In women recovering from breast cancer surgery, four weeks of AYO light didn’t improve the main cognition score over a dim version, though participants reported fewer cognitive complaints.^[7]

In adults with fatigue, bright and dim AYO glasses lowered fatigue by about the same amount, which points to expectation doing some of the work.^[8]

Here’s the scorecard:

• Workplace (182 employees, dim-light control): better sleep, alertness and work engagement
• Navy submariners (42, no placebo): better modeled performance and circadian adjustment
• Military sleep study (36, red-light placebo): more REM, less light sleep
• Breast cancer recovery (117, dim control): main outcome null
• Fatigue (60, dim control): bright no better than dim

It’s real, independent research, but it’s five studies, not 30.

AYO+ vs AYOlite: What Changed

AYOlite was AYO’s cheaper, blue-only model. AYO doesn’t sell it anymore, and the Amazon US listing shows as unavailable, though a few European retailers still list leftover stock.

Here’s how the two compare. The AYOlite details come from retailer listings and owner reports, since I didn’t test one.

• Light: AYOlite is blue only (470nm). AYO+ adds red light and blue plus red.
• App: owners report the AYO app doesn’t work with the AYOlite. AYO+ has the full app, including Biohacker mode.
• Session length: AYOlite runs a fixed 20 minutes. AYO+ runs 5 to 90.
• Intensity: AYOlite has no adjustment. AYO+ goes from 10 to 100%.
• Charging: owners describe a magnetic charger on the AYOlite. AYO+ uses USB-C.
• Weight: AYOlite is listed at 35g. AYO+ measured 34g.
• Price: the AYOlite sold for about $100 less than the full AYO.

If you find an AYOlite on clearance, it’ll deliver blue light, but you give up the app, the adjustable sessions and the red light. For most people, the AYO+ is worth the difference.

Should You Buy the AYO+?

Buy it if you travel across time zones, find white light therapy harsh, or can’t sit at a light box in the morning. It’s the most comfortable and easiest-to-see-through pair I’ve worn, the dose is real, and the app does a good job of building the habit. Check the current price on the AYO+.

Skip it if you’re home every morning with 20 free minutes. A good light box delivers more light for less money. Skip it too if you wear blue blockers or tinted glasses, or if you want red light therapy. The red mode is too weak for that.

I’d buy it again. I just hope the next version puts real power behind the red light.

Light therapy glasses

AYO+

Light, comfortable, and the easiest light therapy glasses I’ve worn to see out of, with about 1,000 lux melanopic EDI on high at my eye and a genuinely good free app. The red light is too weak to be red light therapy. Wear your glasses over it, not under it. My pick for travel.

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Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Brown TM, Brainard GC, Cajochen C, et al. Recommendations for daytime, evening, and nighttime indoor light exposure to best support physiology, sleep, and wakefulness in healthy adults. PLoS Biology 2022;20(3):e3001571 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001571 ↩
2. Shinhmar H, Hogg C, Neveu M, Jeffery G. Weeklong improved colour contrasts sensitivity after single 670 nm exposures associated with enhanced mitochondrial function. Scientific Reports 2021;11:22872 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02311-1 ↩
3. Shinhmar H, Grewal M, Sivaprasad S, et al. Optically improved mitochondrial function redeems aged human visual decline. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A 2020;75(9):e49-e52 https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glaa155 ↩
4. Keeler KR, Barnes CM, Huang Y, Gunia BC, Moy JH. Rise and shine: Morning blue light exposure, sleep, and work. Journal of Applied Psychology 2026. Advance online publication https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001418 ↩
5. Chabal S, Moslener E, Markwald RR, Chinoy ED. Personal light treatment devices: a countermeasure to improve sleep, fatigue, and circadian misalignment in an operational setting. Sleep Advances 2024;6(1):zpae097 https://doi.org/10.1093/sleepadvances/zpae097 ↩
6. Killgore WDS, Franca G, Elali L, et al. 0887 Daily morning blue light exposure affects polysomnographic sleep in a real-world setting. Sleep 2025;48(Suppl 1):A385 https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsaf090.0887 ↩
7. Aspelund SG, Halldorsdottir T, Agustsson G, et al. The effects of light therapy on cognitive function and stress in women with breast cancer before systemic treatment. Cancer Medicine 2025;14(22):e71412 https://doi.org/10.1002/cam4.71412 ↩
8. Butler M, D’Angelo S, Ahn H, et al. A series of personalized virtual light therapy interventions for fatigue: feasibility randomized crossover trial for N-of-1 treatment. JMIR Formative Research 2023;7:e45510 https://doi.org/10.2196/45510 ↩