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Compex is a company that’s been around for about 30 or so years. They’re a company that is primarily known for being in the electro-stimulation space. Most prominently their TENS units are really popular. Compex is a company that’s a part of a larger brand called DJO Global. DJO Global is a company that does a lot in the occupational physical therapy space. They do a lot of orthopedic devices.
When I saw a lot of people in the YouTube comments asking me to review the Compex Fixx, I was excited because, I was familiar with the brand knowing that they’re, kind of in the medical space, expected to find a pretty quality product. I did order this directly from Compex, from their website. This device did ship from a warehouse in Texas, so it did not come from China. It wasn’t a long wait once I ordered it.
Needless to say, given the brand’s reputation, I’m a little bit surprised with the device, and I’ll get into that in a second, but let’s start by taking a look at what comes with the device out of the box and then I’ll get into some of the specs.
Out of the box, it does come with a case. Case is pretty standard, similar to any of the other massage guns I’ve reviewed. Does have a handle, kind of a rigid fabric lined case, rubber zipper here. Inside the case, you get a very small instruction manual. Inside the instruction manual, it does mention that they have a fully downloadable instruction manual as well. That gets a little bit more in depth. So if it is your first time using a massage gun, definitely check out these instructions. Also, in the case we have a wall charging cord which goes directly into the base charger, so it just plugs into the back and then you plug into the wall. It also has the battery that comes in the case, which is a removable battery. With your charger, you just plug it in the bottom here, plug it in the wall. It does have a light on it. When it’s charging, if the battery’s not charged, the light lights up in red. Once it’s fully charged, it changes to green.
That’s all that you get with the case. It is nice and convenient to be able to hold it, but there’s not a whole lot in there. In terms of keeping the charger with the gun, the case will help you do that. I did mention it does have a removable battery. To get the battery to pop in, it’s a really easy process. Just pop it in, stick it out. Really, really easy there. This device is a extremely low stall force, so those of you that have seen my other videos or have read my article on stall force, what that is is the amount of force you can apply to the device before it actually stops massaging or the motor stalls. This is maybe the lowest I’ve seen out of any of the massage guns I’ve tested, which was the first really surprising thing, knowing Compex and the brand, I was expecting something that I would really be able to get aggressive with and do a lot of things with, so that was a little disappointing to me.
Stall Force
I don’t see it published anywhere what the stall force is, but I would guess it’s maybe 20 pounds, maybe even less. I’m going to turn it on the lowest speed here and just show you what I’m talking about and then I’ll also show it on highest speed, but you’ll see that almost with minimal effort, I’m going to be able to get this to stop. So, I’m going to turn it on here on the lowest speed and just press my hand up against to it and see what happens. So this is the lowest speed, and I’m barely pressing on this. I’m going to go ahead and put it on the highest speed. Just for example, some people sometimes think that the higher speed has a higher stall force. So, you see there it’s stopping really easy.
The one thing I do like, I guess, the kind of silver lining with it is that when it does stall, as soon as I remove that force, it starts back up again. A lot of the devices that I reviewed previously with the low stall force, as soon as they stall, they shut off, and you actually have to turn the device back on. So one positive there, it does come right back on but in terms of being able to get aggressive at all with this, I really don’t see that I would be able to do with what I want, just talking, trying to massage here, even on my forearm, which I can apply a lot of force. So if it’s something you just want to let the weight of the gun … yeah, it’s nice but in terms of a deep tissue, you can’t really get that with this.
Stroke Length
Now in terms of a stroke length, the stroke length is the distance the massage head moves away from the device. You’re talking 16 millimeters here. So it’s pretty significant there. I do like ones with a longer stroke length. It does only come with one attachment. It comes with this ball attachment, which it is a removable attachment. I’ll try to show there’s kind of two little square nodes on here that line up with the backside of the ball, and you just press it in. It stays on, it’s sturdy, you can’t rotate it at all. From all I’ve found on their website and researching online, this is the only attachment that is available for this device at the moment. So it’s great that it’s removable, but I don’t really see why you would want to remove it if there’s no other attachments that you can put on.
One thing I will say is in the case, there are two foam cutouts here that look like maybe a wedge could fit here and a cone tip could fit here, so maybe there’s plans in the future or a future model that they’re going to add different attachments but currently nothing listed on their site under the accessories, nothing listed under with the massage gun. So right now all you get is the one round ball tip. It is a three speed device, so in order to turn the device on, there’s a power button here and you just go up across the three different speeds with it and actually, don’t know why it didn’t turn on there, I guess my battery just died, so I apologize about that, but it is a three speed device. I’m going to just try to charge it here quick so I can show all of it.
Speeds
It is a three speed device. The first speed is 1500 percussions per minute. The second speed is 1980, and the third speed is 2,700 percussions per minute, so good amount of speed. The device does adjust up to three different angles, so all you have to do is adjust that is just press this button and rotate. Now it does look like it could go one more, but it does only go to about 180 degrees there. The battery is removable. As you saw, I just removed it, plugged it in quick. Hopefully going to be able to get a little bit of juice just to show it function a little bit more.
Battery Life
It does have a 90 minute battery life, so once it’s fully charged, you’ll be able to use it for 90 minutes. Typically, that varies depending on what speed you’re using it on, but they are advertising 90 minutes, which is pretty good. Again, I can’t see that you can buy individual batteries at all, so you are going to have to charge that device, charge that battery, put it in and once it’s dead, charge it again or charge it between uses.
Noise Level
The noise level on it is between 55 and 70 decibels from the lowest speed to the highest speed. Certainly something that you can use in a public setting. It’s not super loud. It does have … I guess I would say a less smoother noise than some of the others. What’s coming to mind, for example, is the hyper volt.
So I’m going to see if I have enough juice in this yet. So here it is on the highest speed. Just for example, I do have my hypervolt here. This is the hyper volt plus. This is the hyper volt plus on the highest speed. So the Compex is maybe just a little bit more plastic-y sounding, I guess is the word I’m looking for. It’s just not as smooth sounding. It is really light though. So this is 1.74 pounds. I have to go back and check, but this might be the lightest massage gun that I’ve reviewed. It is really convenient. It’s a really compact massager, which is nice.
Where To Buy The Fixx?
It does have a really nice price point. I bought this off a Compex’s website for a little above $200. You can actually get it on Amazon right now for a bit cheaper. I don’t know if that’s just because of the holidays or if they’re getting ready to release a new model, but it’s actually cheaper on Amazon than it is on the actual company’s website. It’s normally around $299.00, so really good price right now.
Pros and Cons
If I could just kind of mention a few pros and cons. The cons, I don’t know if it’s a con or not, but the fact that it’s so light almost makes it feel cheap, and it doesn’t allow me to get that strong force that I really want on it, and it actually maybe makes little sense why the stall force is so low because if it was any heavier, the weight of the device might stop it on its own. So whether that’s a pro or con, I do like that it’s light. It’s obviously easy for traveling and packing, but the fact that it’s so light just makes it feel a little bit cheap. Also, where the power button is, so you see it’s kind of located down and underneath the handle here, really designed for our right-handed user to be able to slide their thumb there. I’m imagining if I was left-handed, and I’m holding this, it’s really not convenient to have to switch my hands, turn it on, move it over there. It would be a lot nicer if the power button was right back in the center here or on the backside.
Not a big deal but just trying to think of everybody that would be using it here. It’s really geared toward a right handed user. I don’t like that it only comes with one tip. The Tim-Tam also only comes with one tip, but you can buy other tips on their website. This only has one tip and only one tip available, so definitely an improvement that can be made there.
The handle is a little bit small for me. I really do like the design, because it allows you to be able to grab it and grip it in different spots, but this bottom part is a little bit small for my hand. I can really only fit two fingers in here. I would like to be able to fit my whole hand in there if I’m going to be going down, trying to press into my leg or something like this. It’s minor, I know but just trying to pick apart what I can.
The pros of it, again, it is really small. So in terms of traveling with this, you could easily throw this in a backpack. I don’t even think you need the case just because there’s nothing that’s coming with it except for the charger, so I really do like that. I do really like that the battery is removable.
Then lastly, the price is really nice. If you’re someone that doesn’t like a really aggressive massage, maybe you do just like to be able to get the blood flowing with the weight of the gun or the weight of the device. This could be an option for you and for $200.00, that price point is really, really nice. I typically look to find if a device is $250.00 or less as kind of the middle point, so finding that for $200.00 is just pretty nice.
I did do one other video where I compared 15 different devices. This device was not included in that, but I did apply what I called the best massage tech score to all those devices, so if I were to give that score to this device, this would receive a best massage tech score of eight, and that’s eight out of 12, a 12 being a perfect score. I will link that video right here where you can just see how I came up with that scoring and see how this maybe stacks up with some of the other devices on the market, but that is the Compex Fixx 1.0. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments. I do sincerely appreciate everyone that likes and subscribes. That’s a review.