Viking Cold Plunge Review: Two Companies Use That Name, and One Cannot Reach 37 Degrees

Which Viking are you looking for

There are two, they are not connected, and the results mix them freely.

Nordic Wave Inc., Charleston, South Carolina, badges its whole cold plunge line Viking: Premier, Hybrid, XL and Commercial. Tall upright insulated HDPE tubs you step down into. They own most of page one here, and we took them apart in our Nordic Wave review, including the XL filled weight that does not cover a full fill.

Viking Spas Inc., Wyoming, Michigan, is a hot tub manufacturer. Its cold plunge is the Chill Therapy, a one-person acrylic lounger 70 inches long in a cabinet, sold through spa dealers.

Same badge, different companies. The rest of this page is the Viking Spas one, because nobody has checked it.

What Viking Spas publishes, and what it does not

The Chill Therapy model page gives 70 by 33 by 37.5 inches, 79 gallons, one seat, digital topside controls, a mini-inverter chiller, a HydroPur filter and an ozone system.

What it does not give is a temperature range. Not a minimum, not a maximum. On a product whose reason to exist is water temperature, the maker’s own page is silent. So we downloaded the owner’s manual, revision 05.23.2024, which Viking Spas publishes free. That is to its credit.

Three different minimums for one tub

The manual’s specification page lists Temperature Control: 40-104°F (4-40°C).

Turn to the control panel section and the first panel gives a setting range of 46-104°F (8-40°C). The manual then says there are two possible panels. The second one’s range is 3-40°C (40-104°F), which does not convert, because 3 C is 37.4 F.

Meanwhile the dealer listings selling this tub advertise 37°F to 104°F.

That is four numbers for one tub. Depending on which panel is fitted to yours, the coldest you can dial in is 40 degrees or 46 degrees. Neither is 37.

The freeze protection settles it

Buried in the same manual is the antifreeze function. Quoting it: heating initiates when the water drops below 40°F (4°C) and turns off when it reaches 48°F (9°C). The freezing-proof section repeats it and says it works automatically.

Read that as a cold plunge buyer. Any time the water falls below 40, the machine heats it to 48, and the manual describes no way to disable that. So 37 degrees is not a temperature this unit is built to hold, and a tub that self-heats at 40 is a cool tub, not an ice bath. Our chiller comparison covers separate units that reach the mid-thirties and stay there.

The arithmetic that does hold up

We check every capacity claim, because this category fails that test constantly. Viking Spas passes.

The exterior box is 70 x 33 x 37.5 inches, or 375 gallons to the brim if it were a hollow rectangle. It is sold as 79, which is 21 percent of the outer box. That is what you expect once you subtract the shell, a tri-layer cabinet and a chiller inside the skirt. No inflation.

The weights are calculated rather than guessed. Water runs about 8.34 lbs per gallon, so the 955 lbs filled on dealer listings minus the manual’s 294 lbs dry leaves 661 lbs of water, or 79.3 gallons. The claim is 79. Somebody did the sum.

A real advantage falls out of that. Filled, it puts about 59 lbs per square foot through a 16 square foot footprint.

Compare an upright. Nordic Wave’s Viking Premier stands on a 36 by 30 inch base, which is 7.5 square feet, and its own product page gives 60 lbs dry and about 95 gallons. Those inputs come to 852 lbs, or about 114 lbs per square foot, nearly double the Chill Therapy. Nordic Wave separately prints a filled weight of about 904 lbs for that tub, which would give 120 per square foot, but that figure does not follow from the brand’s own dry weight and capacity and we do not build a loading claim on it. Our Nordic Wave review shows the working. Either way the low wide format is the safer shape if a deck is in the picture, and either way a structural engineer gets the final word, not us.

The trade is space. The Chill Therapy takes 16 square feet of floor for 79 gallons. The Premier takes 7.5 for 95. More than twice the floor area for less water, and our sizing guide covers why the two pull against each other.

The metric conversions around this tub are sloppy, for the record. One dealer listing prints 955 lbs as 493 kg, when the answer is about 433.

What it costs to run

The only power figure anywhere is 120V, 60 Hz, 7.5A. That caps the whole unit, pump and ozone and compressor together, at about 900 watts.

Turn that into cooling and you get a floor rather than an answer. 79 gallons is 659 lbs of water, so moving it one degree Fahrenheit takes 659 BTU, and 900 watts is about 3,071 BTU per hour of input. Even if the heat pump returned only as much cooling as it drew, which any inverter unit beats, that is roughly 4.7 degrees an hour before ambient heat leaks back in. The real number is better. Viking Spas has never published it.

No BTU rating, no kWh estimate, no cooling rate. Add a HydroPur filter every three months, which the manual specifies. Our running cost breakdown covers why ambient temperature decides the bill more than the tub does.

The manual was not written for this product

Two things in that document are hard to unsee.

The first is a contradiction. Page two sells the unit as “perfect for year-round outdoor use”. Page four warns that it must be installed in a climate controlled area. Dealer copy says it needs only a power outlet and a flat surface, indoors or out, while the manual says electrical connections must be performed by a licensed electrical contractor. Three installation stories.

The second is provenance. The safety page asks that the spa be installed to BCA standards, that electrical work comply with AS:3000 Electrical Wiring Rules, and that the circuit be RCD protected. BCA is the Building Code of Australia, AS:3000 is the Australian wiring standard, and an RCD is what a GFCI is called abroad. This is a 120V 60Hz product sold by a Michigan company. That text came from someone else’s document.

The troubleshooting pages are recycled hot tub copy. Under “water does not get cold” they advise opening the jet valves and covering the spa to retain its warmth. This tub has no jets, and retaining warmth is the opposite of the complaint.

Buying one, and the warranty

There is no direct purchase. Viking Spas lists dealers, not prices, so what you pay depends on who is nearest. Dealer listings state one year, parts and labour, and at least one says professional installation, not included, is required for the warranty to be valid.

We could not open the Chill Therapy warranty document, which Viking Spas lists as a separate PDF effective 01.01.2024. So the exclusions, the void conditions and whether the chiller is covered on the same terms as the shell are things we cannot repeat to you. Ask the dealer for it before you sign.

On the company, the Better Business Bureau gives Viking Spas Inc. an A+ and shows the file open since August 2004 with 28 years in business. That is a longer trading record than most cold plunge brands have, but it is a hot tub record, not a cold plunge one.

Cheaper ways to colder water

If you want a tub and chiller together, a two-person cedar tub sold with a 1 HP chiller sits a price band below and puts real refrigeration on 132 gallons.

If hot and cold is the appeal, that is the Chill Therapy’s honest strength, and our contrast therapy guide explains what the protocol needs before you pay for a heated shell.

If you already have somewhere to sit in water, buy the chiller alone. A 1 HP unit with ozone and triple filtration holds temperatures this manual will not let you dial in.

If the low wide shape is what you liked, an oval insulated tub sized for a chiller gives the same lie-down position and low floor loading for far less money.

Our verdict

Viking Spas is a real manufacturer with a long trading record, the Chill Therapy’s capacity and weights survive checking, and its low wide format solves a floor loading problem upright plunges create. Publishing the full manual is more openness than most brands here manage.

That manual is also the problem. It gives three minimum temperatures, none matching the 37 degrees the listings advertise, and a freeze routine that heats the water whenever it drops below 40.

Buy it if what you want is a heated one-person soaking tub with a cool mode and a dealer you trust. If you want a cold plunge, get the coldest achievable setting in writing before you order, or start from the tub comparison instead.