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I do love a spa day, so put me in a hot tub and give me a massage and I am a very happy girl – Ashley Roberts
Life can be hectic at the best of times, and when it isn’t hectic, it’s usually frenetic and frenzied.
It isn’t easy trying to keep up with the world, so in those all rare, and increasingly, brief moments when we’re actually free to enjoy our hours away from the dog eat dog day to day toil of the working world.
The more we look, the more frustrating trying to find ways to relax becomes, and the more frustrating it becomes, the more we need to relax. It’s a Sisyphean loop that, at one time or another, we all find ourselves hopelessly caught up in.
But the most complex questions always seem to have the simplest answers and the twenty-first relaxation conundrum has a startlingly easy riposte. The solution? A hot tub.
Bear with us, because we know what you’re thinking right now. Hot tubs are expensive and a chore to have installed and once they’re part of your yard or your porch, they’re there forever.
While all of that used to be true, and the process of owning a tub used to arduous and more hassle than it was worth, the times as Bob Dylan once sang, are a changing and hot tub technology has changed with them.
Inflatable hot tubs are now every bit as reliable and dependable as their old fashioned ancestors, and as they’re more affordable and easy to set up and take down and store when you don’t need, or want, to use them, they’re a much more attractive option than their forebears.
MSpa is right at the forefront of the inflatable hot tub race, which is why we thought we’d take a much closer look at one of their most popular, and one of our favorite, tubs
PRODUCT REVIEW
MSpa Lite Alpine Outdoor Spa
What do you mean you haven’t heard of MSpa? Actually, unless you’re already fully immersed in the hot tub world, there’s no reason why you should have heard of them.
They are, in their own words “a world leader in the industry of portable and inflatable spas” and they’re not wrong. They make spas, that’s all they do and they are incredibly good at what they do.
And the Lite Alpine?
It’s one of the best inflatable spas, or as they’re more commonly known hot tubs, that MSpa or anyone else makes. Why is it so good? We’re glad you asked, and we’re more than happy to answer that question for you.
Let MSpa Do All The Hard Work
The Lite Alpine comes with everything you need to inflate it. Plug it, attach the hose to the control unit, press the button and it’ll do the rest.
Okay, so it isn’t quite that easy, and we may have slightly over-simplified the process, but it isn’t much more complicated than that either.
It even comes with an instructional DVD that’ll guide you through inflating your spa in a serious of easy to follow steps.
We had ours set up and ready to go in around an hour or so, which given that we struggled to get to grips with operating our toaster, just shows you how straight forward it is.
Just Add Water
The only thing that you’re going to need to add to Lite Alpine is water. Once it’s fully inflated and ready, you’ll need to fill it using a hose.
It’s just like a Chia Pet, all you need to do is make sure that the Lite Alpine has enough water and it’ll do the rest.
And when you’re finished using it? Open the drain plug and it’ll empty. We know, it’s ridiculously easy to fill and empty.
Now For The Fun Part
Your tub is up and it’s full, so all you need to do next is bring it up to temperature, which again is simplicity personified thanks to MSpa.
The Lite Alpine heating element is actually built-in, so all you need to do is select your desired heat, push another button and it’ll slowly, but surely heat up the water in your tub for you.
MSpa reckons that it tackles around eighteen hours or so for your tub to reach, and maintain your selected temperature, which we found to be a little overly cautious, as ours was ready to go in a couple of hours less than that.
It may not seem like much, but when it comes to spending time in the hot tub, we were more than happy to have another two hours to just watch the world go by and enjoy some good conversation.
The Lite Alpine does have one party trick up its sleeve, which seemed a little pointless to us as we’re not fans of being boiled like lobsters, but if you like things a little hotter than most, you can luxuriate in the Lite’s all-time high temperature of forty-two degrees celsius.
The fact that we’re more comfortable around thirty-six probably explains why we were able to get in earlier. But it’s all subjective, and if you like it really warm, this tub will willingly deliver all the heat you’ll ever need.
It also uses an automatic heat maintenance system, which while it’s great at maintaining the heat in the tub, actually switches the element off after twenty-four hours if you haven’t used the spa.
We love the attention to detail and how safety conscious MSpa is, but if you’re a little forgetful and go to jump into your tub a couple of days after you last used it, you’re going to get a very chilly surprise.
And then you’ll need to go right back to heating it up all over again.
What About The Bubbles?
We said that the Lite Alpine only had one party trick, didn’t we?
That may have been slightly misleading on our part, as it actually has another incredibly clever feature that separates it from, and makes sure that it towers above its competition, It has, drum roll please maestro, one hundred and thirty-two AirJets that make more bubbles than you’ll ever be able to handle.
Seriously, we the jets turned up to their highest setting and they literally turned us into rubber in less than ten minutes, It was a fantastic way to be pummeled into a fully relaxed state, but we had to turn them down or we’d never have left the tub.
And those jets? They’re surprisingly quiet, in fact, they’re a little too quiet and it’s all too easy to forget that you’ve switched them on, and all too easy to forget to switch them off. That absence of noise?
It’s all due to MSpa’s patented WhisperQuiet technology which is frighteningly good at what it does and rather appropriately named.
You’ll have to have your bubble based wits about you when you use the Lite, or there’s every possibility that the Jets will keep flowing until you’ve turned into barely set jello.
How Big Is The Alpine Lite?
It’s just over five feet wide and two feet tall. While MSpa claims that it’ll accommodate up to six seriously in need of relaxation adults, we found that if we really wanted to let our hair down, it wouldn’t hold more than three of us comfortably.
Which was fine with us, as we don’t need any more room than that, but if you’ve got a larger family who fully intends to share your tub with you despite your protestations, it could be a problem.
When it’s full, this wonderful tub will hold around a hundred and seventy gallons of water and weigh somewhere in the region of fifteen hundred pounds. So position it before you fill it up, because as soon as it’s full, it won’t be going anywhere.
Control And Comfort
MSpa believes in keeping everything simple and straightforward and that includes the Lite Alpine’s controls, as you’ll be able to monitor, alter and maintain everything you need to from the central, fully waterproofed control unit.
Everything to do with this tub is about how easy it to use and how comfortable it is to while away your time in, and even though there’s no seating and you’ll be sitting on the bottom of the tub, it feels like you’re floating on air.
Which, is essentially what you are doing, but once you’re in, you’ll never want to get out. We almost had to be dragged out of it and if it wasn’t for the joint inconveniences of having to go to work and look after our families, we’d still be sat in the Lite Alpine, thoroughly enjoying life.
It Won’t Burst Will It?
There’s absolutely no chance that the Alpine Lite will burst, suffer from a hot tub related blowout, or suffer catastrophic failure caused by the over-anxious and over-eager teenage members of your family and their friends.
It’s designed to be tough and the six layers of reinforced PVC and metallic silver liner that it’s made from will stand up to all of the abuse that you, your family, and everyone else who uses it can hurl at it.
Pump It Up
Look, we love a traditional hot tub as much as the next severely stressed and over-worked man does.
But as we’re just average working stiffs, they’re way out of our price range and the only way we can well and truly relax in the manner that we think befits our deserving, but humble, stature is with a surprisingly affordable, functional hot tub like the Lite Alpine.
This probably explains why we love it so much, as not only is it within our budget but it also does everything that a conventional hot tub does. And when we’re finished with it? We can just drain it, deflate it and store it until the next time we need to use it.
That’s exactly the kind of technological miracle that makes relaxing so much fun.
