This foldable, futuristic neck massager will heat your aching muscles and talk to you while it does so — yes, really

The best massage guns are brilliant at soothing soreness in easily accessible muscles like the quads, calves, and glutes, but they aren’t so adept at reaching those pesky knots in the neck and shoulders.

If you’ve ever spent more than 10 minutes in my company, you’ll know that I suffer from (or at least compain about) near-constant soreness in those very areas, so when offered the chance to take the SKG G7 Pro Fold neck massager — which is on sale now at Amazon for $169.98 (was $199) — for a spin, I accepted so quickly I almost got whiplash (which, alas, no amount of massaging can fix).

This foldable accessory features five distinct massage modes: Quick Relax mode, Zen Kneading mode, Strong Pulling mode, Release Stress mode, and Active Acupoints mode, plus several more lovely-sounding modes in a compatible app (one is called Dopamine Tech mode, for goodness’ sake!).

Each one of these modes works in tandem with the massager’s single near-infrared (NIR) light sensor, which applies heat to your neck while nine vibrating massage heads do their business. The results are, as you’d expect, delightful.

The SKG G7 Pro Fold features easy-to-use toggles for tweaking pulse intensity, vibration patterns, and the level of heat emitted by the NIR sensor, so you can customize each mode to your liking.

Oh, and you’ll also be greeted by a rather lewd-sounding voice as you flick through those options, though you can quite easily mute this faceless companion if you so wish.