Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am a redhead with sensitive skin and very thick facial hairs, on certain areas of my face I get irritation/shaving bumps very easily so I decided to permanently remove the hairs in those areas with electrolysis. Were I not a redhead, I probably would have just done laser hair removal since it is much cheaper and faster than professional electrolysis (laser does not work on red hair due to different type of pigment than other hair colors). I would not recommend using this machine to remove thinner hairs where the follicles are hard to see, ie arm or leg hairs. It is better suited for thicker hairs such as pubic areas or male facial hair In order to successfully use this device you will need a good lighted magnifying mirror, I would recommend a 7x mirror as it gives good magnification and allows you to see clearly and in focus without getting too close to the mirror. On 10x/15x mirrors you have to get so close that you may end up bumping the electrode and/or your tweezers against the mirror. I would also highly recommend a good pair of needle/point tip tweezers such as tweezerman, these make it much easier to pinpoint and grab a single hair compared with the tweezers included in this set. Once you have those two items all you need is to follow the directions and practice. When I first started using the machine it took me about an hour to remove 15 hairs and about 10 of them failed (you can tell if it works because the hair will just slide out of the follicle with no resistance). After practicing for a while, I can now remove about 90 hairs per hour and very rarely have a failure. To some extent how fast you can go will depend on what area you are using it as well as how sensitive your skin is or how robust your hair follicles are. If you crank up the voltage you can zap them faster but it will hurt more and the chances of scarring are much higher, so it is best to stick with as low a voltage as possible. **As it says in the manual DO NOT stretch the skin while the electrode is on, this will make it much more susceptible to scarring/pitting. It is however ok to stretch the skin to insert the electrode while it is not active, then complete the circuit after releasing the skin, in many areas this will make it much easier to insert the electrode correctly into the follicle at the right angle.** This machine is not easy to use, it takes a steady hand and a lot of practice; however, for $70-80 (cost of this unit + a good lighted mirror and tweezers) plus around 60 hours of my time, I was able to remove a large section of my facial hair which was estimated to cost $5000 or more by a professional electrolysis technician. Also I was able to do it in a faster amount of time than professional electrolysis and on my own schedule. (The total hours of electrolysis would have been less using a professional, probably 35-40 hours; however, the overall process would have taken longer since I would have had to space my treatments out into weekly or bi-weekly sessions)