Iluminage Touch
When it comes to hair removal, I am super lazy. I rather wear pants than shave. Admittedly this Iluminage Touch was kind of an impulse buy. Saw this while I was browsing beauty tools and thought it was neat. However the $445-ish price was a bit much for me. So I went to ebay and found someone selling their used one for $150. Such a price difference that I ended up buying it. Iluminage is an at home laser permanent hair removal system that is pain free and they say will work with any skin and hair tones.
There are warnings in the instructions like suggesting avoiding moles and other discoloration spots to prevent irritation, not to treat the same spot over and over, and such. Directions is to treat the hair once a week and to start on low setting. While they advertise this to be painless, there is some heat going on so I am a bit scared of getting burned at first. On my legs, it only slightly felt warm. It definitely felt warm on my armpits, and a bit warm on my arms. You will have to go over the area 2-3 times during treatment since once isn't enough to cover. There are two silver bars on two sides of the applicator. You need to have the skin touch both sides in order for the light to start flashing. This can be tricky on narrow parts of your body like the side of your arms and the top of your legs where the bone are. So I definitely recommend doing it at various different angles. The light is definitely bright but not enough to make me want to wear sunglasses or the goggles. The instructions says to do 7 treatments, and to do spot treatment afterwards. It doesn't say if we're to expect a difference at that point or not. From photos, it just seems to thin your hair and have the regrowth be slower. It may take a year to see reduction.
The technology they use for this device they call Dual Wave IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) and RF (Radio Frequency). Its an alternative laser for hair removal treatment but seems to do almost the same as laser. How it works is it detects the hair color and target heat to it to inhibit the hair regrowth. They advertise to work on all types of skintones and hair colors.
The device is a bit bulky, and not exactly the easiest thing to store. The applicator is attached to the dock with a cable. It isn't a wireless device. You can detach the power cable though. When turned on the dock does make a fan like sound so it is slightly noisy. The applicator has its own power button on the bottom, and there's also a fan on the applicator itself. While you do your treatment, the light will make a flash like sound. It does seem like its rather noisy, and it is though I don't find it to be annoying.
For the first 3 treatments I've done it on low setting. Since I wasn't really seeing any difference I tried the medium setting. Medium setting is warmer and even slightly hot feeling on the skin. The heat will make you be more careful to not get yourself burned. I also tried the high setting which is hot, and it does have the pinching kind of pain on more sensitive areas. Though its not bad once you get use to it. I don't think High setting will really hurt anyone unless you're careless. The device will get hot after like 20-30 minutes so let it cool down for a minute. The hotness may also cause some burning hair kind of smell. The smell is mild and I don't really smell it till I treat areas close to my face like my underarms and bicep area. High setting also makes it highly likely for bits of hair to get burnt and stuck on the cartridge. You can simply rub those spots off with a clean tissue. Higher setting does obviously give you faster results and I wished I started on High earlier. I saw results using on High and hardly any kind of results on low or medium. Though the coarser the hair is the longer it takes to see results for them. My underarm hair is the thickest and regrows faster than my arm and legs. My underarms is also the most sensitive. The thicker hair usually are the ones that come growing back faster. Obviously it will take time to thin them out. I am only treating one side of my legs so I can compare both.
During the 7 treatments, I do see that the hair do grow back slower. On the 6th treatment, I only had a handful of visible hairs that have grown like 3 mm. On the 7th, there really wasn't much hair to shave before I did the treatment. Only area that hardly showed any difference was my underarms. The hair there is like 3 times coarser than the hair on my arms and legs so it may just take 3 times as long to get the results I wanted. After the 7th treatment, I will be spot treat only the areas I see hair grow back. So I do feel that 7 treatments is a good amount of time to see a difference. For me, the majority of hairs have barely grown back a week later.
Since I am of east Asian decent, I have black body hair so my hair stands out against my lighter tone skin so it makes the technology easier to pinpoint my hair. I have moles and a number of dark spots, but this device has yet to hurt me when I treat on those spots. Even though my system is a used one, I still have yet to need to replace the cartridge even after 8 weeks of use. I was skeptical of this device since I saw mixed reviews, but I am rather impressed with it. Whether it permanently stopped hair regrowth, I probably won't know until at least a year later. I have started to use it on other parts of my body like my upper lip and bikini area. I'm too scared to go on High on my upper lip, but Medium is probably the most I can handle there. I didn't buy the attachment that reduced the cartridge size, but I didn't need it. The device fit in fine in that area.
Overall, I am rather happy with this device as it is working for me, its painless, and no ingrown hair issues. I do highly recommend it, and its worth the money. It be really worth it if you got it used! Since the cartridge is like a plastic light bulb, the clear window is plastic as well so it makes it rather easy to keep clean. Didn't have to worry about hygiene with used hair removal compare to like epilators. So my tips to using this is to go on High setting as soon as you can, remember to treat the area 3 times, and to only move the device once it flashed once. The commercials and demo videos show them continuously moving the device, but I like to leave it on the skin till it flash, and then move. That way I won't miss a spot. It will only flash if skin touches both silver metal bars. Also have something to watch or listen to as you do the treatment. It will take awhile since it takes it a second to flash. It takes me at least an hour to do my underarms, arms, and one leg.
------ One Year Update!!
I've continued to used this regularly for a year. Still haven't changed the cartridge yet but I probably should even though it didn't indicate I should. I haven't seen much change in the hair, but it may be because it is growing back slower so I don't treat it weekly. My leg hair is the slowest to grow back so I'm glad for that. My arm hair is getting close to growing back as slow as my leg hair. My underarms still grows back fast enough that I still treat it weekly. I do think its slightly growing back slower. So I am curious that if I change the cartridge if it will be stronger.
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