The Home Skinovations Silk'n Home IPL Hair Removal System

Home hair removal these days no longer means drinking a bottle of wine so you can endure a girlfriend tearing off your top layer of skin in the hope of waxing away some hair for a few weeks. And if you think that home IPL hair removal machines are going to take you a complete trimester to get beyond your belly, then you better meet the fastest gun in the West - the Home Skinovations Silk'n HPL Hair Removal System. Here's a nice introduction to Silk'n on Good Morning America:

Essentially the Silk'n HPL home hair removal system offers you a convenient way to use salon hair removal technology from the comfort of your own home. When one of the UK's best places to buy home hair removal machines asked if I would give my opinion on how the Silk'n measures up in practice when compared to other forms of permanent hair removal such as salon based IPL hair removal and the Boots Smooth Skin home IPL hair removal system, I was lucky to have a calf I could donate for the furtherment of medical science! Let's take a quick look at what Home Skinovations say about their Silk'n HPL hair removal machine and why it's different:

• The Silk'n home IPL hair removal machine is one of only two home hair removal systems to be approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Over 150 patients were treated in physicians offices as part of the trials for the Silk'n to demonstrate effectiveness in reducing unwanted hair.

• Whilst laser and IPL hair removal systems have been around for over a decade, the Silk'n uses a new, patented technology based on IPL called HPL or Home Pulsed Light Technology. This uses a flash of light at a certain wavelength, like IPL, and - according to as much as Home Skinonations are prepared to give away about their top secret technology - supplements it with "a unique acoustic effect that improves the normal process of photoepilation, enabling long term epilation with low level of optical energy without the need to cool the skin." Hair removal without the burn - nice.

• In addition to being less painful than conventional waxing or salon laser hair removal treatments, the Silk'n offers fast treatments through it's combination of large application area, quick recharge and efficient cooling. And if fast, bearable hair removal wasn't enough to get you thinking about buying one, the Silk'n comes very attractively priced against salon or clinic IPL hair removal and a fraction of the cost one can rack up in a lifetime getting professional waxing.

Wow! Silk'n can rescue you from a hairy situation fast, it's gentle with you and it's good for your finances? I think I may have found my hero! Swoon!

The Silk'n Home Hair Removal System comes very attractively boxed and the box is rather handy in that it's the type where everything fits back in fairly easily too, so you may like to keep the packaging for ease of storage. That's even more suprising when you see how much there is the box:

1. The base control unit
2. The applicator head
3. Mains power lead
4. A replacement HPL bulb lamp cartridge
5. A quick start guide
6. A in-depth user manual
7. A DVD telling you all you need to know about Silk'n

It's noticable that Home Skinovations are providing a lot more literature and educational material with their Silk'n hair removal system than comes with the Boots Smooth Skin home IPL hair removal system. Here you can see that unlike many other packaged modern goods, there's not much left inside the Silk'n box once all is taken out:

Even with all the bits out the Silk'n home hair removal system is a compact device and the base unit is smaller than the Boots Smooth Skin. There's not a huge difference in space occupied by the two yet the Silk'n seems smaller overall.

As any girl will tell you, size does matter. Especially in certain places. The way the Silk'n home IPL hair removal machine puts a happy smile on your face is with it's big, fat head - it's just the right size to hit the spot! Commercial salon IPL hair removal systems typically have a large bulb inside a big application head and that's what enables them to treat a big area - like a leg - in a reasonable amount of time. Home IPL hair removal systems are much smaller and this petiteness means you have to take a lot more shots to cover the same area. What that means to you is that you'll need to take much more time out to do your treatment. Some home IPL hair removal systems, such as the Boots Smooth Skin, do take a moment in between light pulses to recharge and will actually switch to a suspend mode after a certain amount of pulses to enable the lamp to cool. This all adds to the time it takes to cover a large area. Here's a visual comparison of the Silk'n hair removal system's application head to that of the only other home permanent hair removal system the US FDA approve, the Tria home laser hair removal system:

Impressive, huh? As you can see, the Silk'n home hair removal system is the big boy when it comes to application head. Coupled with a fast, 3.5 second reload time in between pulses and the way it's patented HPL hair removal technology prevents the lamp from becoming hot, the Silk'n can cover an entire treatment area fast. If you are just getting started with permanent hair removal, your main concern will be to reduce the number of hairs you have over a big area as fast as possible, especially if you are transexual and looking to clear your chest, arms and legs, let alone bikini line, armpits and even back. This speed of treatment means you can be a bit less disciplined or take smaller sessions to fit in around your lifestyle and still see results. A hair removal system like the Tria would be better for ladies who are just removing stubborn hairs or small patches as covering a complete thigh would become a time consuming chore by the 6th session.

OK, let's cut to the bit you're all dying to hear about! What's it like in action? Does it hurt? Did it work? And how much is it?

I treated my calf using the Silk'n home hair removal system and the first thing I noticed was the noise! It's a bit like having a hoover or a hair dryer on and much more noisy than the Boots Smooth Skin. Like the Boots Smooth Skin, you don't need to wear protective eyewear though an afraidycat like me always looks away. And also like the Boots Smooth Skin, you'll want to use a different method of hair removal if you have a skin tone that's above a Fitzpatrick IV type. You can determine your Fitzpatrick skin type here.

The Silk'n home IPL hair removal system in action

The similarity between the Boots Smooth Skin and the Silk'n home hair removal systems ends there. Unlike the Smooth Skin and salon IPL hair removal, the Silk'n needs no activator or cooling gel. It's HPL hair removal technology keeps the application head cool despite the intense pulsed light. Perhaps more importantly, your skin remains cool and so the Silk'n offers a greater deal of comfort than the Boots Smooth Skin which can reach mild discomfort when the application head starts to get warm.

The Silk'n also features special technology to prevent dangerous use of the application head so in order for the lamp to sesnd out any intense light pulses, you'll need to press the head down quite firmly. I wondered whether it has some special type of sensor in it like the Boots Smooth Skin so I tried doing it across all my toes at once, thinking the gaps would make a failed contact. Not so! Bye, bye toe hair...

Elsewhere I did find that the amount of pressure you need to apply to the application head was work although not uncomfortable. It was enough to mean you'd actually have to be trying to zap something before the head would fire.

It took less time to treat my leg with the Silk'n than it took me to treat my bikini like with the Boots Smooth Skin. Not bad considering I'm 5'11 - that's a fair amount of leg! And pain wise, it was much more comfortable although I didn't have it on full power - yet.

Home Skinovations state that the Silk'n will normally need to treat an area for 18 to 24 months to fully clear it. That might sound a long time although you don't treat every week, just every two to three weeks. The reason they state that is because of the way hair grows. They give all the medical information on light based hair removal here and it's exactly the same as salons, electrolysists and other beauticians have told me in the past. But I'm excited by the way this hair removal product covered me so fast and relatively painlessly. I'm excited to see whether it lives up to it's claims as the clinical studies made by Home Skinovations showed an average hair reduction of over 50% in the first 3 months of use.

I'll keep up a course and update on how things progress a month or two down the line.

In the UK, the main place to buy a Silk'n hair removal system or extra replacement cartridges is a company called eBeauty. Their website is So-Smooth.co.uk and you can get a Silk'n through them for around £425 - damn cheap compared to salon IPL treatment and a good price point relative to the Boots Smooth Skin (around £300) or the Tria home laser (around £700). From eBeauty you can actually buy most home hair removal systems and I found their staff to be very friendly and helpful in dealing with questions and pointing out the pros and cons of the various hair removal machines, so I'd have no hesitation in recommending them as worth talking to - they are on 0800 622 6569.

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