Laser hair removal is well known as an effective method to reduce or eliminate hair growth. And home IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) devices have brought this once expensive specialty treatment into the hands of the masses.
IPL technology uses a flash of high-energy light to bombard the hair follicles at the root, preventing hair from growing back in the long term. The Philips Lumea IPL 9000 is Philips’ top-of-the-line model and offers the fastest cordless. A treatment with a wide range of attachments to treat all different areas of your body.
Blessed with thick, dark body hair, I was excited to pick up the Lumea 9000 and test what many believe can permanently remove hair. It may be, but Philips only claims that its device can reduce hair growth for the average user by 78% with long-term use. However, it is not without problems.
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Philips Lumea IPL 9000 review: What do you get for your money?
The Lumea 9000 is the best-equipped IPL machine in Philips’ range, starting at a pricey £460 and going up to £470 if you want the full range of attachments. and precision attachments are offered, but the fully equipped BRI-955 model is BRI-958 Comes with body, face, bikini, and armpit attachments.
All attachments are specially designed for safe and easy treatment of different parts of the body. Each has a rectangular window that fits over a glass treatment lamp in the device body. A light pulse is generated from here. The Lumea 9000 has the largest treatment window of any Lumea model, with a bikini attachment window of 10 x 30mm and a face attachment of 8 x 26mm.
Additionally, each attachment has a slightly different shape designed to fit the area to be treated. For example, the body attachment has a slightly concave shape that fits the contours of the legs and arms, while the armpit and bikini attachments have a convex shape.
By comparison, the cheapest Philips Lumea IPL, the Advanced, has a completely flat attachment, which can make it more difficult to get the treatment window in contact with your skin. The treatment window is also much smaller, with a face and bikini attachment size of 9 x 19 mm. This cheaper model doesn’t have a SmartSkin sensor, so I’m not sure what light intensity setting to use. It scans your skin and uses Philips’ SenseIQ technology to suggest the best and most comfortable light intensity settings for every user. We’ll come back to SmartSkin later, but don’t worry, all Lumea devices have a safety feature that detects if your skin is safe for treatment, regardless of light intensity level.
The mid-range Philips Lumea IPL Prestige offers the same SmartSkin sensor, but the bulb also lasts only 250,000 cycles as opposed to 450,000 cycles on the 9000 model. This may seem like a big difference, but in practice, it would be hard for him to get past 250,000 flashes in the life of the machine.
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Lumea IPL 9000 is currently the only cordless machine in the Philips range. This is a big advantage. Best of all, a single treatment can take up to 15 minutes, and a cordless machine also allows you to sit in the most comfortable spot in your home without the restrictions of wires.
One full charge of IPL 9000 lasts 30 minutes when used at lower intensity levels. This is enough time to treat most areas of the body. The only caveat is that cordless operation slows down the “flash rate” of the device by about half a second. This means that treatment will take a considerable amount of time.
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Philips Lumea IPL 9000 review: How does it work?
We know that IPL uses a flash of light to damage the hair at the root, and in order to allow the light to effectively access the hair as close to the root as possible, prior to treatment, shaving, depilation, Or you need wax. If you’re waxing or depilating, be sure to do so a few days before your treatment to allow the roots to heal.
People with fair skin and dark hair usually get the best results from IPL treatment. This is because dark colors absorb heat and light, and light colors reflect heat and light, making the intense pulse of light emitted by the IPL 9000 easier to work with.
This also means that IPL is not effective for all skin tones and hair colors. The blonde doesn’t do well with her IPL. Most importantly, if you have particularly dark skin, it can cause hyperpigmentation and burns as a result of the high amount of melanin in your skin. You can find detailed guides and color charts on the Philips website.
Luckily, the Lumea 9000 suits the widest range of skin tones of all Philips machines. Thanks to the safety sensor, the machine will not flash when it detects that your skin is too dark. SmartSkin sensors also suggest the most comfortable settings for your skin tone. This means your skin is always protected from damage. Philips IPL also comes with a 100-day money-back guarantee, so you can return it if the treatment doesn’t work for you.
As with many good things in life, results are not immediate. In her initial 8-week treatment phase, the user will have to do 4 treatments, 1 in 2 weeks, to capture all the hair at the right time in her 4-week growth phase. . In my experience the hair is finer and lighter and grows slower with each treatment.Depending on the part of the body the treatment time will vary but after her 4 treatments on the legs there is a significant improvement was seen.
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Philips Lumea IPL 9000 review: How does it feel?
app
At first, I was worried about IPL treatment. The list of warnings and complicated technical instructions made the process feel unnecessarily intimidating. While this information is useful to know from a safety standpoint, it can feel like taking in too much information at once, especially if you want to get the ball rolling as quickly as possible.
That’s where the Philips Lumea app comes in. Simply enter your Lumea model number, create an optional account, and it will guide you through every step of the setup process. This includes patch testing, sensitivity levels, pretreatment preparation, and aftercare advice.
The app also hosts links to blogs with more information and advice from other Lumea IPL users, which you can refer to if you run into any issues. Once completed, the app can also send you a reminder to let you know your next treatment is due. This is very helpful for tracking your treatment.If you’re a few days behind, the app will also guide you on how to get your treatment back on track.
For the most part, the apps are designed to be intuitive, giving you customized advice at nearly every step of the process. Mid-month, if necessary.
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ease of use
The app helps guide you through the treatment process, but the hardware is child’s play. At the top of the device is an on/off button, five LED lights to indicate which power scheme you are using, plus and minus buttons to toggle between settings, and a SmartSkin button to activate the SmartSkin sensor.
Once the device is set to the correct intensity, position the treatment window at a 90 degree angle to your skin until the large white indicator light on the back of the unit lights up. Then you can flash the skin by pressing the large trigger button on the handle. Then move the treatment window to a new location and wait for the indicator light to flash again. Be careful not to treat the same area twice.
Overall, the process was simple and pleasant. Thanks to the curved shape of the intuitive treatment window, it was very easy to keep the device flush with the skin and at 90 degrees. On bony areas like ankles and knees, I had to wiggle the device a bit to get the indicator lights to flash. Rotating the device 90 degrees to move the treatment window longitudinally was found to be of great help in these areas.
What speeded up the treatment was the “slide and flash” feature. If you are treating a large body area like the legs, you don’t need to stamp and press the flush button every time. Just hold the button and move the device every time it flashes. It saves you time, but your hands can hurt after a while.
The entire leg treatment took 18 minutes compared to the advertised 10 minutes. This is a huge time saver and almost certainly faster than going to a beauty clinic, getting laser hair removal, and going back to the beauty clinic again. Nonetheless, if you’re working hard to get the best results, you should spend about 45 minutes treating your whole body. There is no way.
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pain level
IPL is highly praised by manufacturers for painless, long-term hair removal and is definitely a more comfortable process than other hair removal methods such as waxing or hair removal. However, it is not completely painless. If you use high intensity levels on areas with particularly thin or sensitive skin, such as your thighs and underarms, you may feel a slight zapping sensation, like a small rubber band snapping into your skin. No, but it can be uncomfortable.
But for the most part, the treatment was easy and painless on all settings. That’s why Phillips recommends doing a patch test first to see how sensitive you are to the treatment, or if you’ll respond to it, before doing any systemic treatment.
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effect
The treatment was easy and painless, but only worth the time and money if you really achieve long term hair loss. is the frontrunner and I have to say that it worked especially well on the areas of my body where my hair was thinning, such as my legs, stomach and face. It’s gone, and when it does grow back, it’s much thinner and lighter than normal. Now all I need to do is one treatment every four weeks to keep the hair away forever.
Other areas, such as the armpits, where the hair was thickly established, did not completely disappear after the first four treatments. So in these areas he needs to continue using Lumea every two weeks to get the desired effect. Still, my hair is already slowly getting lighter and thinner, which is good enough for me.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the device should be properly cleaned between sessions using the included microfiber cloth. This is not difficult in theory, but care should be taken, especially if the treatment window is very narrow and dead skin or hair fibers are burned into the treatment window. Make sure the skin is exfoliated, clean and free of hair loss before doing so.
Philips Lumea IPL 9000 review: Should you buy it?
Of course, IPL comes with some caveats. It doesn’t work for all skin tones and hair colors and it takes quite a while. Treating larger areas of the body can take a lot of time, and while this is the fastest flash of any IPL I’ve tested, it still took 18 minutes per leg.
However, if you have decent skin and hair coloring and are willing to branch out for the fastest IPL treatment, the Philips Lumea 9000 is all you need. A great option if you want cordless flexibility, the most comfortable treatment and excellent results.
But if you’re going for a splurge, opt for the BRI-958 model and get all the attachments, as they’re usually only £10 apart in price from cheaper models and you can’t buy the attachments individually.
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