Get smooth legs for longer! (Braun Silk epil Xelle Solo)

Member Name: dippykitty

Product:	Braun Silk epil Xelle Solo
Date:	20/08/09 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can change attachments and power settings, light makes it easier to spot fine hairs

Disadvantages: Painful to use at first but this does get easier with regular use

I've been toying with the idea of buying an epilator for a while and finally took the plunge when I saw it in Sainsbury's for around £33. I was very reluctant to pay anything more than this as I am a big wimp when it comes to pain and couldn't be sure that I would ever pluck up the courage to use it again if the pain was too bad!

***The Epilator***
My epilator came with two changeable heads - the beaded one that you can see on the product image above, and a 'flatter' one. I have yet to use the latter and have stuck to the beaded one. There are two power settings but I am too scared to move it past the lowest one as the tweezers seem to speed up a lot when I curiously flicked it onto that setting to have a look. There is also a light that is supposed to be very similar to daylight. This comes on automatically when you turn the epilator on and makes it a lot easier to see fine hairs.

***Using The Epilator***
My first experience of using this was a nightmare. Having cut myself to blazes on my last attempt at shaving and being too much of a wuss to try waxing, I had avoided any form of hair removal for a good week or so prior to using this. Had I read the instructions properly, I would have known that you shouldn't really use it on hairs that are more than a few millimetres long as it really hurts! After ten very painful minutes, I gave up. I decided that shaving my legs was the best option and resolved to have another go with the epilator as the hair started to grow back from that. At this point, I will highlight the fact that my legs were incredibly red and bumpy looking to the point where I was worried about them.

Sure enough, two days later I was back with the epilator. This time around, the pain was more bearable - although I won't say that it was painless as it wasn't! I'm sure that most people reading this review will be familiar with the short discomfort you get when plucking a hair out, and this is similar to that but on a larger scale as epilators can pull out much more than one hair at a time. Fortunately, after clearing around half of my leg, the pain diminished quite a bit so I must have been getting used to it.

For the first two times I used it, it took at least half an hour to fully epilate each leg. After this, each epilation session has been considerably shorter and less painful. Most sessions, I am just epilating random hairs here and there that obviously didn't get pulled out in a previous session or have started to regrow. I speak as someone with a very low pain threshold, so if I can get used to in a few weeks, I'm sure that most people will too!

The hairs soon build up in the tweezers, so you will probably need to keep brushing the hairs out with the provided plastic brush at least once or twice during each epilation session. Removing the attachment and sometimes the head is the best way to do this, or I find that odd removed hairs fall out onto your leg (or wherever you're epilating) and this can be confusing if like me, you mistake it for a hair that needs epilating.

***The Downsides***
It's incredibly noisy. My mum refers to this as sounding like a hedge trimmer, and she's not wrong! For something fairly small, it makes a right racket.

It's not battery powered, so you need to plug it into the mains to use it. The plug on mine only has two prongs so you need to use an adaptor or similar to plug it into the three plug mains.

I absolutely cannot use the epilator on my underarms as it hurts way too much just to pull one hair out so I stick to shaving there. I refuse to even try it on my bikini line based on that!

I'm not convinced that this epilator keeps you smooth for the claimed 6 weeks. For me, the hairs start to regrow within one to two weeks, although I'm not complaining as this is much better than shaving.

***Overall Opinion***
Now that I've got used to using it and the slight discomfort that goes with it, I really like using this epilator. As I've hinted, I only use it on my legs as my experience of using it on my underarms has been rather traumatic but it keeps my legs smooth for up to a fortnight. That isn't to say that I don't epilate for one to two weeks though as I will whip out the epilator if I notice a few strays hairs that have been missed or some regrowth coming through. On average, I spend a few minutes per day with the epilator and that is enough to sort things out. Expect your skin to be red and bumpy for at least a few hours after epilating and that's pretty much to be expected after pulling hairs out at the roots. As you use the epilator more often, that seems to clear up more quickly.

Summary: After a rocky start, I've glad I bought it!