As the saying goes- No pain, no gain! (Philips Satinelle Ice Epilator HP6481)

Member Name: leanne8686

Product:	Philips Satinelle Ice Epilator HP6481
Date:	31/05/09 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Smooth skin, lasts for ages, decent price, looks pretty :)

Disadvantages: Pain

Everytime I've got to 50000 dooyoo miles before, i've opted for a cheque payout. Thus far I have received 7 cheques (£350/350000 miles) but the miles seemed to be adding up rather slowly this time so when I got to £20 I decided i'd treat myself to something from Amazon instead.

Cue- the epilator. I've read nothing but good things about epilators; minus the pain factor of course but i'm not a wimp so I dared to try!

My natural hair colour is darkest brown and I have always shaved my legs before, the hair grows back coarser each time and it seemed I was only going a couple of days between shaves which is extra annoying when you're on holiday and have better things to be doing!
I've tried waxing; ouch, sore skin and most hairs just broke not plucked. Hair removal creams; manky smell, have to sit still for 10 minutes smelling manky and seemed to remove half my hair only.
So the last thing to try is epilating, fingers crossed.

I had a look in Boots first of all and this one initially caught my eye but the price wasn't pleasing; £48. I liked the idea of cooling the skin before the epilator got to work so hoped it would be cheaper on Amazon, for once I was lucky and the current price on Amazon is £21.
One £20 Amazon voucher from Dooyoo + £1 of my own hard earned cash and I was the proud owner of a Phillips HP6481 Satinelle Ice.

Described as an "Ultra gentle epilator", I liked the sound of that!
For those who don't know, probably men lol an epilator is a device which is made up of tonnes of tiny tweezers which pluck each hair out from the root as it moves along your leg (or wherever else you dare try it!)
This one says the tweezers can remove hairs as short as 0.5mm so you don't need to wait for a long regrowth (eww) as you do with waxing.

The epilator looks just like the one in the pic above (seen as I requested this was added to the Dooyoo catalogue!) It's an attractive little thing in pretty colours, what surprised me was the size of it; it's only about 4 inch long and easily fits in the palm of my hand.
The epilating head itself is the pale blue bit and is about an inch wide and half an inch deep, behind this is a lime green 'massaging element' which combined with the ice pack confuses your skin and minimises the pain signals apparently.
The dark green bit you can see on the front is a special rubber material which is really easy to keep a grip on (despite sweaty palms from pre-epilating panic lol)
There are 2 speed setting, number 1 for areas where the bone is close to the surface of the skin; knee, ankle etc. Aka the more painful bits and number 2 for areas of denser hair on less sensitive bits. Number 2 is faster than Number 1.

I liked the box of goodies I got; the epilator itself of course with AC adaptor plus an exfoliating bath puff thing in the same green colour, a little pouch to store everything in (again in the same pretty colours of white and pale green) the cooling glove, into which you slip a special shaped ice pack (also supplied, pretty colours) and a cleaning brush.

Epilating time!!
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So to start you need to put the ice pack in the freezer, leave for a minimum of 2 hours and then slip it into the clever glove thing.
There aren't many instructions; just make sure your skin is clean and dry and it's best used after a bath as your pores will be open easing the epilating process slightly.
I held the ice pack glove over a bit of my leg for about a minute, it felt suitably cold and slightly numb after this time. Plugging in my epilator I was panicking, if it hurt as much as waxing I didn't think I'd cope.....

So I turn it on, quite noisy which makes me scared! I edge closer to my leg, trying to be brave..and i'm off.
Ow!
For any one who has one (I have two now) it feels like getting a tattoo. As the tweezers bits are spinning really fast they are plucking around 24 hairs at a time and it really does burn. The other thing I could liken it to is probably getting a static shock over and over again....
I presume the ice isn't really working so move onto a bit of leg which is un-cooled and try there, it doesn't feel any worse and after about 5 minutes the pain does dull (just like when getting a tattoo) I can cope with it more than I can waxing as that is just a sudden bolt of pain, this is at least consistent!lol.

After one leg is done I resemble a plucked chicken, each and every pore is red :(
I run my hand over my skin and still feel a couple of stubbly bits (and a lot of sore bits) so brave another go, the good thing about this is you can go over the same patch of skin as many times as you need without making it sore as if there aren't any hairs present the epilator does no damage and just glides over your skin.
The same can't be said for shaving or waxing, your skin would be sore as hell if you went over the same bits over and over again.
Doing my 'touching up' is a lot more bearable though it did make me jump when it found a hair lol.

The redness disappears within a few hours so don't worry about that, don't do it the day before your big night out thought just in case.

I have always had an obsession with plucking my eyebrows and I think it's going to carry over to this!

It's been 2 weeks since I first used this and there are still no stubbly bits on my legs, i'm going out three nights in a row (my poor head) next weekend so come Wednesday i'll probably have a little 'touch up'.

Apparently when the hair grows back it will also be softer and finer each time as each hair is 'new' as you plucked the old ones out by the root.


A bargain at the price it is on Amazon, i'm looking forward to my first
summer holiday without needing to shave my legs!


P.S you can also use the epilator on your underarms or (heaven-forbid) bikini line but I'm not brave enough for that yet!

Summary: I'm loving my new gadget despite the ouch