Rio Salon Laser Scanning Hair Remover

208 of 239 people found the following review helpful:

Keep the box handy..., 1^st September 2007

Review By Phil Tee (UK)

When I purchased this I was extremely sceptical, and not least because it is very difficult to find review information on this kind of product (hopefully I'm helping to remedy this!). Was I right to be so sceptical? (I usually am, unfortunately.) Read on (or skip to the verdict!)...

I'm a pretty hairy guy. With the new manscaping trend I've been rather obsessive in my so-far doomed attempts to become smooth. I have tried:

* Home waxing: Repeatedly failed to pull hair out.

* Depilatory creams: Failed to remove hair, burnt skin.

* Bleaching creams: Left for over twice as long as recommended with little (if any) effect.

* Epillation: Extremely painful on thick strong hair - you girls have no idea! You think epillating thin, fuzzy leg hair hurts? Get a man's hairy chest and then try it! - and leaves bleeding sores and ingrown hairs that take a few months or so to heal.

* Shaving with a Philip's Bodygroom razor seems to be the only manageable solution so far - if you don't mind spending the best part of an hour for about half a day's semi-smoothness before regrowth.

My skin and hair type, for comparison:

I have thick dark-as-you-can-get-whilst-being-Caucasian hair and pale-as-you-can-get-without-being-albino skin: in other words I should be a perfect candidate for laser hair removal (darker hair absorbs more laser energy, paler skin absorbs less).

The product:

The scanner provides a laser aperture of less than 7mm x 5mm. At full power it takes 50 seconds to treat this just-over-half square centimetre. As I'm sure you can imagine that, even if your hair only requires a single treatment, it's going to take you a hell of a long time to treat any body part. You supposedly need six treatments for the effect to become permanent, most people leave a month between treatments but it's entirely up to you (you can treat the next day if you like, provided the prior treatment caused no ill effects). Your hair should be one to two millimetres in length for maximum effect. Different hairs have different growth cycles, these cycles last a period of months. This means that treatments of an area will need to be staggered over a few months to ensure that all hair receive at least one treatment whilst they are in the active growth phase (when the treatment is effective, and not just dormant (when it is not). You cannot use this product over moles, dark freckles or tattoos.

The procedure:

So does it hurt? Well I found that I didn't feel anything except the occasional pinprick of heat, and these pinpricks always faded before it reached burning. It didn't hurt me at all, in fact, the only after-effect I had was the indentation marks the scanner leaves from pressing on your skin. This indentation helps you work out where you have and have not scanned already. Btw, the machine makes a lot of really annoying beeping sounds, but these can be muted (apart from powering up and entering the activation code). Successfully treated hairs should fall out in the next few days. This can be assisted via gentle rubbing (apparently).

Does it work?:

*Day One: In the evening I tested the device at full power on an inch square area on my left-upper - the test area across these for days. No after effects were visible bar the priorly mentioned indentations. I'd electrically shaved the area that morning, so I had stubble.

*Day Two: I noticed that all the hair had grown back. For the second day I tried electrically shaving just before using the laser (so there was still stubble). This evening I went over the whole test area twice in one session. Again, there were no noticeable effects.

*Day Three: All my hair grew back as usual, and I electrically shaved that morning. In the evening I went for three treatments over the test area in one session with no ill-effect.

*Day four, it all grew back again, still no hair shed... I tried electrically shaving in the afternoon, treating the entire test area twice that evening.

The verdict:

Four days, eight treatments, the hair of various lengths of no more than 2mm and clearly in the active growth phase! Not a single hair shed, I'm sorry to say. This thing does absolutely nothing to me.

This product has been a total waste of time and money. I don't believe the machine has the energy necessary to reach down to the root beneath the skin and destroy the follicle.

I am sending my scanner back to Amazon for a full refund. You should know that if you want to test this device yourself, you can. When you purchase any product you have a 30 day "cooling off" period, and provided you get the item back to Amazon with these 30 days you are guaranteed a refund. However, I would not really recommend testing it as I doubt you will have any more success than myself. The one hope I could cling to is that a few weeks down the line those hairs will magically fall out... but it's obvious that the follicles are still active and apparently undamaged, and so this is isn't a realistic expectation. I'm returning mine as we speak.

Be assured though that if a miracle did happen I would amend this review :) Assume it won't!

Hope at least somebody found this useful...

150 of 159 people found the following review helpful:

Works but requires a little dedication, 9^th December 2007

Review By Janet_oxford

Having tried this machine and laser hair removal in a salon I can vouch for the fact that it feels the same and works in the same way. This really is a salon style laser hair remover for the home. But obviously it treats only 20 or so hairs at a time unlike the big salon machines. But I guess the fact that salon machines costs thousands explains this.

So it requires a little patience and like the salon machines you need to treat the same area a few times to get the hairs in the right growth stage. To be fair the instructions are excellent and do explain that laser hair removal isn't a miracle cure.

To conclude..yes... the Rio Scanning laser is excellent and feels just like the salon machines... but don't expect instant miracles. I think this is maybe why the reviews are a bit mixed. Personally I think it's a bargain compared to the salon prices.

116 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

It Works But don't expect results over night, 5^th January 2008

Review By R. J. Fauvel "RF" (UK)

One thing i have noticed from the reviews placed so far is that it is obvious that most are not reading the full instructions. My partner bought the machine and yes it does work but the reveiwers seem to be expecting results over night!

If you look at the instructions it does clearly state that it can take 7-14 days for it to work on treated areas, also consider the fact that some areas have to be treated up to seven times before it works then it can be a lenghly process, so time is the key, but for all those who do not wish to give it time to work and feel that they do not want to be treating there body for weeks on end then consider this. All the effort and waiting until the hair drops out or stops growing so that you NEVER! have to shave again is surely worth it? or the alternative carry on shaving for the rest of your life or spend a lot of money on salon treatments.

My partner is well happy with the results but she stuck to it. Nothing comes easy in life so if you want overnight results then don't waste your money and carry on living in dream land. If you are willing to put the time and effort in then this product will work and give you the results that will well be worth the wait.

85 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

Didn't work for me, 6^th May 2008

Review By Margie (Glasgow)

I have been using this for four months with absolutely no effect. I have tried to be patient and persevere but it is fiddly to use - the laser head is such a small part of the wand that it is difficult to know if you have positioned it where you want it to be. I have very fair skin and dark hair so this should work well for me but having seen no improvement my patience has run out.