Oh Me Oh My: HomeMedics Me My Elos Permanent Hair Reduction System Review

I love me a good beauty gadget, especially if using it yields long-lasting results, so I was more than happy to volunteer as guinea human when the nice people at Boots offered to send me a permanent hair reduction doohickey to trial. The gizmo in question is the HoMedics Me My Elos, which sounds like a mangled version of a lyric Joe Dolan might have sung, and it uses a combination of IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) and RF (Radio Frequency) technologies to provide effective targeting of the hair follicle on all skin types.

The manufacturers claim that hair is reduced by 89% on average after a month of weekly use (7 weeks are recommended for best results) but that impressive-sounding stat wasn't what piqued my interest. Nope, it was the fact that Me My Elos uses an intuitive shaving-alike gliding action to operate instead of the more usual stop / stamp / stop / stamp motion required by other similar hair reduction devices that caught my attention.

That makes the whole process much quicker, and the promise is that it takes just 10 minutes to do a full leg and around half an hour for a full body treatment.

Since I had tan on my legs (I must have been feeling very optimistic) and the device shouldn't be used on sun- or false-tanned skin, I decided to start with my underarms which were perfectly porcelain and, I reckoned, should take about 30 seconds each to treat if the blurb was to be believed. After a thorough read of the safety information and the treatment booklet, I shaved, donned the delightful tanning bed stylee safety goggles, set my phaser to “eff off, unwanted hair” and got to work.

Even with all my newbie faffing around, it took less than 4 minutes to do both underarms. I couldn't really get my glide on – I'm guessing that motion works best on larger, flatter zones like legs – but as there didn't seem to be any downtime for recharging between hair-destroying flashes, even having to lift and replace the head along the skin didn't slow me down. And, crucially, it didn't hurt at all, each flash just felt pleasantly warm against my skin even though I used the highest of the three intensities (as recommended for my skin type) but past experience with leads me to suspect that future sessions will be less comfortable.

Now, the reviews on the Boots website for this product are very mixed, which initially concerned me. However, it seems that those having problems aren't using it as instructed – they're using it every 2 or three weeks instead of weekly as directed, or spending less time than recommended per zone being treated – so I'm hopeful that following the instructions to the letter will produce optimum silky smoothness.

(Hairy) fingers crossed...

The HomeMedics Me My Elos is exclusive to Boots and is on offer for €524.99.99 until 24th July (RRP: €599.99) Replacement cartridges contain 5,400 flashes and are priced around €50. Boots have Electrical Beauty consultants in-store who are on hand to offer advice and help on choosing and using these kind of products.