Pros: Efficient, ergonomic, cost-effective and pretty. Long-term hair removal made easier.
Cons: A bit noisy, initial price can seem high.
The Bottom Line: This is an efficient, well-designed and sturdy epilator, with clever touches like different heads, and a built-in light. And it actually makes hair removal somewhat less painful!
lucidlemur's Full Review: Braun silk-epil 5270 Epilator
Hey girls: want to sit down and deliberately rip every hair out of your body? That's what I thought -- of course you do! Don't feel too silly, not many of us are liberated enough to forgo this. If you want to make your hair removal as efficient and cheap as possible, I'd recommend an epilator like the Braun 5270 Silk-épil X'elle.
I had been waxing for years when I discovered epilators, via the Epilady Discrette. Consumer Reports had given the Discrette a #1 rating (they didn't review the Braun X'elle), so I figured it was a good one. It was such an improvement over the messiness and expense of waxing that I thought that that was as good as hair removal could get. I used my Epilady for two years, and I'm really glad I went with Braun when I bought a replacement. This is a well-designed, efficient little machine, with some clever touches.
What's in the box
This 40-tweezer epilator comes with:
- nice silver mesh case
- cleaning brush
- shaving head
- long hair trimmer
- two epilating covers
- user's manual
One cover is designed to make epilating less painful with massaging rollers, and the other is designed for pure efficiency. There's also a slow speed and a fast speed to the device, again, emphasizing comfort vs efficiency.
This is a silly little point, but the epilator body has some very nice blue sparkles. That, combined with the silver bag, makes this a very cute little appliance.
Features
I didn't think I was even going to use the massaging head, since, face it, you're yanking hair out and it's never going to be pain-free. Plus, after years of this stuff, I'm used to the pain. But I've found that the rollers actually do help a bit, so I use that head in sensitive areas like my armpits. I figure the rollers also make it less likely to snag any loose skin.
As far as efficiency . . . wow. I'd been accustomed to going over the same spot several times with the small head of the Epilady. But the Braun has a 25% larger head (1.25 inches vs 1 inch), and it's much more thorough. It's still not 100%, of course, but it's way better than the Epilady, and orders of magnitude better than waxing. With waxing, you have to wait for hair to get to a certain length before the wax will grab, but you can epilate a few days after shaving and it will still work.
One of my favorite things is the little light on the epilator so you can see what you're doing. No more setting desk lamps on the floor! If you look directly at the light it's blindingly bright, so be careful about that. And of course, it only lights a small area (but it lights that area very well).
The power cord to this model is also longer than that of the Epilady, which is nice, since you can't always be right next to the power outlet.
I haven't used the long hair trimmer myself, but I tried it out on my husband's head just so I could tell you it works in this review. I did try the shaver, and it worked very well. I haven't spent a lot of time with it, though -- if I were satisfied with shaving, I wouldn't be reviewing an epilator!
Epilating Advice
For anyone who's buying this as their first epilator, here are a few tips:
Make sure the hair is long enough for the epilator to grab, but not too long. You really only need a few days after shaving before the hair is long enough. Anything over maybe 1/4" should be trimmed first, though, since longer hairs tend to lie down and evade the epilator.
Start with clean and dry skin; this means you should shower soon before epilating. Don't take a long hot shower immediately before, however, since this will open up your pores and make your skin more sensitive.
Don't count on getting everything done in one session. No matter how matter how motivated I am, after a while I reach some threshold where I just have to stop. So don't think you're going to buy this in the morning and go to the beach in the afternoon! Actually, you should really epilate the day before you want your legs to be presentable, since it takes a while for all the redness to die down.
It really does help if your skin is taut. Not only does this keep the epilator from snagging your skin (this happened to me once with my Discrette and it was NOT fun), but it makes the whole process less painful. Of course, my legs are perfectly firm and muscular everywhere . . . ha ha ha ha, no, I need to use my other hand to hold the skin taut most of the time.
Don't be disappointed if you notice hair growing back sooner than you'd expect. Hair grows in cycles, so you can completely remove all your hair and see some new stuff growing within a week -- it's just the next cycle starting. As you epilate more often the hair will take longer to grow back because you've yanked it out by the roots.
As far as the claims you may have heard that epilating and tweezing make hair grow back less over time . . . I don't know if these are true. I've yanked every hair out of my legs as often as possible for the past ten years, and I still look like Bigfoot. I wish I would have thought to measure the hairs per square inch when I was 15 so I could have compared that to what grows now. Maybe I'll see if my husband will let me start an experiment on a small patch of his leg. Probably not, men are wimpy about some things. :)
Price
The $60-$70 price tag seems a bit high, but is within the $30 to $80 price range for this type of product. Of course, if you want a deluxe epilator you could spend well more; Panasonic makes one that sells for $100. Or you could trade down to the Epilady Discrette, my first model, which sells for around $25. But you get what you pay for!
If you're a waxer, you're going to save a *lot* of money. When I think about all the money I spent buying wax every few months it makes me crazy. Even a shaver will save after a couple of months, since there's just a one-time outlay for this product.
Overall
The downsides to this device apply to any epilator: the motor is a bit noisy, and it's painful. But until I manage to become a confident, liberated woman, I'm stuck using something for hair removal, and this is the best method I've found. If your body hair bothers you, an epilator is a good way to remove it for long periods of time. And in my experience, the Braun X'Elle in particular is a great choice.
Update 7/25/08
I bought this on 5/15/08 for $58.43 from Amazon.com; I checked on 7/5 and the price was $67.94, but now it's back down to where I bought it. So there's definitely some variation in pricing. I'd recommend watching prices, then buying it from Amazon, or somewhere else that will do price adjustments. If Amazon's price goes down within 30 days of your purchase you can contact them and they'll credit you the difference.
In a strange coincidence, I just found out that my sister bought this epilator at almost the exact same time I did. She got hers at Target, and thinks it about $70 there. She also loves it, so make that two recommendations!
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