Trans Joy

The super cheap ones get made in bulk and then the company disappears. I had one branded as ARTOLF. It now links to this one on Amazon, but can't 100% say they are the same: https://a.co/d/0aIR7EI3. It had three major flaws. First the business end didn't have a flat surface. Basically there is a lens half an inch inside and on the sides there is the reflective surface covered by the lens, but the end is open. This made it difficult to clean and made it hard to use cooling gels/ultrasound gels since it would go inside. Second is that the cooling function isn't strong enough to keep it as cool as I'd like to reduce pain, but that might also be because of it's biggest strength. On the highest setting it was by far the most powerful handheld IPL gun I've seen. Probably, violating some safety guidelines or something for home devices, lol, but that meant it was extremely effective. And third, it takes time for the light to charge when set to high intensities and usually with IPL you have to let it pulse two or three times in each spot to build enough heat in the root to really kill it. So, it's slow to cover large areas. But again might just be a power vs speed balance that can't really be avoided with a home device.

Eventually the edges of the plastic lense started melting because it would get black residue on it and that would get very hot under the pulse. But that was with near daily use for nearly a year. So, cheap, powerful, but somewhat flawed.

I tried a few others and returned most because they just weren't powerful enough to do much. All had good return policies. And also most had poor cooling or other flaws here and there. At that point I had gotten rid of the thickest hairs completely and needed it more for touchups of thinner hairs.

I settled on the Air 10 from Ulike. It has really good cooling and if you use the SHR function, it significantly slows it down and requires manually pushing the button each time it charges, but it is nearly as powerful as the other device. No others I tested were even close. But at the lower settings it just doesn't seem to do very much, but again I never used it on especially thick hairs. It is a more reputable company than the other and it has lasted a while with no issues so far. But it costs at least twice as much as the other one.

Really the things that have to be balanced are cooling and pulse charging speed vs light intensity. Of course lower settings will always make them run faster and cooler, but I always use the highest setting. A little pain is worth the time it takes to do it at lower intensity. And the pain isn't that bad as long as the hair is cut flush with the skin. If any hair is left outside the skin it will burn the skin it's touching and the thicker the hair, the more heat it absorbs and thus the more intense the burn. Also, dense areas of thick hair will obviously absorb more heat than areas with fewer, thinner hairs, so use lower settings or fewer pulses in those areas and it's generally not that bad at all, especially compared to electrolysis.