Both devices have 5 intensity levels to choose from depending on your skin tone. 1 is low and 5 is high. Press the power button to cycle through the levels. To put this into perspective, the Lumea 9000 flashes once every 2 seconds – that’s nearly double the length of time between each flash with the Advanced model. When treating small areas of the body like the armpits, this won’t make a huge difference, however, it took me a whopping 27 minutes to treat one leg using the Lumea Advanced, compared with 18 minutes using the Lumea 9000. It’s designed to be used every two weeks for the first four weeks and, if we’re being honest, the big gaps make it easier to forget when you last treated limbs, so we found it helpful to set a reminder in our calendar. Fast Treatment: Treat only every two weeks for the first 6 weeks (vs. weekly of other brands), then touch up monthly to maintain the results. Both the Advanced and Prestige have flash windows to match different body areas. The Advanced models come with flat attachments in different sizes and they do a good job. Advanced:The large 4cm2 flat body and small 2cm2 face flash window with integrated red filter do a good job.

This is a neat feature if you have varied tones across body areas. It removes any guesswork. And on more sensitive areas you can still manually lower it a notch or two. Specialist flash windows The setup is easy: simply plug the corded machine in, press the on button on the head of the device and choose from five intensity settings.And I do rather like the idea of the extra specialist windows, with filters and flashes to better treat stubborn bikini spider-legs and underarm hairs. And it’s a clever marketing strategy by Philips because models with these extra windows tend to be more expensive. But in reality, the Prestige works equally well without them and you’ll still get excellent results. So, the cheaper BRI950, BRI945 and BRI944 models with just the body and face flash windows give you everything you need to treat your full body for excellent results. The essentials: Large curved-in body & the small flat precision window (with all models)

Objective studies show up to 85% hair reduction in as little as 3 treatments***. The first 4 treatments must be carried out every 2 weeks, after which you should already be able to see the desired results. To maintain your results, simply touch up every 4 weeks. After just 8 touch up treatments you can enjoy hair-free smooth skin for at least 12 months**.Tailor your treatment: Choose from five light intensity settings for the most comfortable experience while the free Lumea coaching app takes you through your sessions step by step. To see longer-term hair removal in these areas, I’ll likely have to continue with fortnightly treatments for a while longer. That’s good enough for me, though, as the armpit treatments only take around two minutes, so it’s much easier to fit into a busy schedule.

As IPL uses intense flashes of light and no bulb lasts forever, the flashes you can get out of each Lumea are limited. The Advanced reviewed here is rated at 250,000 flashes (as is the Prestige) and the Lumea 9000 lasts 450,000. While that is a big difference, we did the maths and you’d have to do 544 full leg treatments to get through 250,000 flashes, or 22 years’ worth, so don’t let this put you off. Both devices work in the same way. Place the window flush against your skin and press the flash button. After it flashes, move it the height of the flash window to the next spot and flash again. You can keep the flash button pressed for continuous flashes as you glide the window along your skin.There’s a slight warm sensation for settings one to four, but by five it’s hot with a bit of a pinch – but not so uncomfortable we had to stop at any point. For bigger areas like our legs, we held it down flat and glided the device over our skin, but for our underarms, we used a stamp-like motion to press, let it flash, lift off and place down on a different area. IPL is an effective, long-term hair removal method you can do from the comfort of your home. After years of having to save up for laser hair removal, products like the Philips Lumea IPL Advanced have now brought this treatment to the consumer market. It’s important to note that I have dark brown hair and light skin, which means I’m the ideal subject for IPL hair removal. That’s because light colours reflect light and heat, whereas dark colours absorb it; the lighter your skin is and the darker your hair is, the better the intense light pulses will be at damaging the hair. When you first open the app, it asks for the model number of your Lumea to give you specific advice for the device you’re using, which includes setup, preparation, treatment, scheduling and after care. It doesn’t connect to the device directly via Bluetooth, but having this information at your fingertips during treatment is incredibly useful. Also, if there’s something else you’re unsure of, there’s a handy archive of blogs from other Lumea users with extra information and guidance.