Nood Reviews

Whether the cost of razors has become a burden or the pain of waxing is just too much to bear, you may find yourself looking for new ways to deal with hair you’d rather not have. For many women, this may be on their legs, underarms, or bikini line. For many men, this could be the back, chest, or genitals. For swimmers, it’s everywhere.

Devices that use Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) to vanquish hair may prove to be a viable alternative to more traditional methods like shaving and waxing.1 The Flasher 2.0 by Nood is one such device — a handheld tool you can use at home to effectively remove body hair. But does it really work?

Our team took a deep dive into the science behind IPL and tried the Nood Flasher for ourselves to tell you everything you need to know.

Nood’s Flasher 2.0 is a reliable tool that can provide semi-permanent results for people seeking a new solution for hair removal. Like any IPL device, it won’t work well for people with darker skin or lighter hair, but it’s suitable for nearly everyone else. Its most obvious advantage over competitors is its large display screen, which tells you the mode and power level, confirms skin contact, and keeps track of how many flashes are left in the device’s lifetime.

At Innerbody Research, we take pride in testing the products and services we discuss. For this review of Nood, we got hands-on with The Flasher and tested it for several weeks. Our experience with the device gives us unique insights into the customer experience you can’t get elsewhere.

In addition to our hands-on Nood testing, we tested similar products by top competitors and read more than 50 scholarly articles on IPL and other methods of hair removal. Additionally, like all of our health-related content, this review was scrutinized by members of our medical review board for accuracy.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

To evaluate Nood and determine how it compares to its competition, we focused on four key criteria central to IPL and hair removal concerns. These criteria are effectiveness, cost, safety, and ease of use. Let’s take a close look at each to see how Nood performed.

Effectiveness

Something important to note about IPL devices is that many of the top models, including Nood’s Flasher, are all powerful enough to be effective. The meaningful differences often come down to things like the size of the treatment window through which the pulsed light passes, the highest available fluence (greater energy delivery may mean faster results), and lamp cooling features.

Nood gets a high grade for effectiveness partly because it’s undeniably a member of the class of IPL devices with the right frequency range and energy delivery specs to be effective. Its highest fluence (measured in joules) is 5 J/cm², which is about average and meets the energy output of the device used in at least one successful study.1 However, its treatment window is slightly smaller than some of its top competitors, and its ventilation is just enough to keep the lamp from overheating but not enough to ensure significant treatment speed. Our testers found that the minimum time between flashes was less consistent than that of the Ulike Air 3 or the JOVS Venus Pro II.

Ultimately, The Flasher 2.0 should be effective, but it may take longer to perform individual sessions and see results versus more expensive models.

Cost

Speaking of cost, we’ve found that Nood’s The Flasher 2.0 presents the best budget value among our preferred IPL devices. (Visit our full guide to the best IPL hair removal to learn more.) Here’s a quick breakdown of how it compares:

As you can see, The Flasher is tied with the RoseSkinCo Lumi in price, and neither device comes with extras you receive with certain pricier models from Ulike and JOVS. The race between Nood and RoseSkinCo for our top budget pick was a close one, but Nood won out due to offering better bundles with its ancillary products, like its treatment-specific moisturizer.

Still, Nood’s overall rating for cost could have been higher if it took the extra step to include some of the extras you get from other brands, like protective eyewear or a storage case. That would be impressive for a $169 IPL device. Still, even without those extras, Nood is a smart company to consider if your bottom line is the bottom line.

Safety

IPL is a relatively safe way to remove unwanted hair, especially for those with lighter skin and darker hair.2 But there are little things a company can do to improve the safety profile of its IPL device. One of those is to include a pane of sapphire crystal between the lamp and your skin, which significantly reduces the heat energy that could make the process uncomfortable.3 Nood’s Flasher 2.0 lacks a sapphire crystal, unlike JOVS and Ulike.

Another thing a company can do is utilize good ventilation for its device’s lamp. Nood’s lamp is vented, but not as much as others. That can create even more intense heat coming off the lamp. Here’s a quick look at The Flasher’s ventilation:

Some companies choose to include protective eyewear in their kits, even though all of our preferred models come with skin contact sensors. Those sensors, while useful, don’t completely prevent you from seeing the flash of a device’s lamp, which is startlingly bright and can be disorienting — our testers can confirm this. Nood does not provide you with such eyewear (though any pair of dark sunglasses would suffice).

So, Nood gets decent safety marks for being a well-made IPL device with skin contact sensors and some lamp ventilation. But it could improve its ventilation by going with a large circle instead of the flower design in its vent. It could also add things like sapphire glass or protective eyewear, though these changes would likely cause a price increase.

Ease of use

The good news for Nood is that its Flasher 2.0 is very easy to use. That ease starts with the large LED display. No other product among our top IPL devices has such a screen. It conveys which power level you’re at, when the device is ready to fire, and how many flashes are left in the life of its lamp. It also tells you what mode you’re in, in case you entered automatic mode accidentally. Automatic mode isn’t necessarily dangerous, but it could be a nuisance if you were to accidentally flash on a part of your treatment area at a strange angle and then had to work around that spot so as not to flash on it twice, which might increase the odds of irritation.

Ease of use extends from there to the length of the Flasher’s power cord. Maneuvering these devices around your body to reach certain areas, whether plugged in next to your bathroom sink or in your living room or bedroom, can be a pain. And if you have to balance that against a cord that’s too short, you’ll have an even worse time of it. At eight feet, this isn’t the longest cord among its competitors, but it’s by no means the shortest, and our testers found it more than enough length to use comfortably.

Nood’s instructions are easy to follow, and the weight of the device is balanced well enough that it’s easy to position almost anywhere you can reach. It’s definitely a better balance than the Lumi or the JOVS Venus Pro II, though our testers preferred the handling of the Ulike Air 3 over all others.

The Flasher 2.0 is the flagship product in Nood’s hair- and skincare lineup, which also includes an abrasive hair buffer, three body creams, and a couple of useful bundles that marry some of those products together to provide you with some savings.

The Flasher 2.0 itself is an IPL device, which stands for Intense Pulsed Light. It’s a technology that uses light energy to zap hair follicles, not totally unlike laser treatment. But IPL is less expensive and safe enough for regular people to perform in their own homes. The Flasher is not a laser device, nor does it perform electrolysis; IPL is its own specific form of treatment, which we’ll detail below.

Like most IPL devices, the Flasher 2.0 needs to be plugged in to operate. Only the Mini and X models from JOVS contain powerful enough batteries to be used cordlessly.

IPL relies on selective photothermolysis to damage hair follicles to the point where they stop producing new hair strands, at least for a while.4 That phrase, “selective photothermolysis,” might sound like a pretty advanced concept, but it’s easier to understand than it sounds. Here’s how it breaks down.

• Photo: related to light
• Thermo: related to heat
• Lysis: a suffix meaning to break down or decompose

So, an IPL device uses light to create heat energy that breaks down hair follicles. The “selective” part refers to the way specific frequencies of light are absorbed by melanin — the substance that gives skin and hair its color.5

But where does this light come from? Well, it’s not from lasers, though lasers are a popular in-clinic hair removal tool. Instead, IPL devices are outfitted with small xenon gas arc lamps, which produce an extremely bright flash.6 This flash covers a significant portion of the light spectrum, including infrared, visible, and UV radiation.

For safety reasons and to enhance efficacy, IPL devices use thick colored glass panes to allow only specific melanin-targeting frequencies of light to escape. That means you don’t have to worry about UV radiation causing burns or contributing to the risk of skin cancer.7 And the devices do this while emitting enough power that all the remaining light energy still gets converted to heat in the hair follicle and essentially cooks it.

So, you’re using powerful light energy to cook your hair follicles, which sounds dangerous. Fortunately, that light energy is as selective for the colors produced by melanin as it is non-selective for lighter skin tones. That means it affects your hair without harming your skin, at least in theory. And the glass panes companies use to limit the bandwidth of their light output filter out UV radiation, eliminating the associated potential cancer risk.7

The darker your skin is, the more dangerous and potentially less effective IPL will be for you.8 If your skin absorbs that light energy instead of or in addition to your hair, it could cause some irritation or even burning. The IPL industry typically uses the Fitzpatrick scale to determine the people for whom IPL may be dangerous.

The Fitzpatrick Scale breaks skin tone down into six distinct groups that get darker as you move from Type I to Type VI.9 Types I-IV are generally encouraged to use IPL. Type V risks some discomfort and reduced efficacy, and type VI is likely to experience discomfort and no efficacy.

IPL is also dangerous when used over tattoos, large birthmarks, or dense patches of freckles, all of which can absorb its light energy and translate that to heat. In these cases, the best thing to do would be to talk to a dermatologist before beginning IPL treatment.

Nood’s Flasher is a viable option for hair removal for anyone with light-to-medium-tan skin and hair that’s black, brown, or, in some rare cases, red. If you fit into that group, then IPL would be a great way to remove body hair that avoids the cost of razors and the pain of waxing or epilating.10

Nood’s Flasher is also suitable for use by any gender or assigned sex. The light does not discriminate. IPL is also a good choice for women dealing with PCOS, in which hormonal fluctuations can cause unwanted hair growth.12

Who might want to look elsewhere

If your skin is too dark or your hair is too light, IPL devices like the Flasher might not be a good fit. This is also true if you have a neuropathic condition of any kind that might make it difficult for you to gauge the amount of heat your device is generating in your skin, which could lead to unintentional harm.

If you have freckles in the area you want to treat — and you want to keep them — IPL might not be a great idea, either. That’s because the color of freckles also comes from melanin, and light from an IPL device will be absorbed by the freckles and break them up. In fact, the technology has been investigated as a way to remove freckles in those who want them gone.11

Nood company reputation and online reviews

On the Better Business Bureau website, Nood has zero complaints, which is pretty good. But the page has next to no activity on it, with just three user reviews, all of which are 1-star. Those reviews are about a shipping issue, a product issue, and an efficacy complaint, though ⅔ of these have more to do with customers misunderstanding the product than anything else. For example, one reviewer wrote that the device won’t hold a charge, but it’s not a battery-operated device in the first place.

Nood is not accredited with the BBB and currently holds an F rating. Still, it’s good to remember that the page has very little activity to sway the ranking otherwise.

The picture on Trustpilot is similar, with only one review total, which complains that the device arrived “dead.” Whether this is another customer mistaking the product for something cordless is unclear.

Ultimately, the minimal review activity for Nood makes it difficult to use typical internet review repositories to draw any conclusions about the company, which is one of the many reasons we wanted to try the product ourselves.

The process for using Nood’s Flasher 2.0 is similar to any other IPL device. Before embarking on a full session, it’s imperative that you test a small patch of skin to make sure you don’t have a reaction to the process. You’ll shave this area, and Nood suggests that your dedicated test spot be no larger than the window on the device.

Flash the device over this spot at level one, wait five seconds, and if your skin feels relatively normal, go up to level two. Keep moving up the levels until you notice anything close to pain (some warmth and tingling is normal). You don’t need to move the device to a different location when turning up the power. If you feel pain at any point, you’ll know that your starting treatment level is one level down from that.

After testing, Nood encourages you to wait 48 hours and repeat this test, then wait another 48 hours and repeat it a third time before undergoing a full treatment. This is to give your skin time to rest and an opportunity to reveal any irritation that crops up afterward.

Once you’ve performed your skin tests, established your treatment level, and waited a final 48 hours, you’ll perform these steps for a full treatment:

1. Prepare the treatment area. This includes cleaning and shaving the area.
2. Find a comfortable spot to perform your treatment and plug the device in nearby.
3. If you’re concerned about eye safety, put on a pair of sunglasses.
4. Turn the device on and set it to the safe level you established in your skin tests.
5. Place the device against your skin at one end of a treatment area.
6. When you see the word “OK” appear at the center of the display, you can press the flash button.
7. Move the device no further from that spot than the size of the treatment window and repeat steps 5 and 6.
8. Continue in this fashion until you’ve flashed anywhere you’d like your hair not to grow back.
9. After you complete treatment, use a reliable moisturizer on the treatment area.

You can perform two treatments weekly and can expect to see results at some point between three and eight weeks.

For treatment over larger areas like the legs, arms, chest, or back, you may wish to use Nood’s automatic mode. You can activate the automatic mode by holding the flash button down for about four seconds with the window facing away from your skin. This mode allows you to move the device from one treatment spot to the next without having to press the button for each flash. When the lamp is recharged, it will fire as soon as the skin sensor detects contact. You also don’t have to hold down the button while in automatic mode for it to work, which we appreciate.

From the outset, our Nood experience was positive. Our orders shipped and arrived quickly, and our experiences with customer service were pleasant (though we wish the site had a live chat feature or a phone number to call rather than just an email link).

We found this device to be a hair more intuitive than some other IPL units, mainly thanks to its informative LED display. Setting the levels and performing the skin tests were both easy processes. There is some light leakage when using the device on angular areas of the leg, such as the peak of the shin bone and the knees, so we definitely recommend sunglasses.

During the skin tests, one tester experienced some tingling at the middle settings and some pain at level seven (the highest level). Aside from some mild itching at certain points along the treatment site, no other side effects occurred in the days that followed.

Our testers used Nood’s Flasher 2.0 for several weeks and noticed a moderate reduction in hair growth.

Nood’s Flasher is listed on the website at $270, but we’ve consistently seen it on sale for $169. That ties it with RoseSkinCo’s Lumi for the least expensive IPL device among our preferred models.

While the Flasher is Nood’s only IPL device, the company has several other products, including:

• The Eraser: an abrasive buffer shaped like a bar of soap you can use to remove lighter, softer hair. It costs $39.
• The Revealer: An exfoliating body scrub containing resveratrol and exfoliating beads.
• The Reviver: A moisturizing cream containing aloe and azurine.
• The Glow Up: A moisturizing SPF 30 cream with vitamin C.

The Revealer, Reviver, and Glow Up all cost $39 for a one-time purchase, but you can get them on a subscription basis for $29 each.

You can sometimes get that lower $29 subscription price with one-time purchases through Amazon, but the rest of the company’s catalog is priced identically there.

Nood bundles

Nood offers a pair of bundles that can save you a little money up-front and automatically enroll you in a subscription to whatever body products they include. The table below details how they’re priced, what they contain, and what they might save you, along with a quick comparison to RoseSkinCo’s Silky Smooth Routine bundle.

While those savings are impressive, Nood typically offers a discount code on its Noodist Pro Kit when you sign up to receive texts and emails, bringing the kit cost down to around $215. That’s a total savings of $71. Just remember that these kits automatically enroll you in subscriptions to the body products. Fortunately, there is no penalty for canceling these shipments.

Shipping and money-back guarantee

Of all the IPL devices we tried out, Nood’s shipped the fastest. It was the last one we ordered, yet it was also the first to arrive. Nood says it provides expedited shipping, and we can confirm significantly fast results here, at least to the New York metro area.

You can use the device for up to 90 days and still get a refund if you’re dissatisfied. This is a generous policy, and it’s long enough to determine whether the device works for you if you follow the protocol. But it’s worth noting that nearly every other top IPL manufacturer also has a 90-day money-back guarantee.

There’s no shortage of IPL devices on the market, but many are cheap, potentially dangerous versions made by unscrupulous companies and sold on Amazon, where they’re there one day and gone the next. However, there are numerous reliable manufacturers of IPL devices that are worth considering if you’re okay spending a little more than you would to acquire Nood’s Flasher 2.0.

Here’s a quick look at the IPL competition.