Ulike Reviews

There’s a pretty good chance you have hair somewhere on your body that you’d rather not. Sometimes, the removal of this hair is a social norm, like women shaving their legs and men shaving their faces.1 2 Sometimes, it’s less a social norm and more a social pressure evolving from certain beauty standards, like women removing downy hairs from their upper lip or men shaving their backs.3

Whatever the reason, hair removal is a topic that hits close to home for many. And most at-home hair removal tools — razors, wax, tweezers, etc. — are either expensive, tedious, painful, or some combination of all three.4 IPL devices, like the ones made by Ulike, are still a bit tedious if you’ve got a lot of hair to deal with, but they may be able to mitigate the pain and cost of alternative methods.

Our testing team got hands-on with the Ulike Air 3, the company’s top model, to compare it with others in the space and learn as much as we could about the process and its potential to help you with your hair removal needs.

Both of Ulike’s IPL devices are going to be effective and well-made, but the Air 3 is the model we recommend. It’s remarkably easy to use, and the sapphire cooling crystal it employs makes even the device’s highest settings feel comfortable on relatively sensitive skin. It also boasts a higher power output than most of the devices in its class, which may speed up treatment. And its package includes various extras, like a hard storage case, eye safety goggles, and moisturizing cream.

At Innerbody Research, we take every opportunity to test the products and services we review, including IPL devices like the Ulike Air 3. For this review, our testing team tried the Ulike Air 3 for themselves alongside a handful of other IPL devices. That kind of investigation allows us to determine which IPL devices are superior and where Ulike fits into the larger industry picture. It also gives us specific insights into the customer experience, so you’ll know what to expect from ordering to receiving and ultimately using the device.

We also temper our hands-on experience with scholarly research, and our team read through nearly 100 scientific journal articles related to IPL, hair removal, and even the construction and maintenance of xenon arc lamps like those used in IPL devices. Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this review was thoroughly vetted by one or more 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 involving staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

In evaluating Ulike, our testing team focused on four central criteria most likely to be important to the average user. Those were effectiveness, safety, cost, and ease of use. We gave relatively equal weight to each criterion, evaluating how Ulike performed against the field of competitors and comparing it to the scientific literature supporting IPL for hair removal.

Let’s take a closer look to see how Ulike did.

Effectiveness

Any IPL device of sufficient power should be able to perform effective hair removal. The things that change when you see different power levels in use are often the speed of treatment and the range of skin and hair tones for which a device may be successful. Of course, there are several other factors that can affect efficacy, so this rating comes from a combined consideration of IPL's general effectiveness alongside the Ulike Air 3’s power, its overall design, and our testing experience with it.

IPL devices put out energy commonly measured in joules per square centimeter, or J/cm². This is called a device’s fluence. The Air 3 has a fluence range from 2.4 J/cm² on its low setting to 7.2 J/cm² on its high setting. The manual does not provide a specific measurement for the middle of the Air 3’s three settings. That high setting is a couple more joules than used in one of the more prominent successful studies looking at IPL for hair removal without creeping into territory where too much power can have significant adverse effects.5

Another significant aspect of an IPL device’s effectiveness is its treatment window size. This is the pane of glass through which a device’s light passes. If it’s too small, you’ll need to spend more time treating larger areas like the legs. This is an issue we found with Nood’s Flasher 2.0. If it’s too large, treating smaller areas like the upper lip or bathing suit areas can be challenging, as our testers found with the JOVS Venus Pro II. Ulike’s Air 3 has a 3.3cm² treatment window, which is right in the middle of the sizes we’ve seen on the devices we’ve reviewed. This significantly adds to the device’s versatility.

Safety

The big caveat with IPL is that its safety and efficacy drop off as your skin tone darkens and your hair lightens.6 That’s because IPL relies on light energy targeting the pigment in hair, which comes from the same melanin that colors the skin. If those tones are too close together, the light energy can cause heat damage to the skin as much as it does to the hair. Even if you have light skin, hair that’s blonde, gray, or certain shades of red won’t absorb enough light energy from an IPL device for it to be an effective tool. Those cases aren’t safety issues, however.

Since this is true of any IPL device, we approached the safety criterion with an eye toward other potential risks, including discomfort caused by power levels that were just too high for a given skin’s sensitivity or lamp heat that became too intense throughout treatment.

To that last point, Ulike employs what we’ve found to be the most effective sapphire cooling crystal in its class.16 All of our testers were able to use the device on its highest settings without any discomfort. Of course, treating certain more sensitive areas, such as bathing suit areas, may necessitate a slightly lower setting.

But Ulike didn’t completely knock it out of the park here, either, as the Air 3 only has three power levels. If you find that the second and third levels are too intense, you have to drop all the way down to a level that puts out just 2.4 J/cm², which may put a ding in the device’s timeline to efficacy.

Like most IPL devices for hair removal from reputable companies, the Air 3 has a skin contact sensor that prevents the device from firing if it’s not up against your skin, protecting your eyes from the very bright flash of its lamp. The indicator that lets you know when this contact is sufficient to fire the lamp is well-designed and easy to recognize, but the sensor itself can be a little finicky on angular body parts like knees, making it difficult to instinctively know when to hit the trigger button.

That difficulty sometimes results in the device firing as you're lifting it up to reposition it, which allows some bright light to leak out and hit your eyes. This doesn’t pose a real risk to your vision, especially if you wear the included safety goggles, but it’s still an unpleasant experience that befell two of our testers.

Cost

Ulike’s IPL devices fall in the middle of the pack in terms of price. There are less expensive options that are effective but lack certain features or extras, and there are more expensive devices that take some of the technology a little further (without necessarily improving on efficacy).

Here’s a quick look at what our top IPL devices cost and what you get with them.

As you can see, Ulike is only one of two companies that offer more than a one-year warranty on its products, and it's the less expensive and more completely outfitted option of those two.

You also get a well-made storage case for your Air 3, something none of the other IPL devices we tested provide. This may seem like something small, but when you’ve got limited space beneath your bathroom sink, and there’s already a hair dryer, flat iron, curling iron, and more underneath it, a way to keep your IPL device protected and organized is welcome.

Ease of use

It doesn’t matter how much cutting-edge tech or how many safety features you pack into an IPL device — if it’s overcomplicated or difficult to use in any way, it can quickly upset your regimen. For the most part, the Ulike Air 3 is extremely easy to use. It’s well-balanced in hand without being too heavy, its controls are intuitive and simple, and the power brick on its cord is placed part-way down the line rather than at the plug. That last point is something higher-end IPL devices offer, which helps free up plug space and ensure you can plug in your device wherever you like.

While The Air 3’s three power levels are an extremely minor detriment to safety and efficacy, they make the device a bit easier to use than others. The JOVS Venus Pro II, for example, has six power levels and six modes, so you really have to spend some time with the manual dialing in the right settings for different body parts. Nood’s Flasher 2.0 has seven power levels, which provide a good bit of nuance but make testing the device on different body parts a chore.

The Air 3’s trio of power levels lets you find out what works for you quickly so you can get to the business of hair removal with less time and effort.

The one big knock on the Air 3’s ease of use is the sensitivity of its skin contact sensor, which needs to be fine-tuned a bit. It is, perhaps, too cautious, making it hard to angle the device in a way that satisfies it. Our testers sometimes found themselves repositioning the device up to ten times when trying to get it to register and allow them to fire the lamp.

Ulike is a skincare company that makes a pair of IPL devices intended for hair removal. Unlike the other IPL manufacturers we’ve covered, Ulike doesn’t make any other products like exfoliators, cleansers, or masks.

That said, when our testing team placed orders for Ulike’s Air 3, they were sent bottles of a Moisturizing Body Lotion by “Ulike Beauty.” The lotion isn’t mentioned anywhere we could find on the company site. It’s possible that this is something it plans to roll out in the near future, and we’ll update this content accordingly as that changes.

For now, it seems Ulike is solely focused on its IPL device design and manufacturing, which may be one of the reasons it’s created such a compelling product in the Air 3.

Who are Ulike devices for?

Ulike devices are suitable for anyone with excess body hair anywhere on their body they’d like to have gone — so long as they fit the skin tone and hair color requirements for IPL to be safe and effective. Unfortunately, that means darker skin tones and lighter hair colors will not respond well to treatment.

IPL device companies often market their products across the gender spectrum, but Ulike seems to confine its marketing materials to women. Fortunately, there is nothing about IPL that makes it more suitable for one sex or another, and our male testers can attest to its efficacy on male body hair.

IPL devices can be used by women with PCOS whose hormonal shifts have created unwanted hair growth.7 They also appear to have some benefits as anti-aging treatments to reduce signs of photoaging in the face or pronounced veins just about anywhere.8 However, Dr. Scott Bukoski, a dermatologist and member of our medical review board, notes that these IPL devices "typically rely on more refined bandwidth of light and likely higher power settings than those offered by products available for public purchase." We recommend speaking to a dermatologist before attempting to use an at-home IPL device for anything other than hair removal.

Who might want to look elsewhere for hair removal solutions?

IPL manufacturers tend to use the Fitzpatrick scale to describe which skin tones are safe for IPL use.9 The scale divides skin tones into six groups, with types I-IV being safe and suitable for IPL, type V being on the cusp of dangerous or ineffective, and type VI being wholly unsuitable for IPL treatment.

If you have a lot of tattoos, freckles, or birthmarks in the areas where you want to remove hair, you might want to consider an alternative.10 That’s because those darker areas of skin will absorb an IPL device’s light energy before it can reach the hair follicles. That can result in a significant drop in efficacy, and it may also cause irritation and burns where that light energy is converted to heat.

One last group that might want to consider something other than IPL is anyone with a neuropathic condition that would preclude them from feeling when a device’s level was too high to be safe. The process of testing these devices on small patches of skin to determine safe levels for use is pretty consistent across brands, and if you can’t do that testing effectively, the devices may not be safe for you to use.

Ulike company reputation

While Ulike lacks a page on the Better Business Bureau website, it has an active page on Trustpilot, where the company boasts a 4.1 out of 5 stars. That’s based on just 122 reviews, which isn’t a lot, but it’s enough to begin to get a picture of users’ experiences with the company.

Most of the reviews here are positive, with negative reviews revolving around the products not working for some people. Given the variables involved in ensuring efficacy, from skin tone and hair color to adherence to a properly executed regimen, it’s hard to say for sure why these users didn’t find success.

Intense pulsed light (IPL) is a therapeutic technique that uses extremely bright flashes of light in a certain frequency range, or bandwidth, that’s associated with an intended result.16 For hair removal, IPL devices use a bandwidth that’s been shown to be effective at removing hair when used with a certain protocol.11

The light emitted by an IPL device typically comes from a xenon gas arc lamp, which emits light in a range running from ultraviolet all the way into the infrared portion of the spectrum.12 Devices designed for hair removal will have colored filters in front of these lamps that refine the emission to exclude UV radiation and limit the bandwidth to something closer to 400nm-1200nm.

Strong pulses of light from within that range can both penetrate beneath the surface of the skin and target specific pigments created by melanin.13 The darker the pigment, the more powerfully that light energy gets absorbed and translated to heat energy through selective photothermolysis.15 When all that heat energy hits a hair follicle, it essentially cooks it, rendering it dormant.

After enough treatments, it’s possible to kill the follicle altogether, which would result in permanent hair removal at that site. But follicles are resilient, and most people need regular maintenance treatments (once or twice monthly, sometimes less) to keep their intended body parts hair-free.

Because the light emitted by IPL devices is filtered to target a certain range of pigments in hair, the light energy intended to heat up those hair follicles can instead heat up your skin if it’s too dark.6 In our reading, we’ve found that most IPL-related irritation and burns occur in users with darker skin.

But which skin tones are safe, and which aren’t? As we mentioned above, IPL manufacturers use the Fitzpatrick scale as a reference point for skin tones, with types I-IV being generally considered safe for IPL treatment, type V being on the edge of unsafe, and type VI (the last and darkest type) regarded as unsuitable for IPL use.9

If you fall into types I-IV, IPL treatments should be mostly safe for you. That said, those with sensitive skin may experience a little tingling and itchiness after initial treatments, which occurred for some of our testers who definitely land in type I or II.

The same effect you’d see in darker skin tones will occur if the device is used over tattoos, moles, birthmarks, or freckles, so it’s best to avoid those areas altogether, regardless of your skin tone.

Because xenon lamps emit UV radiation, there is understandable concern among users about potential cancer risks.12 14 But the filters in place on these devices prevent UV radiation from reaching your skin, so you don’t have to worry about those particular risks.

Among all of the devices our testing team tried, the Ulike was the most popular. Testers found its sapphire cooling system to be effective enough that most were comfortable using the device’s highest settings right out of the gate. We saw results in test areas faster with the Ulike than other devices.

Our testers also appreciated the simplicity of the device. While having numerous modes and power levels offer subtle changes for different body parts, limiting the Air 3 to just three power levels made it easy to fire up the device and get started quickly. It also removed a lot of guesswork and checking during the initial testing phase when our team had to see if they reacted to the IPL device in any negative way. Instead of having to test six or seven levels, they only had to test three.

The one thing that several testers complained about was the performance of the skin sensor, which wasn’t quite sensitive enough. On certain body parts like knees or the peak of the shin bone, it’s hard to get the device to sit flush against the skin. One moment, you’ll see the confirmation light come on, but the millisecond before you can hit the button, it goes away, which can get frustrating.

To avoid this frustration, we recommend using Ulike’s automatic mode once you’re used to the device, which eliminates the need for you to push the button, allowing the device to flash automatically when the skin contact sensor is satisfied.

Ulike only offers two products on its website, the Ulike Air 3 and the Ulike Air+. The Air 3 is the top-of-the-line model, and the Air+ offers a slightly less expensive way for customers to access some of the company’s innovations.

Here are some of the key differences between the Air 3 and the Air+ models:

The prices in the above chart are after the company’s $70 coupon, which appears to be active consistently. Both models are also available on Amazon, but the prices are identical.

Companies like Nood and RoseSkinCo offer effective IPL devices for less (both are $169), but they lack certain features you’ll get from Ulike, such as the sapphire cooling crystal, included goggles and razor, and the hard storage case. Ulike also reaches a slightly higher power output than either of those devices.

The Air 3 is a little less expensive than the JOVS Venus Pro II or the SoftSkin Pure FIT, both of which are around $300. The Venus Pro II combines its six power levels with dedicated modes designed to be ideal for certain body parts, though our testers didn’t find those offered significant differences. It’s also somewhat poorly balanced for certain commonly targeted body parts, like the legs or bathing suit areas.

The SoftSkin model features an active skin tone sensor that eliminates the need for you to worry about finding the right power level yourself. But it lacks sapphire cooling of any kind, and its power cord is frustratingly short. Whether these added features justify the higher cost despite some drawbacks is for you to decide, but we consistently recommend the Ulike Air 3 to most readers.

Shipping, warranty, and money-back guarantee from Ulike

Shipping is free from Ulike. Our orders typically arrived within a week of order placement, which is around average for our IPL device experience.

Ulike provides its customers with a two-year warranty against manufacturing defects, which is twice as long as we usually see from IPL manufacturers. SmoothSkin is the only other company that offers a two-year warranty on its device, while JOVS, RoseSkinCo, and Nood only provide one-year warranties.

Like most of the IPL products we’ve reviewed, Ulike’s two devices come with 90-day money-back guarantees. This is a good length of time because it allows you sufficient use to know whether the process works for you.

Once you get the hang of using any IPL device, it’s pretty straightforward. But those first few sessions are going to be clumsy and protracted. 10-15-minute full-body sessions are theoretically possible with some IPL devices, but it takes time to become proficient enough to reach those speeds.

When you first start using your Ulike device, be patient with yourself. You’ll want to test a small patch of skin to see how it responds to treatment before attempting any full body part.

To perform the test, prepare an area of skin about three times the size of the Ulike’s treatment window. You’ll flash the device once at its lowest setting on a part of the test patch and wait. If the flash was comfortable and no discomfort arises for a few minutes afterward, you can move up a power level and reposition the device to flash on an untreated area of the test patch. If that goes well, you can go up to the highest level and try again on the final portion of the test patch.

Once you’ve established that at least one of the Ulike’s power levels is safe for use, you can begin normal treatment, which looks like this:

1. Prepare your treatment area. Shave and apply any pretreatment products you may have purchased along with your device or already have in your possession. You don’t have to use the device immediately after shaving, but the sooner you can, the better, as extraneous hair growth will absorb some of that light energy you want to attack the follicle.
2. Plug in and turn on the device. As the device powers on, its internal fan will start spinning.
3. Choose your power level. Your power level will be whatever the highest level was in testing that did not cause an adverse reaction.
4. Put on eye protection. Ulike is one of the few companies we’ve tested that provides eye protection in its packaging. You can use these shades or any pair of dark sunglasses you like.
5. Place the treatment window against your skin. For the legs, start at the ankle or the thigh. For the chest, start at the shoulders or the base of the stomach. It’s easier to perform the treatment accurately if you start from one end of the treatment area rather than the middle.
6. Fire the bulb. All IPL devices use a manual mode that only flashes once the skin contact sensor is satisfied and you’ve pressed the button dedicated to triggering the flash.
7. Move the device. As you adjust positions, try not to move too far away from your last flash point, but also be careful not to repeat a flash over the same patch of skin, which can lead to irritation.
8. Moisturize when complete. After your treatment, you’ll want to moisturize, but Ulike advises you to wait a few hours before doing so. We recommend you follow these instructions.

Ulike recommends performing three treatments per week.

If you prefer not to have to push the button with every flash, you can hold down the flash button with the device facing away from you. After a few seconds, this will put the device in Glide mode, which will fire the device every couple of seconds, so long as the skin contact sensor is satisfied that the window is against your skin.

If you’re worried about moving the device too slowly and accidentally flashing over the same spot twice, you can pick up the device after each flash and place it back down next to the previous spot. When the sensor is satisfied, it’ll fire the lamp automatically.

While we could go deep into the other hair removal methods available to you, from waxing and epilating to electrolysis, we will spend this short section comparing the Ulike Air 3 to top IPL devices from other companies.

To see how IPL, in general, stacks up against other methods of hair removal, check out our complete guide to the best IPL devices.