Good post Chris.
JM1987, from my experience you come across most of the same lasers when checking around. I’m from Toronto and here’s my experience from non stop google searching, checking Groupon deals, etc:
About 2 or 3 clinics have GentleLASE ranging in price from fairly cheap to ridiculous expensive. I’ve never seen anyone with GentleYAG or GentleMAX.
About 2 or 3 also have Apogee Elite to MPX all fairly inexpensive. I’ve never seen anyone with just the original Apogee (alex only).
Another 3 or so have Soprano XL which is also popular, ranging in prices.
Then the rest really seem to be Yag’s like Coolglide, or IPL, or something completely random like radio frequency hair removal that they call “laser”.
In all my searching I’ve never found a clinic that has LightSheer or LightSheer duet.
Please let us know your skin type as that will impact the type of laser used. If you’re dark, then you can only use a yag for one thing.
In terms of the “best” laser, you’d want GentleLASE or Apogee Elite or MPX. They’re all pretty similar. The GentleLASE has a bit of an advantage in that it has a fixed 3ms pulse width so they’re basically forced to use that setting where the Apogee machines go from 5ms up to much higher, so from my experience at least most clinics use something like 20+ms. If you’re looking at Apogee Elite machines, the MPX is the newest, only difference is it has 2 new features, the one is that it has a 18mm spot size now, and the other is that it has a dual hybrid mode where it fires the yag and alex together (or immediately after one another rather) which targets more hair types.
My recommendation is look for GentleLASE, GentleMAX, Apogee Elite, Apogee EliteMPX to start providing you’re skin type 1-3. If you’re higher then look for any Yag. If you can’t find those and you’re treating very dark coarse hair, like pubic type hair or facial hair, then a Yag would probably be second best. If you can’t find those, then I’d look at LightSheer diode or Duet and would avoid Soprano XL diode.
You can always post here too once you find a machine and we can let you know!
