i’ve had 6 sessions full arms with the soprano xl and although I did nottice hairloss you can hardly notice anything overall. does it take a lot longer for arms in general? I am afraid to spend money on more as it seems not to have a lot of effect.
is there a better laser than the soprano xl which I should try? does anyone know any good clinics in London?
We need more info. What is your skin type and is the hair very dark and coarse? It doesn’t take longer on arms than anywhere else but any laser can only treat very dark coarse hair. If your forearms are too fine then you won’t get any results on them. Please read the faq’s and other posts on here, soprano XL is not that good of a laser. If your the right skin type 1-3 then an alexandrite like GentleLASE or Apogee Elite/MPX would give better results. The Soprano is a bit of a gimmick I think.
You’re not providing enough information. You don’t mention shedding at all, which makes me suspect that you may not have known that all your hair should have shed after each treatment. If that never happened, your treatments were probably ineffective.
I just had my second treatment today. They did 40 joules with the soprano which I keep hearing is very high. What settings did they use on you? It should atleast be painful for this one to work. They refuse to treat me any higher settings for some reason…
Also, I’d go for an Alexandrite laser if it’s not much more expensive. And assuming you’re white.
The Soprano XL goes up to 120 joules, shows here at Alma as well
is that in HR mode?
I assume so but not sure. I was treated in SHR mode when I used the Soprano and when I asked what settings were used later I was told the highest possible which is around 120j.
I’d imagine it would be for SHR cause if they fired 120j single pulses I bet it’d burn the skin off. I’ve been told my settings were pretty high as it is. I can’t imagine trippling that lol.
And the technician was too much of a chicken to crank it up even higher for me. Bit of a dumbass I have doing my treatments.
I think the biggest problem with the Soprano is that there’s no way to know if an area has been covered enough when using SHR. The tech told me they know by the skin colour and also by the # of pulses fired on the machine but to me that’s bs. My whole issue was that when my under arms were treated, she took about 3 minutes on each underarm and by the end it was feeling very hot and almost started to get uncomfortable. When she did my legs though, they were both done in something like 20 or 30 minutes. On my legs I NEVER felt that heat anywhere and I also had no shedding on them. My underarms completely shed same as with an alexandrite. I think that’s part of the problem with this machine, for a small area it may work because you can be sure you’ve covered it enough but larger ones is impossible They should have to split into grids that are the same size, then they can at least know how many pulses should be fired in each grid for optimal removal.
I totally understand what you mean. Good thing I’m not doing SHR mode it really doesn’t look practical. Plus wasn’t it designed for large body areas anyway? It seems a failure.
Anyway I found the HR mode settings on the Soprano XL.
Power: CW 500 Watts
Pulse duration: up to 400 ms
Energy output: up to 120 J/cm
Spot size: 10 x 12 mm
Pulse/Sec: up to 3 Hz
Cooling: Sapphire Contact
I’m thinking the 120J is just an indication of the maximum power output of the machine like other lasers have as well. But still, I wonder if people have been treated with something like nearly 100J.
What area are you having treated? From my understanding and even Alma’s website, the whole benefit of the Soprano is the pain free removal and that it’s designed for the super hair mode multi pass. I’m not really sure why anyone would use single pulse mode on it. Their website and even my tech I went to said the single pulse is for areas like toes or face where you can’t keep doing multiple passes since the area is so small. For legs chest etc it should be on the multi pass mode since that’s mostly what it’s designed for. I wouldn’t waste money on it in single pulse mode, I’d rather go for an alex.
sorry i’m new at this. skin type 3 hair is coarse. there was shedding but not all the hair that was treated, only part of it. I suppose they didn’t use a good setting as there was almost no pain and they don’t tell you how many joules they use. i will try GentleLase then. It seems to have better reviews