7 Best Epilators to Buy in 2018 – Reviews and Buyer’s Guide

• Epilators are efficient,
• Epilators are affordable,
• Epilators are gentle,
• Epilators are portable,
• Epilators are suitable for all women,
• ................
• .......................

Cool..., right?

Anyways, I'm no epilator girl. But, the more I'm using epilators, the more I'm falling in love with them. You won't believe, "there are many best things in an epilator".

Don't be so excited right now. Here's a quick information for you:

Every year around hundreds of new epilator models become available on the market. Many of these epilators come with new features and technologies, which makes the purchasing decision a little bit difficult for us.

So, today in this epilator review, we embark on a journey to uncover the best epilator of 2018.

Best Epilators for 2018 - Comparison Table

1. Braun Silk-épil 9 9-579 - Best Epilator of 2018

Although they began with razors, Braun branched out into epilators and quickly became skilled in those as well. Braun highly values customer feedback, and the Silk-épil 9has incorporated that feedback into a high-quality and effective epilator.

Braun fan? Read the best Braun epilator review>>

The Silk-épil 9 employs cutting-edge technology. The MicroGrip tweezer technology utilized in this epilator was developed by Braun to be able to remove hair that is 4 times shorter than the hair wax is able to pick up.

The MicroGrip tweezers are wider, longer, and deeper than on previous epilator models. In fact, the entire head of the Silk-épil 9 is 40% wider than other Braun products to allow for greater coverage of large surface areas. 

Philips Norelco is a well-known grooming brand. Norelco is an acronym that stands for ‘North American Philips Electrical Company’, due to a legal battle with Philco that resulted in Philips needing to market their grooming products under a different name.

 Philips purchased Philco in in 1981 but chose to continue to label their personal grooming products as Philips Norelco. Norelco was intended to be phased out but is still commonly associated with Philips grooming products.

Philips has been producing hair removal products since 1939. Their experience has led them to become a leading brand in the grooming industry, for both men and women.

The Philips HP6576 used ceramic discs as opposed to the traditional tweezers used in other brands of epilators. These discs are essentially tweezers, but separate Phillips from other brands.

The HP6576 has a hair lifter system that raises flat hairs up to a level where the epilator can grasp them for removal. This design is beneficial since it prevents you from needing to do multiple passes over the same area to get all the hair.

This epilator fully charges within an hour and can run for 40 minutes without being plugged into an outlet.

3. Philips Satinelle Essential HP6401 

Another one of Philips designs, the HP6401 has many similarities to the HP6576 However, and the primary difference between these two products is the size. The HP6401 is the compact epilator option that Philips manufactures.

The HP6576 weighs 1.2 pounds, whereas this compact epilator weighs in at 8.8 ounces. In addition to simply weighing less, the compact epilator is also much smaller, meaning that for most people, the entire device will fit in your hand.

The Satinelle HP6401 may be smaller than the other Philips epilator, but that doesn’t make it any less efficient. This compact epilator can detect and pull out hairs as short as .5mm.

Read the full review here or ​buy it now >>

Like the HP6576, the Satinelle HP6401 is corded and only able to epilate on dry skin.This means no epilating in the shower or bath, or in any other wet or damp environment.

The smaller Philips epilator has less ceramic discs that make it less efficient than the larger option. It may take longer to remove all the desired hair due to the compact nature of the device.

4.  Braun SE7681 Silk-épil 7 Wet and Dry Epilator - Most Popular

As we mentioned earlier, Braun has a long history in developing personal grooming products. The Silk-épil 7 is an older version of the Silk-épil 9 that we reviewed earlier.

The Silk-épil 7, at first glance, seems to be nearly identical to the Silk-épil 9 version. However, there are still major differences. One key difference is that the Silk-épil 9 uses MicroGrip technology that the Silk-épil 7 does not have.

The other dramatic difference is with the attachments that come with. The Silk-épil 7 does not have any attachment designed to exfoliate. The five attachments that come with this model are the efficiency cap, the trimmer cap, the sensitive area cap, the shaver head, and the facial cap.

Although these attachments are designed to let the epilator be tool that can remove hair from anywhere on the body, they do not include an exfoliation attachment. However, each attachment does successfully do what it is intended for. This means that the Silk-épil 7 is a good epilator for full body hair removal, including the face.

Emjoi is an internationally known personal grooming product brand that produces a wide variety of epilators, shavers, and more.

This Emjoi epilator stands out from the rest of the products we’re reviewing because of a number of tweezers that it contains. The Emjoi AP-18 has a shocking 72 tweezers in it, which is significantly more than other product options.

The increased number of tweezers are designed to make epilating faster and less painful. Instead of potentially needing to epilate the same area three, four, or even five times, this epilator is designed so you only need to epilate an area once or twice.

To help gather more hairs faster, the Emjoi AP-18 include flaps in the middle of the head that are designed to make hairs stand up more. This makes sure that the epilator is able to grasp them firmly on the first try.

However, unlike some other epilators on the market, the Emjoi does not come with any attachments.

Panasonic is a company that rarely comes to mind in discussions of hair removal. Panasonic is an international electronics company that is based out of Japan, commonly known for its cameras, phones, or kitchen appliances. However, Panasonic also produces electronic personal care products, including epilators and shavers.

The ES-ED90-P from Panasonic, at first glance, appears to be a perfect combination of all the things that make a good epilator. It has attachments to become a shaver as well as an epilator, a head designed for foot care, and various epilating heads.

This epilator is completely waterproof, has hypoallergenic components, and boasts an impressive 48 tweezers.

However, the device is dependent on being charged with a cord. When not plugged in, it should hold a charge for about an hour, but can often fall much shorter than that mark. The epilator also does not have a good way of removing the pulled hair from the epilator head.

Hair will often clog up the epilator after only a few passes and requires frequent manual intervention with a cleaning brush that makes the process take significantly longer.

7. Remington EP7030 Smooth & Silky Deluxe Rechargeable Epilator

Remington is another household name in regards to grooming products. With over a century of experience in customer service and business, Remington’s eventual foray into grooming products has been largely successful.

The Remington EP7030 has a head that is designed to be as smooth and flexible as possible while still picking up hairs. The pivoting head makes it easier to remove hair from curving areas, such as on your legs. The EP7030 also features a massaging cap that includes Aloe Vera to soothe skin after epilation.

The head is also easily removable to allow for frequent and thorough cleaning. The removability makes this epilator stand out regarding cleanliness.

This epilator is clunkier than other options on the market. The size and grip can be uncomfortable depending on the user. Although it comes with a massaging cap designed for soothing skin, it can be extremely painful for use on sensitive areas.

This is a question, which comes to me many times. People seek reasons for shifting their preferences from a normal waxing session or using a hair removal cream to epilators. Well to begin with, you can get a great epilator for much less, than you would pay for a single waxing session at a beauty salon, which makes it an affordable as well as durable way of getting rid of the unwanted body hair. So let us now discuss the details that might help you in choosing the best epilator from all the available option.

Well to begin with, let us be very clear about the fact that, the features that you get depends completely on the fact that what is your budget. Once you are able to determine your budget, then you can choose wisely, by keeping in mind the following:

1. Power

The power of an epilator, i.e. how effectively and how many hairs will it remove; can be determined by assessing that how many ‘tweezers’ the device has. These small rotatory tweezers are responsible for removing hairs. The more number of tweezers a device has, the more number of hair can be removed in one go.

2. Cap

The pain or sensation you suffer while epilating; is regulated by a cap, which is second most important part of an epilator. There are certain expensive epilators, which have such delicate caps, which can be used to get rid of even facial hair. Hence, owing an expensive epilator can save you from the extra burden of buying a separate epilator for your face.

3. Epilators that reduces pain

There are primarily two types of epilators that we’ll discuss in this section. 1st is the dry epilator, which has to be used on a dry skin. The second type is a wet and dry epilator, which is easier to use as it fit for being used even under a shower. A wet and dry epilator is a device that we would recommend people who don’t have a prior experience of waxing and are alien to the pain that is incurs. If you use a wet and dry epilator, after applying some hot water, it would open your pores and would hence reduce the pain.

4. Corded/Cordless

Let us begin with the most basic benefits that you can get out of a cordless epilator. Such an epilator is hardly to use, and easy to carry as tit saves you from the hustle of connecting it to a plug every time, just to ensure the constant supply of power. Furthermore, in case of a wet and dry epilator, only cordless devices can be used because suing a corded device is the only option, for obvious reason.

5. Washable head

In order to ascertain that the epilator can be washed properly, it is necessary that it has a washable head. There are other epilator which do not have a washable head, and these devices can only be cleaned with a brush.

6. Built in Light Option

There are certain parts of the body, where you tend to grow really short hair. This feature of an epilator helps you in getting rid of such unwanted short hairs.

7. Additional Heads

Normally, an epilator just has one tweezer head. However, an epilator can have more than one such attachments and can be instantly converted, either into a trimmer or into shaving device, making the epilator a more useful device. This, however, completely depends on the requirement of the user that whether there is a utility of a shaver or a trimmer for that matter, in her day to use. If there is no such requirement, then you should rather save some more money on this aspect.

When you think about hair removal, what are the first methods that pop in mind?

Shaving, waxing, tweezing, electrolysis?

One of the least discussed methods of hair removal is epilating. Let's take a look at epilating compared to other methods of hair removal.

Shaving is probably the most common method of hair removal. A disposable razor is worth mere pennies, and are often not sold for much more than a few dollars. Electric razors are often pricier, and then you need to buy new blades for it anyways.

In addition to not breaking the bank, most people first learn to shave with a disposable razor and may not ever upgrade to an electric razor. Shaving is cost-effective and familiar.

However, shaving may be one of the most annoying and inefficient methods of hair removal out there. Shaving cuts the hair that is poking above the skin, meaning that the root is still intact. With an intact root, the hair will grow back within days.

In fact, according to this British study, women spend 1,728 hours shaving over the course of their lives, Huffington Post reports. This study also says that the average British woman shaves for 4 minutes, 6 days a week.

Shaving is undoubtedly an inefficient form of hair removal if it has to be done almost every day because of how quickly hair stubble grows back.

Shaving also blunts the ends of the hair, which can cause it to curl inwards and create ingrown hairs. If that doesn’t happen, the hair follicles can become irritated and develop razor burn. If neither of these things happen, you could accidentally nick yourself with the razor, which could lead to an unsightly gash or scar.

All of these are reasons why shaving is not an ideal form of hair removal, and epilating improves on every single one of these problems.

Epilating rips hair out by the root, similar to waxing. Since the root of the hair is gone, it needs to reform before the hair can grow again. This takes weeks, depending on the individual. Using an epilator cuts down on your hair removal time by large chunks.

Although ingrown hairs can form with an epilator, it is rarer than it is with shaving. Since the hair is growing back from scratch it is possible for it to grow sideways, causing an ingrown hair. However, shaving will often shove the hair back into the follicle. If epilating cause an ingrown hair, it is due to damage to the follicle from ripping it out.

Epilators may still irritate your skin, but it often only turns it red for a few hours. The majority of irritation can be avoided by exfoliating prior to epilating.

Epilators will not nick or cut you unless you make a significant effort to do so. Epilators are just lots of little electric tweezers and are no more dangerous than a handheld traditional tweezer. 

Waxing and epilating are very similar. Both methods of hair removal rip the hair out by the root. One major difference, however, is that epilators grasp the hairs and pull. Waxing will grab the entire surface presented to it, which sometimes results in ripping the skin off as well as hair.

There is no real indicator of when a wax will take off a layer or two of skin. Someone who has never had that reaction could have it the next time they wax. If the skin you’re waxing is recovering from any irritation or dryness, it could be pulled off by the wax.

Depending on how much skin is removed, there is potential for the area to scar over or remain discolored for long after it has healed. Although there are products to remove scar tissue and discoloration, they don’t work for everyone and are a hit or miss for effectiveness.

Even if your wax doesn’t visibly tear your skin, it will damage the skin cells that were yanked on. This means that the likelihood of developing painful, raw skin after a wax is extremely high.

Another major disadvantage to waxing is that hair typically needs to be a minimum of one centimeter long before the wax will be able to pull it out. It takes the average person around six weeks to gain this growth, according to Hairfinder.

Imagine how visible your hair is at six weeks post hair removal. Even if you have lighter hair, it will be easily seen.

Waxing is also a hefty investment. Depending on where you go and what you have done, it can cost upwards of $100 per session! If you go 10 times a year, that’s $1000 each year down the drain.

It is possible to wax yourself at home, but unless you have a trained helper or are an expert yourself, the likelihood of you harming yourself or not using proper amounts of wax is high.

Since epilating doesn’t pull on the skin at all, it completely avoids the problem of losing skin from hair removal. You may have some redness or soreness after epilating, but it won’t be anywhere near as intense as the results of a waxing that grabbed some skin along with the hair.

Epilating, on average, only requires .5mm of hair growth to be effective. That means you will be able to epilate again every two to three weeks instead of waxing every six. Hair doesn’t become really visible until that two or three-week mark for the majority of people.

Epilators do not break the bank the same way that waxing does. You can purchase a high-quality epilator for less than $100 that will last longer than a year. The amount of money that can be saved by epilating is monumental. Plus, epilating doesn’t have the same learning curve that do-it-yourself waxing does. 

Tweezing is only effective for small areas, such as your eyebrows. Even then, tweezing can be time-consuming, frustrating, and even cause hand cramps! However, unlike waxing, tweezing pulls hair out by the root yet leaves the skin intact.

Tweezing is such an effective form of hair removal, that it is the basis of the epilators we have today. The biggest problem with manual tweezers is that you can’t tweeze off all of your body hair- you have thousands of individual hairs, and that doesn’t even include the ones on your head!

Epilators are essentially electronic tweezers, but instead of only one tweezer, they come equipped with upwards of forty! When it comes to deciding between tweezing and epilating, epilating will always come out on top.

 According to WebMD, the FDA and American Medical Association say that electrolysis is the only permanent method of hair removal. This is great if you know you never want that hair back, but if you aren’t sure you like your brows shaped that way or you don’t know if you’ll like having no arm hair, it is not a great option.

Electrolysis pricing will vary depending on where you go to have it done, how much hair you want to be removed, and how many sessions you’ll need to attend. To fully remove hair, electrolysis needs to be performed in multiple sessions on the same area. However, you’ll almost definitely be spending at least a few hundred dollars.

Since electrolysis is permanent hair removal, you want to ensure that you’ll be happy with having that hair gone forever. Before getting electrolysis done, you’ll want to experiment with how you feel without hair in certain areas.

Using a good epilator to test out how you like the look and feel of various hair removal is a wise choice. Epilation will be the most cost-effective and safe way to test what you want to be done before permanently removing the hair. Epilating will give you the same results as electrolysis, except the hair will grow back in a few weeks.

 You could wax to try out various ideas, but as we discussed earlier, waxing is expensive, it hurts your skin, and it can leave permanent damage. Epilating is a cheaper and safer way to achieve the desired results.

Question: What do I need to do before I epilate?

Answer: Epilating takes some preparation. It is not a quick fix for hair removal. To get the best results, you will always want to begin by exfoliating the area you plan to epilate. Exfoliation is removing dirt, dead skin cells, oils, and other debris that may be stuck on your skin with something like a loofah, a washcloth, or a facial brush.

 After you exfoliate, it may be beneficial for you to hop into the shower or bath and let some warm water run over the areas you plan to epilate. In addition to ensuring the skin is clean, the warm water can help weaken the hair strands and follicles.

Question: Is epilating as painful as people say it is?

Answer: Epilating is notorious for being painful. After all, waxing is no walk in the park, and they’re both similar experiences. Depending on your pain threshold, epilating can range from excruciating to mildly irritating. Luckily, the majority of the pain is only present the first few times you epilate.

 After you have epilated a few times, the pain decreases exponentially. However, if you’re still worried, you can apply a thin layer of ointment with lidocaine in it before epilating. Another option is to take a pain reliever 30-60 minutes before you plan to epilate.

 To make the actual process as pain-free as possible, use the slowest setting on your epilator to begin with. Don’t start on a sensitive area. It is also crucial to remember to pull your skin taut, so the epilator has a smooth surface to work on.

Question: Do I need to clean my epilator?

Answer: Yes. Like any hygiene product, it is important to keep your epilator head clean and free of bacteria and hair. Many epilators come with a small brush you can use to brush the hair that may be stuck in the tweezers out. Some epilators even have detachable heads to make cleaning easier and accessible.

 When you clean your epilator, remove the power source if possible. Do not get it wet if the instructions say it isn’t waterproof since this could still damage the epilator no matter how careful you are.

 Always remember to read the cleaning instructions for your specific epilator to ensure safety.

​There are a lot of positive reasons to invest in epilating over other hair removal methods. Finding the best epilator for you is an important part of this investment.

Epilating rips hair out by the root, meaning it will grow back significantly slower than it does when you shave. It also only grabs the hair and not your skin. Although waxing does rip hair out by the root, it also rips off your skin.

Epilating is cheaper than waxing, because the only investment is in an epilator, and not in multiple expensive waxing sessions. This is also true in regards to the expense paired with electrolysis hair removal. It is entirely possible to find a cheap epilator that does an amazing job.

Epilating is also a non-permanent form of hair removal, so you can make sure that you want to remove hair before getting it permanently removed, which is what electrolysis does.

If you decide to take the plunge into the world of epilating, choosing your epilator can be a daunting decision. To streamline this process, this article has done in-depth and accurate epilator reviews.

Out of the seven we reviewed, we are confident to recommend the Braun Silk-épil 9 9-579 due to this epilators dedication to making the process as successful and pain-free as possible. This epilator comes with attachments to make exfoliating prior to epilating accessible and fast.

It also has a dual function as an electric razor, which saves you money from having to invest in an electric razor in the future. This epilator can be used wet or dry, making it convenient if you prefer to remove hair in the shower or bath.

The head of this epilator is flexible, making sure it contours to your body for an even epilation. It also has a massaging function that soothes skin after you finish epilating. Since epilating can be painful for the first few times, this addition is a benefit to help beginners.

Overall, the Braun Silk-épil 9 9-579 is designed to be user-friendly, pain-free, high quality, and effective. With minimal drawbacks, we can happily say that this model is the top one out of the seven best epilators we reviewed.