Review (4/5): Not painful but very time consuming.
This is the only epilator I have used and I was a little scared to try an epilator but I could not afford waxing my legs once a month. The epilator pinches a little as is pulls out the hair but it is not painful. The best way to use it would be to shave on day one and then on day two exfoliate your legs really well and then use the epilator. The down side to using the epilator is that hair does not grow at the same speed so if you want silky soft legs you need to shave or use the epilator every day... and the epilator can take up to 1/2 to do both lower legs. After my first couple of uses I noticed that I had a lot of ingrown hairs, I was able to use tweezers to help them out and then use the epilator to remove them.
All in all I do this that this epilator works well but I do find that I need to shave my legs if I am going to go to the beach or something. But other that the slowness I would recommend trying one!