Review (4/5): It worked for me
I have used this to treat some rogue hairs on my face and have been successful. The hairs are on my cheek bones above my beard line, nose tip, between my eyebrows and a single one on my ear. Many of them have not grown back in a month after first treatment. I treat every 1-2 weeks. Whatever does come back I have treated again and there is less to treat each time.
It's more tedious than IPL for sure, but the success rate per treated hair seems good. Also you can be very precise with this.
My technique is:
Grind some salt in a mortar and pestle to get a fine salt powder, put it in a small container with filtered water. Get a small container and put rubbing alcohol in it. For the container I just use a two sided measuring spoon from my kitchen. Maybe an old contact lense case would work good too, just don't use it for contacts after. Clean my face, then use my fingers to spread rubbing alcohol on the follicles I'm going to treat. Dip and wisk the end of the electrolysis pen in the rubbing alcohol to clean it. Get in front of a well lit mirror and table. Make sure the tip of the electrode is perfectly straight and fully extended - - mine was a little curved at the end and needed straightening. Dip into the salt water solution the index finger that is on the hand that will hold the pen. Hold the pen on the plastic parts with your other fingers. Fully insert the electrode into the follicle to treat. Touch your salty index finger on the metal band to electrify the electrode. You will hear a buzzing for a few seconds, then a pause, then buzzing again. The pause means treatment for that follicle is done and you can move on to the next. Though for good measure sometimes I prolonged the treatment of each follicle for an additional 1-2 buzzes, I don't know if it's necessary. Maybe that's best reserved for stubborn hairs. You will see some white puss looking fluid come out of the follicle, supposedly that's lye, which kills the follicle. When done with all of your hairs for the session, take a pause before tweezing hairs and cleaning your face. Here is a good time to put away your tools, brush your teeth or whatever. Sanitize your probe with rubbing alcohol. Meanwhile this will give the lye time to work, let's say it's 5-10 minutes. Then you tweeze the hairs and clean your face. You can use your extra rubbing alcohol to wipe on your hair follicles to help sanitize them.
Another tip, make sure your probe is fully in the follicle during the shock. The probe needle should dissappear inside, and your skin should not dimple inward from the probe pushing it down. Don't touch the skin with the probe sleeve/nozzle, but be very close. You can also use two hands to hold the probe for stability. Your dominant hand can hold the top part of the pen, and your other hand hold the tapered bottom part and brace the side of your hand against your face. I have shaky hands and this helped me to keep the probe in place.
My nose tip hairs seemed to all die out in 1-2 treatments. Cheeks I started with a lot but each time it gets easier with less and less hair. That single ear hair was one and done. Between eyebrows, I started with a bit of a monobrow but it's getting very thin. Overall a success and I plan to continue to treat other areas in the future.