Philips Lumea IPL 9900 review: is this the GOAT of all IPL machines?

New research from Philips Lumea shows that 33% of women experience pain as a result of their beauty regime, which adds up to an average of one hour and 26 minutes of pain each month  – or just over 1,098 hours over their lifetime!

Unsurprisingly, traditional methods of hair removal such as waxing, tweezing and threading are the biggest culprits for causing major discomfort. But, while 58% of those surveyed admitted they wished treatments were less painful, 76% also felt they didn’t have a choice. And that’s not to mention the quarter of women questioned who said they experienced negative side effects from hair removal, including in grown hairs from shaving (27%) and blistered skin from waxing (13%).

Thankfully, there is an alternative. The best IPL machines provide a pain free solution to hair removal that can banish unwanted body and facial hair for good and help you say 'so long' to unsightly stubble and shaving rashes. And one of the best IPL machines on the market right now is the new Philips Lumea IPL 9900, hailed as the brand’s smartest and speediest device ever. Read on to find out why it’s so good.

PHILIPS LUMEA IPL 9900 REVIEW: PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

There are several purchase options you can choose from when it comes to the Philips Lumea IPL series to meet your needs and budget. I've been testing out the new Philips Lumea IPL 9900 Series BRP958/00 which has a recommended retail price of £539.99 and comes with four attachments. As the only device from Philips to feature the new SkinAI, it’s the brand’s most premium option out of all the bundles.

However, other models include the Philips Lumea IPL 9000 Series BR1958/00 (RRP £499.99), the Philips Lumea IPL 8000 Series BR1945/00 (RRP £449.99, currently reduced to £329.99), and the Philips Lumea IPL 7000 Series BR1921/00 (RRP £349.99). The models differ due to the number of precision attachments and other accessories on offer, whether the device is corded or cordless, and the kind of smart tech features they provide.

While the new Philips Lumea IPL 9900 device is only available exclusively from the Philips website right now, it’s worth noting the brand now offers a ‘Try & Buy’ subscription service which lets you make 12 monthly payments of £44.99 you can cancel at any time. Moreover, you get a 2 year global warranty and 1 extra year of warranty when you register your product within 90 days.

PHILIPS LUMEA IPL 9900 REVIEW: UNBOXING AND SETUP

Launched in June 2024, the new Philips Lumea IPL 9900 is billed as the brand’s smartest, fastest cordless IPL solution ever, with SenseIQ Technology and exclusive SkinAI features to analyse your skin, track your progress, and deliver up to 12 months of hair-free smooth skin. As such, there’s a lot to unpack. 

Inside the box, you get the IPL 9900 hair removal device, four ‘intelligent’ attachments for the body, face, bikini line and underarms (more on those later), a power adapter, a luxury pouch with individual internal pockets for storing the attachments, an instruction manual, a cleaning cloth, the new battery powered Philips Facial Hair Remover device with a Philips AA battery and cleaning brush, plus a QR code for you to scan and download the Philips Lumea IPL app.

The free companion app is seriously impressive with almost too many features to mention. Try to ignore any initial feelings of overwhelm when you open the app for the first time because, once you do, it will clearly guide you step-by-step through every stage, from setting up and doing your skin sensitivity tests to coaching you through every single treatment with helpful reminders on how to prep your skin beforehand, the best angle for using the device on a certain body part, which attachment to use, plus advice on cleaning the device after use for the best efficacy, plus a whole lot more I’ll explain below.

PHILIPS LUMEA IPL 9900 REVIEW: DESIGN

The Philips Lumea IPL 9900 has a super stylish, ergonomic and well-thought-out design that’s very comfortable to hold, easy to angle around the different contours of the body, and not so heavy that you’ll have wrist ache after a full body treatment.

Best of all, the only button on the handle is the trigger to set off a flash: all the other buttons are located on the head of the device so you’ll never accidently turn it off or change your chosen intensity setting during use.

I love the long, thin ‘READY to flash’ light located on the rear of the head. This only lights up white when the device is in full contact with your skin, meaning you can confidently pull the trigger knowing the flash will work properly rather than you struggling to see if a red flash has gone off against your skin (if you know, you know).

This light also flashes orange as a safety mechanism if it detects that your skin is too dark to treat (for IPL to work, there needs to be a contrast between the pigment in the hair colour and the pigment in the skin tone, which is why the IPL hair removal method works best on naturally dark blonde, brown and black hair and on skin tones from fair to dark brown, as shown on the chart below from Philips or in our guide to how IPL machines work).

I also like the fact that it’s a doddle to remove and affix the attachments over the Light Exit Window (featuring an integrated UV filter), so you won’t be wrestling with any parts or worrying about breaking them.

The four ‘intelligent’ attachments all come with their own individual SmartSkin sensor to trigger the most effective programs for each body area when they are connected. They are also specially designed to perfectly fit the curves of the body, and include the…

Face attachment: tailored for the upper lip, chin and jawline with a flat design, small window, and an extra UV filter (you should not use this attachment above the cheekbones)

Body attachment: boasts the largest treatment window with a convex (curved-in) design to effectively cover areas below the neckline, especially larger areas such as the legs, arms and stomach

Bikini line attachment: has a rounded, curved-out design that provides a higher light intensity compared to the Body attachment to deal with thicker, stronger hair 

Armpits attachment: this attachment has a smaller treatment area and curves out to treat underarm hairs that can be hard to reach

PHILIPS LUMEA IPL 9900 REVIEW: FEATURES

One of the standout features on the Philips Lumea IPL 9900 hair removal device is its high performance lamp. Built to last, it gives you 450,000 flashes, which is the equivalent of 39 years of lamp lifetime. Comparatively, the Braun Skin i-Expert Pro 7 which currently holds the top spot in our best IPL machine guide costs twice as much with an RRP of £999.99 and comes with 400,000 flashes.

To apply the flashes to the skin, you can either use the ‘stamp and flash’ method where you move the device to the area you want to treat and pull the trigger to activate one flash (great for precise treatment on trickier areas like the chin, knees, ankles and armpits), or keep your finger on the trigger to activate the ‘slide and flash’ mode for a fast gliding application across larger areas like the legs.

Thanks to its rechargeable battery, it can also be used cordless for greater freedom of movement and use, or with the power cord to dramatically speed up the number of flashes you get per minute in ‘slide and flash’ mode.

As mentioned, each attachment comes with its own individual SmartSkin sensor to help you select the most suitable light intensity from five settings according to your skin tone and hair colour when the attachments are connected to the device. 

You can, of course, override these manually using the buttons on the head of the device to select one of five intensity settings (the higher the intensity, the more effective the treatment) but do heed the advice from the free Lumea IPL ‘coaching’ app to avoid any potential skin irritation.

Talking of the app, it has so many game changing features it’s almost hard to know where to begin describing them without remarking on how they completely transform the user experience and enhance the performance of the device.

PHILIPS LUMEA IPL 9900 REVIEW: PERFORMANCE

Deemed as Philips’ ‘fastest cordless’ machine to date and their ‘smartest IPL solution ever for long lasting smooth skin’, the Lumea IPL 9900 hair removal device with SenseIQ Technology now comes with exclusive Skin AI features in the Lumea IPL app to analyse your skin and track your progress.

I’m the first to admit the above all sounds a bit mindboggling and overwhelming, but honestly, navigating the app and following its advice to complete treatments couldn’t be easier. In fact, I didn’t even have to open the instruction manual to get going, which is an absolute first for me (but I obviously did read it later for health and safety reasons).

The app is packed with high quality video tutorials, from tips to perfecting your technique from real users to prepping and caring for your skin before and after treatments. In another first for using an IPL device, I didn’t have to spend hours googling unanswered questions or watching YouTube tutorials to find how to get the best from the machine. I just turned it on, followed the app, and got stuck in. 

Two of the exclusive SkinAI features to try before you start your treatments are the Skin-Selfie Analyser and Body Hair Analyser to help you track your progress over time. For both features, you need to take a photo of your face or certain body part once a week to keep a record of your progress.

I wasn’t too fussed about the Skin-Selfie Analyser, which focuses on analysing the skin texture, pigmentation, and radiance levels of your face to name a few, but the Body Hair Analyser was seriously cool, and by using it, I could see that my body hair was growing back sparser over the weeks, giving me an added motivation to continue treatments.

Another SkinAI feature is the Audio Flash Counter which counts your flashes once you grant the IPL device access to your smartphone microphone after scanning a small QR code on the machine’s handle. To get the best from this feature, and as an example, I had to measure my leg from ankle to knee (14.5 inches) for the app to work out how many flashes I’d need to treat one strip of my lower leg (29 flashes).

The slight downside is you need to carry out your treatment in a quiet space so your phone’s microphone can pick up the soft popping noise of the flash. But the advantage of using this feature is you’ll quickly find out if you haven’t applied enough flashes to treat one strip of your leg.

That’s because if you only apply 19 flashes when you should be applying 29, you won’t get the full effect of the treatment because your flashes are spread to far apart and you might miss areas of hair growth. Therefore, using this feature, at least initially while you get the hang of things, helps you to learn how far apart your flashes should be spaced for maximum coverage while encouraging you to slow down and focus. 

That said, this machine is anything but slow. While the cordless feature is great for tricky areas like armpits, the speed of the flashes during the ‘slide and flash’ mode when it is plugged into mains power is the fastest I’ve ever experienced compared to other IPL machines. And that means you can treat large areas in a fraction of the usual time.

But perhaps my favourite thing about the app is that it creates a personalised treatment schedule for you and provides you with reminders for when it’s time to do your next treatment. And it does this for every individual body part, ticking them off one-by-one once you’ve completed a treatment so you no longer have to write treatment dates in your diary and can easily stick to the schedule for the best results.

You only need to use the Philips Lumea IPL 9900 once every two weeks for eight weeks, and then once every four weeks thereafter for touch ups. The first day I began my treatments, I started with my legs and selected this body part from a menu that included underarms, bikini line, face, arms, and stomach. Once I completed this first leg treatment, the app then showed me my forthcoming treatment schedule, and would show a reminder when I needed to do my next treatment two weeks later. 

A week later, I kicked off my face, armpits, and bikini line treatments and received individual treatment schedules for those body areas too. And the clever bit is that when you select your next treatment from the menu, it always reminds you to affix the correct attachment and tells you what setting to use. In short, it’s foolproof, genius stuff. But what were my results?

Well, I was stunned to notice that my leg, bikini line and underarm hairs all grew back slower and sparser after the very first treatment. And by the end of my first four sessions, I had only a few fine hairs left to treat with top ups once a month. I was delighted with my silky smooth results, the ease and speed of the treatments, and the support and guidance I received from the app to make everything as painless as possible, both literally and figuratively speaking!

PHILIPS LUMEA IPL 9900 REVIEW: VERDICT

There’s no doubt about it, the Philips Lumea IPL 9900 hair removal device is one of the best IPL machines on the market. Stylish and ergonomic with a well-thought-out design, it comes with four ‘intelligent’ attachments to fit the curves of your body and face, and can be used cordless for greater freedom of use or plugged into the mains to dramatically speed up treatment times.

The companion app and smart features, including SkinAI and SenseIQ Technology, are seriously impressive, helping you to analyse your skin and hair reduction progress, guide you through every treatment from start to finish, and provide personalised treatment schedules with reminders. A stunning IPL machine delivering silky smooth, long lasting results for up to 12 months.