Sorry, to perform thread necromancy, but I finally broke down and purchased a Tria, and thought it might be nice to share my experiences with it. I already started professional laser treatment to get my face cleared, but I can't afford to do laser on my whole body. I have experienced some hair reduction as a result of HRT, but I still have a lot of lot of fine but still dark hairs left in all the usual problem areas (and then some). What I am hoping to accomplish with the Tria is to get my body hair down to the point where I only need to epilate it once every week at the most, although complete removal would certainly be nice.
So far, what I have noticed using the Tria, is that it is much weaker than a professional laser. Even at the highest settings, in most areas that I treat, a single zap won't cause any pain whatsoever. The exception is my face, which is notably painful with a single zap, but it's still nothing close to the severe pain and smell of burning hair that professional treatment caused. While initially I was pretty disappointed, after experimenting a bit I figured out that by ignoring the instructions and using the Tria in the same place multiple times in a row, I was able able to achieve a sensation much closer to what I felt with professional treatment. No burning hair smell, but it was still just as painful. Usually it took 3-10 pulses in quick succession to get this result. Basically I just kept trying until I felt a pulse that was close to my highest pain tolerance level. I'm pretty sure that the feeling was not burning skin, because my skin had no negative reaction to the treatment, and when I tested areas without any hair I felt no pain no matter how quickly or how many times I zapped. The downside is to this method is that it drains the battery pretty quickly, and it will take a few weeks to completely treat my body given how long the Tria takes to charge.
I'm going to keep going with this method and see what kind of results I get. I'm a little afraid I might trigger some sort of negative side effect from damaging my skin, but my skin is just so light I'm not sure that the laser does much of anything at all to it. I would definitely not recommend what I'm doing to anyone with even a small amount of skin pigment, because I think there is a very good chance you would burn yourself. When I accidentally hit a dark area of skin with a mole on it multiple times, that did feel like I was burning my skin, so be sure not to do that either. I'll post again in a few months to let everyone know how well the treatment is working.
