What Customer Reviews Can and Cannot Tell You
Medically reviewed by
4 independent reviewers
Andrew Conrad Barile, PT, DPT
Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) | Licensed Physical Therapist (PT) | CEO and Founder, Xtreem Pulse LLC
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Dr. Andrew Conrad Barile is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and the CEO and Founder of Xtreem Pulse LLC, the engineering company behind PureLift. He earned his Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Daemen College and is a licensed physical therapist.
He brings over two decades of clinical and entrepreneurial experience across physical therapy, craniosacral therapy and medical device innovation, built on a working knowledge of human anatomy and muscle physiology.
For PureLift LAB he reviews how current is delivered across all ten levels, from sub-sensory nanocurrent and skin-level microcurrent to motor-level EMS, and how the Infuse pass fits into the same ten-minute routine.
Bertica M. Rubio, M.D.
Board-Certified Physician, Dartmouth Medical School | Medical Director, Antiaging Regenerative Medicine Clinic
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Dr. Bertica M. Rubio is a board-certified physician and Medical Director of the Antiaging Regenerative Medicine Clinic in Redlands, California. She earned her Doctor of Medicine from Dartmouth Medical School and completed her pediatrics residency at UC Irvine Medical Center.
With decades of clinical experience, she specialises in age management medicine, regenerative medicine, wound healing and growth factor therapies, and her practice integrates evidence-based medical science with advanced aesthetic treatment.
For PureLift LAB she reviews articles for medical accuracy across the whole dial, from the gentle nanocurrent and microcurrent settings through to muscle-level EMS and the Infuse pass.
Daniel Grinberg, MD, FACS
Board-Certified Otolaryngologist | Head and Neck Surgeon | Fellow, American College of Surgeons | Mount Sinai
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Daniel Grinberg, MD, FACS is a board-certified otolaryngologist and head and neck surgeon at ENT and Allergy Associates in West Nyack, New York. He earned his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
He completed his otolaryngology residency at New York University Medical Center, serves as Assistant Clinical Professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and is a Fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Otolaryngology.
For PureLift LAB he brings a wider clinical lens, connecting at-home facial stimulation from microcurrent to EMS to the anatomy underneath, with the same rigour we apply to every device specification.
Prof. Dr. med. Ivo Buschmann
Chair of Angiology, Medizinische Hochschule Brandenburg | Clinic Director, University Clinic for Angiology
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Prof. Dr. med. Ivo Buschmann is Chair of Angiology at the Medizinische Hochschule Brandenburg Theodor Fontane and Clinic Director of the University Clinic for Angiology at the Brandenburg University Hospital.
He trained at the University of Hamburg, was a Max Planck Society Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, and held senior consultant posts at the Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin before his appointment as Chair in 2016.
One of Europe's leading authorities on arteriogenesis, with over 150 peer-reviewed publications and US and EU patents, he reviews for PureLift LAB how the evidence on electrical stimulation is read and where its limits lie.
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Reviews are simultaneously the most honest thing you will read about a product and the weakest evidence that it works.
This article walks through the routine step by step, such as:
- The selection problem
- What reviews genuinely tell you
- What they cannot tell you
- How to read a review page properly
- What we would rather you relied on
and many more!
Some parts of a review are genuinely reliable, though, and knowing which parts is the useful skill.
Key Points:
People who abandoned a device in week three rarely write a review, which skews every rating upward.
Reviews are reliable on comfort, build, ease of use and customer service, and unreliable on cosmetic outcomes.
Nobody reviewing a device had a control group, a consistent light, or a sham comparison.
A review at week two is describing drainage, not cumulative change.
Read the three-star reviews; they are usually the most informative on the page.
The selection problem
People write reviews when they are delighted or annoyed, and the large middle group who bought a device, used it for three weeks and put it in a drawer mostly writes nothing.
That group matters enormously, because the single biggest determinant of whether anyone sees a change from a facial device is whether they keep using it, and the people who did not keep using it are systematically missing from the page.
So a four and a half star average tells you about the experience of people who stayed, and says nothing about how many left.
The same is true on every brand's site including ours, and it is not a conspiracy, it is how reviews work.
What reviews genuinely tell you
Comfort and sensation. If dozens of people describe a device as uncomfortable at usable levels, that is real information, and it is exactly the kind of thing no specification sheet captures.
Build quality and reliability. A pattern of devices failing at eight months is a pattern worth knowing about and is precisely observable by a customer.
Ease of use. Whether the routine is manageable on a Tuesday night, whether the serum runs out fast, whether the thing is awkward to hold.
Customer service. How a brand behaves when something goes wrong is something only customers can tell you.
Those four are the reliable part of any review page, and they are the part worth reading closely.
What they cannot tell you
Whether the device produced a cosmetic change. Nobody reviewing had a control group, a sham device, or a consistent photographic setup, and the ordinary things that change a face over three months, sleep, hydration, better skincare adopted alongside, weather, are all uncontrolled.
Expectation is a real effect in cosmetic outcomes, which is why Chang and colleagues ran their trial double-blind and sham-controlled (10.3390/ijerph17113783). A review is the opposite of that design in every respect.
And a review written at week two is almost always describing the same-day drainage effect rather than anything cumulative, since the cumulative work takes about twelve weeks; Kavanagh and colleagues ran a 12-week protocol (10.1111/jocd.12007).
How to read a review page properly
Start with the three-star reviews. They are usually written by people who liked some of it and not other parts, and that is the most informative position anyone writes from.
Look for how long the person had been using it, and discount anything written in the first fortnight for outcome claims.
Look for specifics. "The probe drags unless I reapply serum" is a usable observation; "amazing product" is not.
Count the negative reviews rather than reading only the top ones, and read what the brand said in reply.
Be sceptical of any photograph in a review for the same reasons you should be sceptical of ours, since light, angle and expression change a face more than three months of treatment does.
What we would rather you relied on
The specifications, which are checkable: 7 mA at 500 ohms for Face and Pro with a 4 microsecond pulse, 7.7 mA for Pro Edition, 9 mA for Pro Plus and GLOW, cleared under K190269, K230506, K221443 and K243587.
The category research, which is real and which we cite in full including the study that disagrees with us on frequency modulation.
And the return policy, which is the only thing on any product page that lets you find out for yourself at limited cost.
For how to judge a study, see how to read a facial device study, and for photographs, before and after photos.