Nine Technologies on One Dial, What the Rest of the Market Actually Carries
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
Read bio
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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We mapped 33 facial devices from 24 brands and found no competitor at any price carrying nanocurrent, microcurrent, muscle-contracting EMS and a serum delivery pass in one handheld.
This article compares the market on what decides the result you actually see, such as:
- what each brand's device actually carries, at its actual price
- why one dial with ten levels is not the same as ten programmes
- which brands publish an output figure and which publish none
- the recurring gel cost that sits underneath half the category
- the three things competitors do that we do not
and many more!
Every figure comes from the brand's own published specification, checked on 17 September 2026.
Key Points:
PureLift GLOW carries nine technologies on one dial, Pro Plus carries seven, and Face, Pro and Pro Edition carry six.
Most of the category carries one technology, and the multi-tool devices that carry several rarely include anything that contracts a muscle.
Of 33 devices mapped, six publish an output figure and only two of those state the load the figure was measured at.
Around half the category requires a branded gel, from $24 to $80 a bottle, which is a cost that does not appear on the price tag.
Percussion massage, whole-face LED coverage and radiofrequency are three things we do not do, and if one of them is your priority, buy the device that does it.
What most of this category actually is
Walk through the facial device market at any price and you find the same shape repeating.
NuFACE, ZIIP, Skin Gym and MyoLift sell microcurrent, measured in millionths of an amp, which works at skin level and never contracts a muscle.
Omnilux, CurrentBody, Dr Dennis Gross, Shark, HigherDOSE and Qure sell light, which works on skin cells and cannot reach the muscle at all.
Silk'n, TriPollar and NEWA sell radiofrequency, which heats tissue to provoke a collagen response, and is a genuinely different job from either of the above.
FaceGym and Ya-Man sell EMS, the current level at which a facial muscle does contract, and between them they are nearly the whole of that category outside ours.
So the honest description of the market is not that devices are better or worse than each other, it is that most of them are doing one job, and you are expected to buy three devices to cover three jobs.
The multi-tool devices, and what they leave out
Several brands answer the one-job problem by bundling, and the bundles are worth looking at closely.
Therabody's TheraFace PRO at $419.99 carries percussion massage, microcurrent at 500 microamps, cleansing and LED rings, and the microcurrent sits below the motor threshold, so no attachment contracts anything.
Medicube's Age-R Booster Pro X2 at $249 lists microcurrent, EMS, LED and a delivery mode, and publishes no output figure for any of them, so there is no way to check what the EMS setting is doing.
Solawave's wand at $169 carries galvanic current, red light and warmth, which is a sensible budget combination and not a muscle device.
The pattern is that bundling adds breadth at skin level, and the muscle layer is usually the thing left out, because contracting a facial muscle safely needs milliamps rather than microamps and that is a harder engineering problem.
What one dial with ten levels actually means
PureLift Face, Pro and Pro Edition carry six technologies: Infusion, iontophoresis, nanocurrent, microcurrent, EMS and PDM.
Pro Plus adds PDM++, the bipolar pulse, for seven, and GLOW adds blue light at 465 nm and red light at 634 nm, for nine.
Level 1 is nanocurrent and level 2 is microcurrent, the same calm band that NuFACE, ZIIP and Skin Gym occupy for the whole of their range.
From level 3 the current crosses the motor threshold and the muscle contracts, and that is the band those brands never enter.
Then the Infuse pass runs afterwards with two delivery technologies, Infusion built on electroporation (Prausnitz 1993) and iontophoresis, which Zhang and colleagues measured for vitamin C penetration (10.1016/S0378-5173(99)00058-3).
The reason this matters is not the count, it is that a single device covers the gentle day, the muscle day and the serum step without you buying three devices or deciding which one to skip.
Output, and who publishes it
Of the 33 devices we mapped, six publish an output figure at all.
FOREO publishes 680 microamps for BEAR 2, Therabody 500 microamps for TheraFace PRO, Skin Gym 10 to 500 microamps, 7E Wellness 350 microamps for the MyoLift QT, Omnilux about 30 mW/cm² and HigherDOSE 50 mW/cm².
Only two state the load the figure was measured at, which matters, because current through skin depends on resistance and a number without a load is not a specification.
PureLift publishes 7 mA at 500 ohms for Face and Pro, 7.7 mA for Pro Edition, 9 mA for Pro Plus and GLOW, with a 4 microsecond pulse width, and clearance numbers K190269, K230506, K221443 and K243587.
We publish the load because it is the only way you can compare our number with anyone else's, and we would rather compete on figures that can be checked.
The cost that is not on the price tag
NuFACE gel starts at $35 a bottle, ZIIP gels run $29.99 to $79.99, FOREO's serum is $41.90, Therabody's gel is $29.99, Skin Gym's is $24 and 7E's ReStore gel is $27 for four ounces.
Over two years of regular use that is not a rounding error, and it changes the arithmetic of a device that looked cheaper at the till.
PureLift works with any water-based serum you already own, and the Activator Serum we sell is one option rather than a requirement.
Three things we do not do
We do not do percussion massage, and if tension in the jaw is your main complaint, TheraFace PRO does that and we do not.
We do not cover the whole face at once with light, and a good LED mask delivers far more light per session than GLOW's light layer does, which we set out in full in our LED mask comparison.
We do not do radiofrequency, so if a clinician has told you heat-driven collagen remodelling is what your skin needs, look at Silk'n, TriPollar or NEWA rather than at us.
Naming those three is not modesty, it is the same principle as publishing the load, because a comparison that has us winning every category would not be worth reading.
Where that leaves the buying decision
If you want one job done and done cheaply, the single-technology devices are honest purchases and several of them are good.
If you want the skin-level work and the muscle work and the serum step in one device, with a published output figure at a stated load and a clearance number you can look up, that is the gap we built into.
Face at $499 is where that starts, Pro at $699 and Pro Edition at $799 add the professional pen format, Pro Plus at $899 adds PDM++ and the strongest output in the range, and GLOW at $999 adds the light.
All of them are made in Japan in an ISO 13485 facility that has been building medical devices since 1987, and all of them run a ten-minute session, three minutes per side maximum.
The device-by-device comparisons
Each of the devices above has its own full comparison, where the figures are set out at length rather than summarised.
- PureLift against NuFACE Trinity+
- PureLift against FOREO BEAR 2
- PureLift against ZIIP Halo
- PureLift against Medicube Age-R
- PureLift against Therabody TheraFace PRO
- PureLift against FaceGym Pro
- PureLift against Ya-Man Medi Lift PLUS
- PureLift against the professional microcurrent machines
- PureLift against LED masks
- PureLift against a salon course of facials
- PureLift against botox and fillers
- PureLift against NuFACE MINI+ at $175
- PureLift against Shark CryoGlow
Two further pieces sit underneath the comparisons: what a branded gel actually costs over two years of use, and why an output figure is meaningless without the load it was measured at.
- PureLift against Droplette Device Ultra
- PureLift against Solawave 4-in-1
- PureLift against Skin Gym Microcurrent Wand
- PureLift against MyoLift Mini
- PureLift against Bio-Therapeutic bt-sculpt GEN2
- PureLift against Omnilux Contour Face
- PureLift against CurrentBody Skin
- PureLift against HigherDOSE
- PureLift against Dr Dennis Gross SpectraLite
- PureLift against Qure and Silk'n LED masks
- PureLift against Silk'n Titan MultiPlatform
And for the technologies we do not build at all, lasers and radiofrequency, we set out who should buy those instead in The Four Devices We Do Not Compete With and Why.
If you want to check any brand's regulatory claims yourself, including ours, our guide to running the FDA 510(k) check takes about two minutes.
The microcurrent questions, answered
Thirty articles covering what people actually ask about microcurrent, from what the current does to your face through to what it will not do for a jowl.
- Conductive gel, what you actually need
- Do microcurrent devices need gel
- The best gel is probably already on your shelf
- Gel against serum against aloe
- Side effects, normal and not normal
- Is a microcurrent facial safe
- Thyroid, pacemakers and metal implants
- Long term side effects and the evidence
- Do microcurrent devices work, the studies
- What a microcurrent device does to your face
- Reading before and after photos
- How to use one, step by step
- Where to move the probe, the diagram
- The muscles you are actually working
- The proper professional procedure
- The strongest device, and the wrong question
- FDA cleared devices and their K numbers
- Frequency specific microcurrent explained
- Professional machines against at home
- Cost, a salon course against a device
- How long a microcurrent facial lasts
- The best device for a jawline
- Microcurrent for the eye area
- Microcurrent for skin tightening
- Microcurrent for a double chin
- Microcurrent against red light therapy
Reading the category for yourself
These pieces are the method rather than the verdict, so you can run the same checks on any brand including us.
- Every published output figure, in one table
- Where filings and marketing disagree
- The five questions to ask before buying
- What makes a serum conductive
- What every branded gel costs per session
- What we would tell you not to buy
Prices and competitor specifications verified on 17 September 2026 against each brand's own published material and the FDA 510(k) database.