Are at-home lasers effective?

At home lasers are not near as powerful as the lasers used in physician's offices. Therefore you should not expect these devices to give you the same type of results you get from an in office procedure. In terms of safety, patients with darker skin types or those who are tan should not use these devices since they are more likely to develop burns or blisters. It is also worth noting that some of these gadgets are pricey. My advice is before you spend any money on at-home lasers or light sources check with your dermatologist. 

Most of these over-the-counter gadgets are approved for safety by the FDA, and therefore their strength is limited. But even though they give off low-level energy, I worry about adverse effects that might happen on the wrong skin type if the instructions aren't followed at home. (Darker skin types should never use these things, since even though they emit low doses of light, they can cause postinflammatory hyperpigmentation.) Most of these contraptions aren't really "lasers" at all but LED (light-emitting diode) devices. Though the FDA requires this particular machine to be sold in a doctor's office as a safety precaution and it puts out a fraction of the energy that a doctor's office machine emits, I still question its safety for use at home.

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