I don’t think I have ever written about footcare before. But your feet are an important part of your body that cannot be ignored. Not just in summer when you want to show off your feet, but also in general as your feet carry you around all day and thus prone to cause you problems if you don’t take proper care of them. Now I have seen reviews on the Scholl Velvet Smooth Electronic Foot File everywhere but at more than 25 euros I find it a tad expensive for what it is. So when I found this budget version at my drugstore I thought I’d give it a review.

NOTE: if you dislike feet, do not proceed!

The idea of these is simple. It is a battery operated, fast spinning sanding machine for your feet. Where with regular files it will take you ages to get rid of all your calloused skin, with these it should be done in a jiffy. This budget version costs a mere 12.95 euros, which is less than half of the orginal and what’s best: I got this on sale when it first launched for 9.95 euros.

The product comes in a simple box and these are all the bits. You get the device, 2 files (a coarse one and a gentle one), a brush to clean it and batteries. The top of the device is closes off with a cap, but I find that pops of fairly easily.

This device is specifically made for removing hardened skin and callouses. And I have seen more reviews on these devices before. But 9 out of 10 times the people who review them have hardly any hard skin or callouses on their feet. I do.

My feet are hands down my least favorite part of my body. The reason? My super calloused feet. So you’d think that as long as I’d take proper care of them I would be fine right? Well you’re wrong. Because no matter how hard I try, they pop back up immediately. The reason? Years and years of dance classes. Callouses simply come with the territory of having done dance my entire life. So I was curious to see whether this would work for me as well.

There is a small switch on the top that allows you to control whether it’s on or not. I would have liked to be able to slow it down and have it turn at different speeds, but this thing doesn’t have that. It is on or off and there is no in between. The first time I switched it on I thought I would rub right through my skin. (I didn’t, but we’ll get to that later).

The head of the device pops off and you can easily switch the coarse and fine heads with the click of a switch. I found it easy to clean and not too messy. Just make sure you put a towel or piece of paper underneat to catch all the ‘dust’. The green head this comes with is the coarse one and I used that one as the pink, fine one, didn’t do much for me. Like I said, I have some major callouses so anything too gentle would not work.

Before – After

Before – After

And these are the results. I cannot write about a device to remove dead skin from your feet and not show them now do I? As you can see in the before pictures the case is nearly lost. I do have to say that I spent a few weeks going to dance class without being too careful about removing anything so I could show you how this would work. I usually ‘top up’ every time I take a shower.

The after may not look very impressive, but this was the best I could do. The fine version didn’t do enough and the coarse version did a bit too much. So after I ground down the worst part, I found it was a bit too strong to tackle the rest of my feet. It didn’t hurt, but I felt this burning sensation that I didn’t like very much.

But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy with the final result. I was! This effect only took mere minutes to achieve. Where I usually spent 10 minutes with foot files trying to file it all off, I now spent about a minute per foot. I then applied a bit of body butter for some extra moisture and I was left with silky smooth feet.

Are you interested in trying an electronic foot file?