What do beauty editors talk about over lunch? I can tell you that the topic gripping my end of the table at a skincare launch a couple of months ago was a small, curvy white and silver facial toning device known as The ZIIP Halo. Three editors – not me, yet – used it almost every day. Two wouldn’t dream of filming anything for Instagram or TikTok without using it first. One editor uses two at the same time. Everyone else was rapt.
What is the ZIIP Halo?
The ZIIP Halo, which is loved by actors Margot Robbie and Elizabeth Olsen as well as multiple beauty editors, is a handheld device that pushes a patented combination of low-voltage electrical currents into the skin. One lifts and tightens by stimulating the muscles underneath and another boosts cellular repair by triggering production of a molecule called ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate), which stores and transfers energy to the cells.
It promises instant and accumulative results; it’s quick and easy to use and it’s taken the beauty world by (electrical) storm.
ZIIP Dual Waveform Technology: an explainer
Microcurrent: lifts, tightens and sculpts by stimulating muscles under the skin to work harder. Can feel zappy on the skin, as if muscles are being tugged upwards. Lifting effects can appear instantly but need topping up frequently.
ZIIP Nanocurrent™: brightens skin and prompts collagen production by triggering the release of cell-energising ATP. You won't feel anything at all and while the brightening and smoothing results take longer to appear they get better and better the more you use the device.
ZIIP Halo: Review
I’d had my own ZIIP for about a year when that beauty editor’s lunch rolled around. I’d done exactly what I always did with devices: used it once then crammed it into that drawer where devices go to die, alongside a bunch of mystery cables and decommissioned phones.
That evening, however, I committed to daily use – ok, not quite daily but we’ll get to that – and I haven’t looked back. My skin is now so much brighter and more evenly toned that a friend immediately bought a ZIIP Halo of her own. How we use it and what it’s done for our midlife faces has become one of our favourite things to talk about. On which…
How do you use the ZIIP Halo?
The ZIIP Halo comes pre-programmed with a simple four-minute routine known as The Lift. Just cover your (clean) face with the ZIIP conductive gel, switch on your device, place both silver pads onto your skin and off you go, manoeuvring smoothly around your face in time with the vibrations.
You can use the device anywhere on your face, other than over your throat (where your thyroid is) and over your eyes (closely around is fine). The technique is easy; stroke upwards and outwards, keeping the silver pads in contact with your skin as much as possible. A short buzzing sound signals when it’s time to start a new stroke, then two minutes later a ‘beep’ tells you it’s time to move to the other side of your face. When you’re finished just wash off the gel, complete the rest of your skincare routine and off you go.
At least, that’s your entry level or day-to-day routine. The beauty of the ZIIP Halo (which was the first app-connected skincare device on the market) is that you can download a phone app stacked with different programmes, each coded by ZIIP's co-founder, Hollywood aesthetician Melanie Simon.
‘If you’re just pressing play and doing the four-minute programme, that's a really good combo of microcurrent and nanocurrent,’ explains Simon from California when I quiz her over Zoom. ‘But if you go onto the app then you have all of these choices you pick from. And it's not just the placement and routine that’s different with each programme. It’ll be the pulse, or the power or combination of waveforms, depending on your aim.'
Want your cheebones to ‘pop’? The ZIIP Halo can do that. Want to open the eye area, lift your jaw or work towards a ‘glass skin’ look? No problem.
The ZIIP Halo for lymphatic drainage
But the effect the editors raved about at lunch – and the one that Simon describes to me as she shows me how to use my ZIIP to flush trapped fluid away from the centre of my face – is lymphatic drainage. This makes perfect sense once you know that Simon’s beauty career really took off when she bought an endermologie machine (a suction-based lymph and circulation-stimulating massage device) and perfected a sculpting body treatment that brought a Hollywood clientele running to her Santa Barbara beauty studio
It's ‘next level gua sha’, she told me, explaining that guiding the fluid almost magnetically away from areas of build-up allows contours (and even drooping brows) to spring back into position.
How often do you use the ZIIP Halo?
ZIIP recommends using the device up to five times a week (a couple of rest days are essential to let muscles recover). I use mine four or five times a week and it never feels like a chore. I miss it when I don’t use it, in fact, because of the immediate lift and brightness it gives me.
Simon, however, likes to repeat the standard four-minute programme twice in a row, three times a week. ‘Four minutes will contour you and you'll look great, so if that's what you have time for then ok. But for longer lasting change I like people to do the whole thing on one side and then the whole thing again on the other side. It's eight minutes and you're done. I believe, personally, it works better. And eight minutes gives you time to get your neck, and who doesn't want a better neck?’
‘And by the way,’ she continues, ‘if the vibrations feel too intense, you can do two or three shorter strokes per vibration. You don't have to do one long stroke and wait for the buzz – you can do it faster and get better contouring that way.' In fact, says Simon, the ‘younger set’ in Hollywood do a super-fast five strokes per vibration, for a snatched and contoured look.
Why nanocurrent is the secret to the ZIIP Halo's success
Simon's favourite programme is (naturally) the 10-minute Founder's Favourite, which is the most followed programme on the app and uses only nanocurrent. 'You don't have to pay attention because you're not working the lymphatic system or the muscle – you just keep on moving for ten minutes and you try to cover every area of your face in that time,' she tells me, recommending I do it in front of something easy to watch on TV in the evening.
Notably, nanocurrent is the waveform that many other facial devices don't have, and the one that Simon says has the greatest longterm benefit. 'It puts a message into the skin so the skin thinks, "Oh, the brain is telling me to repair" and then it's going to start doing whatever needs to be done. Whatever's going wrong, it's going to try to combat it,' she says. The ZIIP website allows six weeks of treatment for the true 'Halo' effect that come from nanocurrent, but Simon tells me people see 'massive results' after three consecutive treatments and 'remarkable change' after three weeks. She pulls up some before and after photos from clients and customers and I agree that they are, in fact, 'obscenely' good.
(I also ask Simon, by the way, whether I'm imagining the sense of calm wellbeing I get after I use my ZIIP and while she's careful to say she would never claim anything of the sort, she also shares that many devotees believe a feel-good endorphin release is part of the ZIIP package.)
Why I love the ZIIP Halo
And I really love mine. I take it with me whenever I go away, even for a weekend, and I use it most mornings. It rarely needs charging up and it's so easy I'm often just wandering around the house – even working – as I use it. My skin looks brighter and clearer, and my face has better definition.
But what I really took away from my chat with Simon is how versatile the ZIIP Halo is and how much – once you understand how it works and what you want from it – you can go off-piste and develop your own routine.
'I don't ever treat any two people the same because every face is different,' she says. I'll look at them and go, okay, this person's fat pad comes down like this, or this person has a lot of crows feet that they want to deal with. So then you can be intuitive with it, and feel like a sculptor. That's what I tell people. Sculpt the way you want your face to look.'
With this in mind, I tell Simon I'm starting to lose volume and she advises me to switch to a longer routine, three times a week: the standard four-minute program followed by the Founder's Favourite, but spending 'a ton of time' on areas that need firming and volumising (under my eyes and nestled into the socket, over my temples and fine lip lines and under my right cheekbone). If I have time, I can finish with one minute of the Electric Tone treatment, focussing on an annoying hyper-pigmented blotch on my forehead. 'Give it twenty-one days and you'll see amazing change', she promises. 'And that's for real results. They're not gonna just dissipate the next day. They actually build.'
If you're wondering about investing your own ZIIP Halo – because at £379 for the device and the gel it is an investment – I can't recommend it enough, despite the price, and neither can those other beauty editors. No, it doesn't replace a solid skincare routine but it certainly super-charges it with almost zero effort, and there's not much I can think of that does that at home.
