Machine steams off gel nail polish without damaging nails

• We test out a $46 gel-polish-remover machine that steams 100% acetone to peel up gel polish from the nail with no damage.

• The machine claims to remove gel polish quicker than traditional removal methods.
• The machine actually worked quickly to remove gel polish and works with other kinds of manicures.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Nico Reyes: I'm constantly switching up my nails, which also means that I'm always looking for an easier method of removal, and that's where this steam nail polish remover comes in. It's supposed to make removing gel polish a lot faster and a lot less damaging. I do have a gel manicure on right now. This is one layer of base coat, two layers of color, and then one layer of topcoat. I'm gonna be testing it out on how well it removes my gel manicure, if it actually is faster than my normal removal process, and if it's less damaging on my nails.

The instructions say that I have to file off the shiny top layer of my nails first, and then fill the machine with 100% acetone and let it get...steamy, I guess. The green light just turned on, which means it's time. I am very uncomfortable with the idea of putting my fingers into this little machine, but let's just do it.

Oh, my God. It's, like, really warm. I don't love it. It kind of feels like you're sticking your hand in, like, warm dough. The instructions don't have a specific time stated for how long I have to leave my hand in here, but the box says eight to 10 minutes, so I'm assuming it's about that long. It says that the light is gonna go from green to yellow, and that's when I can take my hand out. [gasps] OK, it felt like something on my thumb just popped, so I'm assuming the polish just peeled up. It felt like it went [blows raspberry]. I still think it would be funny if I took my hand out and it was just those skeleton fingers. Full bone. I also forgot to mention this, but it does say to not touch the acetone at the bottom of the machine, so just try and angle your fingers in a way that's gonna make it not touch all that acetone. [timer beeps] [gasps] It's time! They kind of did lift! It's looking a little explode-y.

So, it says to repeat the process if it doesn't work 100% the first time, so let's try this one more time. Here we go. This was round two. I'm just gonna lift my hand. Oh! Some nails completely came off. Whoa. I'm just going to gent-- oh, that came off so easily! It's literally just peeling right up.

That was pretty impressive. It did take me two tries to completely get the polish off, but I think that had to do more with my hand placement the first time. You gotta make sure that all your fingers are directly, [record scratches] am I thinking of the word perpendicular or parallel? You gotta be straight down, like this. What's the word?

Producer: Just say straight down.

Nico: [laughs] OK. I won't get too technical. I don't wanna overwhelm people with my brains. Now let's repeat that entire process over again with my right hand. We timed it when I was doing my right hand, and the machine turns off at around eight minutes, and all of that polish was already peeling off. All it needed was a little gentle prodding, and I didn't have to do a second round. I feel like I can say that this thing does less damage to my nails than my normal method of removal, only because I didn't have to go around scratching up leftover nail polish. It just came off so easily.

The instructions didn't specify whether or not you could use this machine with dip nails, but their Amazon listing did. So obviously I had to try that out to see if it would actually work, and here's what happened.

And even though it's not meant to remove normal nail polish, I still did a regular manicure and tried it out in the machine just to see what would happen to nail polish.

The steam polish remover obviously works, and it works really fast, and even though I did have to do my left hand twice, it still came out to less time than if I had done it my normal way.