Tried and tested: Scholl Velvet Smooth Electronic Nailcare System

I have a fortnightly ritual to have my nails primped, polished, and finished off with a couple of coats of a gel nail colour. Seriously, nothing gives me more joy than a fresh Shellac manicure that lasts.

Sometimes, though, this dedication to a glossy manicure doesn’t always fit with my budget, and given I’ve been having back-to-back Shellac appointments for the past year without giving my wallet much of a break, I decided it was time to skip one appointment and give my nails (and bank balance) a teeny break. This decision was also partly due to the arrival of Scholl’s new nailcare system on my desk. I was intrigued by this three-in-one tool and wanted to see if it stood up to the reputation of the Scholl Velvet Smooth Express Pedi. And so, thanks to a combination of my intrigue and a desire to be kinder to my finances, I was going to say a temporary farewell to my glossy gel manicure.

The product

The Scholl Velvet Smooth Electronic Nail Care System is a nifty electronic three-in-one device that can file, buff and polish when you change the head attachments.

The process

To use the gadget, all I had to do was take it out of its packaging, pop in the AA battery (which was included inside), and attach the filing head with the number one stamped on it. The trick to filing your nails with this tool is to use light movements, and to move it in one direction to avoid splitting the nail. This step made it easy to create the squoval (the lovechild of a square and oval) shape that’s my top request when I’m getting my nails done.

Next came the buffing step. I took the filing head off the device and attached the head with the number two stamped on it. To smooth the surface, I moved the tool over the surface of my nail in light, circular motions. This all took about two minutes to complete for both hands, which is roughly the same time as an ad break (or in my case, during an impromptu content team meeting with Carli and Alex over the speaker-phone).

The final step was to polish my nails to make them nice and shiny. By now I knew how to remove and attach the head like clockwork, so it took all of three seconds to pop on the one that had the number three stamped on it. Like the buffing step, I moved the tool in light circular motions to polish the nail’s surface.

The final verdict

All up, this self-nail care experiment was a success. While my nails didn’t look like they had a shiny coat of nail polish on them (mainly because they didn’t), they did have a really healthy-looking and natural sheen to them. And it took almost no time at all; the whole process took up about six minutes of my day, with the filing step the trickiest to get right, due to the fact that I’d never used the tool before.

Would I swap my regular Shellacs for almost-always bare nails and some extra cash for fancy dinner and shoes? Probably not, as I’m way too addicted to the shade CND Shellac in Winter Glow, but giving my nails a break every so often is definitely something I need to do more, and I’d be keen to keep using this tool when I do.

Main image photography: Georgina Egan