It is the most common question we hear from experienced practitioners.
You have a CO2.
It works. Your patients trust it. The results are real.
So why would you invest in another resurfacing platform? The answer is not that your CO2 is wrong. It is that it has limits you have probably already hit, and UltraClear® operates beyond them.
It is that it has limits you have probably already hit, and UltraClear® operates beyond them.
CO2 laser resurfacing has been the benchmark for ablative outcomes for good reason. At 10,600nm, it delivers genuine dermal remodelling, meaningful collagen contraction, and results that non-ablative devices cannot match. For the right patient, a well-executed CO2 treatment produces some of the most dramatic skin rejuvenation available without surgery.
No one is arguing otherwise. The practitioners below all had access to CO2. Several had used it for years. They still chose to bring UltraClear® into their clinics, not to replace the outcomes they valued, but because the CO2 had stopped being the right answer for a growing proportion of their patients and their own clinical standards.
Here is what they found.
The most concrete limit of CO2 resurfacing is patient selection. The wavelength’s broad thermal scatter generates significant residual heat in surrounding tissue. That collateral thermal damage triggers an inflammatory response, and in patients with higher melanin concentrations, that inflammation can stimulate excess pigment production: PIH and PIE that can persist for months or permanently alter skin tone.
In practice, that means the device delivering your best results is also the device excluding a significant part of your patient base. Across most urban UK clinics, patients with Fitzpatrick III-VI skin types represent 30 to 50 percent of presentations.
“50% of my patients are skin of colour. To date, having a CO2 laser or any kind of ablative laser, it’s been really tough for them. Where I could treat half my database, I wasn’t able to treat the other half.”
Dr Sabika Karim, Aesthetic Doctor, Skin Medical
“For years, patients with darker skin, my skin type and darker, were effectively denied resurfacing options. Studies show up to 65% complication rates on my skin type with older lasers.”
Dr Dev Patel, Aesthetic Doctor, Perfect Skin Solutions
“One of the most important things is that we can treat darker skin types, which we couldn’t with other devices that we had.”
Dr Nima Mahmoodi, Aesthetic Doctor, Remedi London
Perfect Skin Solutions in Portsmouth had the same experience. After adopting UltraClear®, they made their CO2 and Er:YAG lasers dormant entirely. Their assessment: UltraClear® shows far superior results with significantly less downtime, a much safer risk profile, and critically emits approximately 5% of its energy as heat, compared to approximately 60% from CO2. The commercial consequence of that thermal difference is a patient base that is no longer segmented by skin type.
“When UltraClear® arrived, I very quickly realised my CO2 and erbium YAG were redundant. Why would I use the older lasers when I had UltraClear®?”
Dr Dev Patel, Aesthetic Doctor, Perfect Skin Solutions
See how clinics are integrating UltraClear® alongside or instead of CO2.
Register for an upcoming practitioner webinar:
The second limit is practical. Full CO2 resurfacing requires 10 to 14 days of social downtime. For the right patient with the right motivation, that is an acceptable trade-off. For a growing proportion of the aesthetics market, working professionals, parents, people who cannot disappear for two weeks, it is a dealbreaker.
This is not a niche problem. It is the single biggest reason patients who want ablative results end up choosing non-ablative alternatives that underdeliver. They do not reject the outcome. They reject the recovery.
“Compared to what we were doing before with CO2 laser, it is a lot less in terms of severity of side effects and discomfort.”
Dr Sabika Karim, Aesthetic Doctor, Skin Medical
UltraClear’s 3DIntelliPulse technology delivers deep dermal remodelling through controlled sub-pulses with thermal relaxation time built in between each.
The ablative channel is created cleanly, without the surrounding bulk heating that drives extended post-treatment inflammation.
Ultra Mode reaches up to 1.5mm dermal depth, comparable to CO2 remodelling depth, with significantly shorter recovery.
“For us, UltraClear® is a much safer option. It’s a lot healthier for the skin and with a lot less downtime.”
Dr Nima Mahmoodi, Aesthetic Doctor, Remedi London
“You get the results of CO2, but with way less discomfort, less risk, less downtime.”
Dr Hannah Chapman, Aesthetic Doctor, Kindred Skin
“With UltraClear®, day one to three can look similar to CO2 recovery, then patients suddenly turn the corner. They’ll message me saying ‘I can’t believe I looked like that yesterday and now I look almost normal.’”
Dr Dev Patel, Aesthetic Doctor, Perfect Skin Solutions
“Most UltraClear® patients feel back to normal by day four or five and are back in makeup around a week post-treatment.”
Dr Paul Elgey, Aesthetic Doctor, Paul Elgey Aesthetics
It is worth being precise about what separates UltraClear® from CO2 at the physics level, because it matters to how you position it with patients and how you answer the question from colleagues who have heard every laser claim.
CO2 operates at 10,600nm. UltraClear® is a 2910nm erbium-doped fluoride glass fiber laser, an Er:glass platform, not an Er:YAG, not a CO2. At 2910nm, tissue water absorption reaches its peak. Energy goes into direct ablation rather than dispersing as heat through surrounding tissue. The ablative channel is cleaner. The thermal footprint is smaller. The biological response is more controlled.
“Because UltraClear® is so precise with its wavelength and how it delivers the energy, we don’t get any excess heat generated that we don’t want.”
Dr Sabika Karim, Aesthetic Doctor, Skin Medical
“What makes it different is how it delivers that energy. It’s incredibly targeted, which means we can trigger collagen production, resurface the skin and improve overall skin quality without the level of trauma we used to associate with traditional lasers.”
Dr Nima Mahmoodi, Aesthetic Doctor, Remedi London
Dr Hannah Chapman at Kindred Skin went through a formal device comparison before selecting UltraClear®, including hands-on experience with CO2:
“I had demos with a number of different laser devices, including a CO2 laser, and then I had UltraClear®. From that moment it was clear that this was the option for Kindred. It blew the others out of the water in terms of downtime, comfort and results.”
Dr Hannah Chapman, Aesthetic Doctor, Kindred Skin
“Traditional lasers deliver roughly 40% ablation and 60% heat damage. UltraClear® delivers 95% ablation and only 5% thermal. The entire risk profile shifts.”
Dr Paul Elgey, Aesthetic Doctor, Paul Elgey Aesthetics
“The great thing about UltraClear®’s 2910nm wavelength is the tunability. We can start at 95% ablation, 5% thermal, and dial the coagulation up when we need to.”
Dr Tapan Patel, Aesthetic Doctor, PHI Clinic
Beyond treating a wider patient population with less downtime, UltraClear® has a clinical capability that CO2 does not have. Laser-Coring™, the most advanced mode on the platform, physically removes micro-columns of tissue at selectable depths of 1 to 3mm, producing genuine structural tightening of the jawline, jowls, neck, and periorbital region. It is the only laser on the market with this technology.
No CO2 device, regardless of settings, replicates this mechanism. Fractional CO2 resurfaces and remodels. Laser-Coring™ removes tissue volume and contracts surrounding structures. For patients presenting with early jowling, neck laxity, or periorbital hooding who are not ready for surgery, this is a clinical option that simply did not exist before.
At 111 Harley Street, Dr Yannis Alexandrides is now combining UltraClear® with his surgical facelift plans, using it to address both structural skin concerns and surface texture and sun damage in a single integrated protocol. That is the level at which this device is now operating.
Beyond Laser-Coring™, the six-mode platform covers the full spectrum from zero-minimal downtime 3DMIRACL through to deep dermal remodelling, all on a single device, combinable in a single session. CO2 does not have a lunchtime mode.
“Before we had UltraClear®, we would have had a solution for all of those things, but it would have taken multiple modalities, multiple different treatments, multiple different sessions. Now people can come in and truly get transformational results with one treatment.”
Dr Hannah Chapman, Aesthetic Doctor, Kindred Skin
“Laser-Coring™ gives you the firming results people used to associate with CO2, but without the risk profile or the pain.”
Dr Dev Patel, Aesthetic Doctor, Perfect Skin Solutions
The question of whether UltraClear® replaces or sits alongside an existing CO2 depends on the clinic.
For some, the answer is straightforward.
“If you have a CO2 and you’re thinking about replacing it, then UltraClear® is the way to go.”
Dr Nima Mahmoodi, Aesthetic Doctor, Remedi London
For others, particularly those with high surgical and post-surgical patient volumes, the two platforms can run alongside each other, with UltraClear® capturing the patients CO2 cannot safely treat and extending the clinic’s non-surgical treatment menu.
Dr Sabika Karim, with 20 years of device experience, puts the investment question in terms that are hard to argue with:
“If I want to give my patients the best treatment, I have to have an UltraClear®. If I want to grow the clinic, grow the revenue, then UltraClear® is a really great way forward.”
Dr Sabika Karim, Aesthetic Doctor, Skin Medical
“We use UltraClear® more every month. I told my team at the start of the year we’d end up competing internally for time on it. We’ll probably need a second unit.”
Dr Tapan Patel, Aesthetic Doctor, PHI Clinic
The practitioners above are not early adopters chasing novelty. They are experienced clinicians who evaluated the evidence, compared the devices directly, and made a considered decision. The most telling data point is not what they said about UltraClear®. It is what some of them did with their CO2 afterwards.
Should You Reconsider Your CO2 Offering? Explore UltraClear® if:
The question is no longer whether your CO2 works. It is whether it fits what your patients need now, and what your clinic needs to be in five years.
Discover what UltraClear® can do for your clinic: