Ped Egg are back at it again with their second attempt at creating an effective callus remover. To sweeten the deal they have included two features not found on any other callus remover, a pivoting head and a built in light.
You may recognize this electric callus remover from the Home Shopping Network, a big promoter of Ped Egg products.
If you have read our review of the Ped Egg’s first electric callus remover effort, the Ped Egg Power, you will be fully aware we gave it a roasting. The unit was cheap and nasty.
Can Ped Egg redeem itself with the Powerball? Find out in our detailed review.
Ped Egg Powerball
Unboxing the Ped Egg Powerball
The Ped Egg Powerball ships in easy to open cardboard packaging:
If you tear open the box of your brand new Ped Egg Powerball, this is what will be waiting for you inside:
Let’s break it down:
- Ped Egg Powerball Unit
- Coarse roller
- Charger
- Instruction manual
For some odd reason there is also an offer for a $20 ring that has been “Appraised at $98.00”. Ped Egg seems to think that customers who buy the Powerball callus remover are also interested jewelry of dubious quality.
Examining The Ped Egg Powerball
The Ped Egg Powerball is available in a few different colors. During the review we came across Purple, Teal and Blue. There is no difference between the models except for the color.
At first glance the Ped Egg Powerball seems better designed than the Ped Egg Power. However, if you look closer at the unit you will notice that the same poor workmanship can be found where one section of plastic meets the next:
If you look closely at the picture on the left you can see a sharp piece of plastic sticking off the unit. Running my hand over this section rewarded me with a nasty little scratch for my effort.
Located front and center on the Ped Egg Powerball handle is the power button:
While the power button does it’s job, it feels too small. Because there is no safety lock, the Ped Egg Powerball can turn on if anything leans against the button, making it unsuitable for packing away in your luggage.
Further down the front of the handle, just below the logo, you will find a small red indicator light
The indicator light will shine red when you place the Ped Egg Powerball on charge.
If you look closely at the picture above you may even notice that the logo has smudged. This likely happened during manufacture, when the paint was drying and is yet another example of the poor workmanship on the unit.
The rear of the Ped Egg Powerball looks much the same as the front:
This is how you will hold the Ped Egg Powerball when you use it, with the head facing down.
Speaking of the head, let’s take a closer look at it:
The head of the roller is made up of two parts. A Y-shaped holder and a removable roller that sits inside.
The Ped Egg Powerball has obviously drawn inspiration from the Amope Pedi Perfect which features a near identical roller head.
Where the Powerball differentiates itself from the Pedi Perfect is with the addition of two extra features. The pivoting head, where there the powerball gets it’s name from and the built in light.
The head can pivot in 4 directions.
The Y-shaped roller holder can pivot from side to side while the silver ball just below pivots the head forwards and back.
The range of movement is fairly limited. There is probably a reason why no other brand name callus remover includes this feature, it’s pretty useless.
Hidden away from sight, just behind the roller is a small LED light built right into the head of the Ped Egg Powerball.
The light will come on every time you hit the power button, whether you want it to or not.
Below you can see a photo of the light in action:
Truth be told that unless you are removing your calluses in the dark then the built in light is pretty useless. The roller head is so large that it blocks out your view from where the light shines, so the light isn’t much of a help when lining up the roller with your skin.
So the two features unique to the Ped Egg Powerball turned out to be gimmicks. I highly recommend you do not take these features into consideration when deciding which electric callus remover to purchase since they are unnecessary.
On the right side of the roller head you will find a blue button:
This is the roller head release button. Pressing down on this button with your thumb with one hand while pulling up at the right side of the roller will allow you to remove it from the holder.
While removing the roller does require two hands, the entire process was surprisingly smooth.
Now let’s take a closer look at that roller.
Ped Egg PowerBall Roller Refills
To put it simply, the roller is a drum with sand paper wrapped around it. When the power button is turned on the drum will rapidly spin, allowing you to use the roller to buff away the cracked skin and calluses.
Only one grade of coarseness is available. Fortunately, Ped Egg have choosen to stick with an extra coarse grain, and it will be more than coarse enough for most of you.
The roller of the Ped Egg Powerball is looks very similar to that of the Amope Pedi Perfect, one of our favorite electric callus removers.
Now a major concern with the Ped Egg Powerball is that at the time of writing this, refills were quite difficult to track down. At the time of writing this review our only option was to order them from Home Shopping Network.
If you are having difficulty tracking down this hard to find roller then here’s a handy trick:
Use a Pedi Perfect roller!
It turns out that the Ped Egg Powerball roller doesn’t just look like the Pedi Perfect roller, it IS the Pedi Perfect roller but with a different abrasive coating.
Amope Pedi Perfect are much more commonly available at local retailers and performs just as well if not better than the roller included on the Powerball. Just be mindful to buy the Extra-Coarse roller and not the standard one.
Charging the Ped Egg Powerball
The Ped Egg powerball is one of the cheapest rechargeable callus removers on the market. Before you use the Powerball, you are going to have to charge it with the adapter included in the box.
The cord on the charger is just over three feet in length, which should be long enough to stretch from most power outlets to the bathroom counter. You can use the twist tie to shorten the length of cord so you do not have excess cable laying around.
The charger only works on 120V. This means you will be unable to charge the Ped Egg Powerball in most countries you visit outside of America.
If you look at the base of the Ped Egg Powerball Handle you will see a small hole:
This is the charging socket. Plug the charger into this hole and the Ped Egg Powerball will immediately begin to charge. You will be able to tell that your unit is charging by red light on the front of the handle:
Unless our three models were faulty, the indicator light does not appear to turn off, even if you leave it on charge for a week. It would have been nice if the indicator light would turn off to let you know when the battery is fully charged.
You will be unable to use the Ped Egg Powerball when it is plugged in. Pressing the power button while the unit is charging will have no effect.
I would also like to mention that the handle gets quite warm while Powerball is on charge. Not hot to touch, but warm enough to ask the question “is that right?”. This appears to be normal. We experienced heat during charging on all our units.
Testing the Ped Egg Powerball
With the battery of the Ped Egg Powerball fully charged, it’s time to take it for a test drive.
Since I don’t suffer from cracked skin or calluses I had to bring a team of volunteers who did. I then had the pleasure of examining their skin before as well as recording feedback. The following contains summeries of the results.
You may recognize this electric callus remover from the Home Shopping Network, a big promoter of Ped Egg products.
The first thing you will notice when you go to pick up the handle is the slightly awkward shape. Rather than being completely rounded, the edges taper inwards, closer to the roller head.
This made the Powerball somewhat awkward to hold for users with larger hands.
When you turn the Powerball on you are greeted with a constant grinding sound. In terms of just how loud it is, testers best described it as being as loud as an electric toothbrush.
When the motor starts the whole handle vibrates. And you can feel it through the handle. A tester who was particular sensitive to vibrations said that it made the unit unusable for her. She also noted that she avoids electric toothbrushes for the same reason.
Then there is the light. Testers commented on just how useless it was. Unless you hold the handle at the most awkward and uncomfortable of angles, you will be unable to light the area directly underneath the roller head.
When you put the roller to your foot you will notice what appears to be smoke coming from the roller head. Do not be alarmed by this, this is actually really small particles of skin being buffed off your foot.
Many testers commented that if you press too hard the roller head will stop. This is a safety feature designed to prevent you from shaving off too many layers of skin. The same feature can be found on nearly every brand name electric callus remover.
Roller to foot, it worked fairly well. The roller is on the side of abrasive and spun fast enough to remove even the most stubborn of calluses, although these did take a little bit more time to remove.
Testers commented on just how useless the pivoting head is. It added nothing to the experience and appeared to make the head wobble slightly more than it would have without this feature.
Unlike the original Ped Egg Power, the Powerball does not have a recessed roller head. The head remained in contact with the skin even at unusual angles. The Pedi Perfect has a similar head and was by far the most highly regarded out of all the electric callus removers I tested.
One problem with the head is that getting underneath the toes was a little difficult because the roller has such a large surface area and grinds away all the nearby skin as well.
While it wasn’t the best callus remover the testers experienced, it did get the job done.
Final thoughts
Overall, the Ped Egg Powerball is an average electric callus remover. While the workmanship is poor, the handle vibrates and the pivoting head and built in light are gimmicks, it does have some things going for it.
The fact that you can use the amazing rollers from the Amope Pedi Perfect is a huge bonus and the rechargeable battery is a nice touch on an electric callus remover in the price range.
While the Powerball is far superior to the Ped Egg Power, the bar was set pretty low. The Ped Egg Powerball is a good effort hampered by numerous flaws.
The next step up is Amope Pedi Perfect. While it doesn’t have the rechargeable battery, it provides a much better user experience.
Edit: We are receiving numerous reports from other readers of their Ped Egg Powerball failing. This may be a quality control issue since we did not encounter this problem during testing. We recommend that you consider this product with caution.