So which derma roller is the best for me?

Our opinion is that the dermaroller which suits your need the most is the dermaroller you should buy. There is no such product which can suit everybody's need. Price should not be the primary concern for buying. We advise to read this buying guide carefully to choose the most suitable roller for your condition.

Components

A derma roller is mainly composed of the following parts: needles, roller wheel and roller handle. A high quality dermaroller has to be made of high quality components. So we will discuss each components and its special design and features one by one.

Dermaroller Needles

The quality of the needle is the most important factor affecting the treatment result, efficiency and safety. There are six factors directly contributing to the needle quality: needle material, needle diameter, needle shape, needle number and needle array.

1) Needle material

A brief online search about dermaroller would give us the conclusion that there are mainly two type of needles in the market:
Titanium and medical grade stainless steel (medical grade SUS-304 steel).
However, we found most of the claimed "titanium derma roller" are not made of titanium. Those information the sellers provided is misleading and unprofessional.

"Titanium micro needle roller" sold on other website

What is titanium?

• Titanium is a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density and high strength. It is highly resistant to corrosion in sea water, aqua regia and chlorine.

• Commercial (99.2% pure) grades of titanium have ultimate tensile strength of about 434MPa (63,000psi), equal to that of common, low-grade steel alloys, but are less dense.

• Titanium has a silver-greyish-white color. It is about three times the strength of steel and much stronger than gold, silver and platinum and yet is very light weight.

• The cost of Pure Titanium is about 10 times higherthan steel:

From our research online, those claimed "Titanium micro needle roller" on those sellers website is not real Titanium.Those needles is gold color, while Titanium should be silver color.
As the market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, more and more companies tends to market their products as pure titanium to differentiate from other products. Retailers /Sellers are unaware of this knowledge fact and keep advertising as Titanium dermaroller. However, the fact is most manufacturers don't choose this expensive material for their products. To the best of knowledge, most of the needle with gold color is Titanium nitride coated medical grade SUS-304 steel. Our manufacturer also use this material. But be notified some other suppliers may use copper plated needle as it is a lot cheaper.

Titanium nitride coated needle with gold color

What's Titanium nitride coated?

Applied as a thin coating, TiN is used to harden and protect cutting and sliding surfaces, for decorative purposes (due to its gold appearance).
TiN is non-toxic, meets FDA guidelines and has seen use in medical devices such as scalpel blades and orthopedic bone saw blades where sharpness and edge retention are important.[6]
Titanium nitride (TiN) coated punches using cathodic arc deposition technique

This method is more practical and economical than using pure Titanium. The advantage is providing the material with the following characteristics:

• non-toxic
• Hardness
• gold appearance (appealing for consumers and good for marketing)
• corrosion resistance
• Sharper edge (edge retention)
  
  Disadvantage:

• cost a bit more than medical grade stainless steel.

• A bit more thicker than non-coated materials(5 micrometres:0.005mm)

What's medical grade SUS-304 steel？

Stainless steel is one of the most commonly used materials in the manufacture of medical devices, in particular Stainless Steel 304. 304 is used where high corrosion resistance, good formability, strength, manufacturing precision, reliability and hygiene is of particular importance.

It is regarded the world over as one of the most suitable materials for the manufacture of medical devices for all sorts of applications such as Medical needles and Medical syringes . It offer unique material characteristics at a competitive price point, thus making it the logical choice for medical device specification.

Is Titanium nitride coated derma roller better than medical grade SUS-304 steel?

Technically, Titanium nitride coated is a bit better especially in terms of hardness and sharpness . However, in actual practice, we won't notice big difference between the two materials.For consumers, both are very good materials for skin needling.In our opinion, Titanium nitride coated SUS-304 has better characteristics and looks better. We provide various type of Titanium nitride coated dermarollers.

2) Thickness of Needle/needle gauge

Each puncture of dermal needling creates microchannels that triggers the body to fill these microscopic wounds by producing new collagen and elastin. The size of microchannel is critical for treatment result and safety. In actual practice, the thinner the needle, the smaller the microchannel it creates. This enable less invasive, less painful and more microchannels for more efficiency treatment. However, if the needle is too thin, it may not be strong enough for deep needling which may get bent or broken during needling especially for length1.0 mm to 3mm. In the market, most of the needle gauge ranges from 30 to 33. In our opinion, 30 gauge (0.3mm) is a bit too thick. And 31 gauge (0.25mm) to 33 gauge (0.2mm) should be ideal for clinical or medical needling.

3) Needle shape

There are mainly two type of needle shape in the market:  Round (sewing needle type); Flat (lancet type)
Flat needle is manufactured by automatic cutting machinery. Each disk contains at least 60 lancet type needle. The Production cost is lower and it's easy to assemble.

Above is one of the best selling Flat Needle products DRS dermaroller 0.5mm.

 Round needle is produced separately and installed one by one manually with certain precise tools. The assembling takes longer time and the production cost is higher.

Best selling Round Needle products DNS dermaroller 1.0mm.

Round Needle and Flat needle comparison

Note: the flat needle is measured by width. The round needle is measured by needle diameter.

 0.5mm needling: flat needle create a bit smaller holes than round needle.
1.5mm needling：Flat needle create larger slice-type holes. Round needle create smaller ellipse-shape holes. Flat needle require much more strength for full depth rolling. Round needle rolling is easy and need much less strength.

In view of this, we advise to choose flat needle roller mainly for needling length (0.2~ 0.5mm). Below 0.5mm, flat needle creates smaller holes. The flat needle design is to aim at the home micro needling market.
Above 0.5 mm, the flat needle size gets progressively wider making penetration more difficult. Sometimes it cannot penetrate the skin to their full length especially for 1.5 ~3mm. And it also creates significantly larger holes and more painful than round needles for length above 1.0mm.

Round needle is more suitable for Professional skin needling such as medical or surgical needling (usually 1.0 mm to 3.0mm). It provide easy, consistent and smooth penetration. For clinical needling, the depth is the most important factor affecting CIT result. Scientific evidence shows the deeper the penetration, the more extensive the induced hemorrhage and wound healing reaction, and the greater the potential improvement. Round needles enable deep needling easily and smoothly. Well known dermaroller brand such as dr. roller and environ also uses round needle for their product.

4) Needle length

Different needle length is for different purpose. The needle length ranges from 0.2mm to 3.0mm.
Please check the above pictures for more details.
Most of the derma rollers in the market provide standard and accurate needle length. However, there is still some poorly made dermarollers with inaccurate length and bent needles . Please double check the needle length before applying derma rolling. Otherwise, using such dermarollers could pose great danger to your skin.

Fake dr. roller has bent needles

5) Needle number

There are so many kinds of needling rollers with various needle number such as, 75 needles, 180 needles, 192 needles, 200 needles, 540 needles, 600 needles, 1200 needles and so on. The purpose of different needle number is to target different treatment areas.

For small areas such as eye around , mouth and nose areas, delicate and small-sized Roller is a good option. For large areas such as back, leg and stomach, a larger roller with large number of needle delivers more efficient treatment.
Small area:75 needles, 180 needles, 192 needles,
Large area: 200 needles, 540 needles, 600 needles, 1200 needles

6) Needle array

There is mainly two type of needle array:  Type A：parallel needle array: Type B：diagonal needle array.

Type A can be found in most of the dermarollers. Type B is the improved design.

Advantage of diagonal needle array:

• Skin needling creates evenly punctured holes.

• Greatly Reduce chances of repetitive needling in one place, leading to less pain and less trauma.