Y.Y.
Hello! I am 34 years old and had this done. I have Asian skin and so I have a higher tendency to have age spots on my cheeks. IPL is amazing! I did 4 treatments (I think I could have done 3 treatments), and my spots are lighter. I think it's very effective and there is no downtime. The only other experience I've had with laser is laser hair removal, and there are some lasers that work better than others in my experience, so this may be true for IPL as well.
The spots DO get much darker after each treatment, so don't let it freak you out. After about a week, they start to flake off and they'll be lighter after that. With each session, you'll notice a difference. Some spots I didn't even know were there appeared out of the blue after my first treatment, but sure enough became lighter and flaked off.
Also, I would go to a physician's office to get this done. Like I said, the other experience I've had with laser is with laser hair removal, and the second time I had it done, I had it at a spa type of place. I believe their laser was very mediocre because the hair wasn't removed at all (even after 4 sessions). My first experience was at a physician's office, and even after 3 sessions (I did a total of 6 using a Groupon-like deal), the hair did not grow back... even to this day and that was almost three years ago. The IPL I had done was at a plastic surgeon's office.
Hope this helps!!