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January 2, 2025

Connie Park/NYT Wirecutter

A lot of beauty aficionados will tell you: Americans generally have the wrong idea about skin care. Their approach focuses on correcting problems—acne, wrinkles, dark spots—rather than preventing them in the first place. Korean beauty products, on the other hand, prioritize hydration and a healthy skin barrier for glowing, luminous skin.

We tested dozens of options to find the very best products that uphold the tenets of K-beauty: cleansing, treating, moisturizing, and protecting. We evaluated the glassy, the stretchy, and the balmy. And we settled on 14 standouts.

Some of our favorites? A plush cleanser that removes even stubborn waterproof mascara, a refreshing exfoliant for acne-prone skin, and a snail mucin serum that smooths and soothes.

Glass skin awaits→

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The best instant noodles Just add water→

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Baking can be fussy. This nonstick mat is not. It has helped our kitchen expert bake cookies, roast veggies, and freeze chocolate strawberries for two decades, with less cleanup→

Photo illustration by NYT Wirecutter; source photo by iStock/mikhail badaev

On this episode of The Wirecutter Show, kitchen editor Marguerite Preston shares her favorite nonalcoholic drinks that won’t disappoint, especially for folks who normally enjoy gin, Amaro, or Aperol. Plus, her best advice on how to build a delicious buzz-free bar cart: Start with the basics like seltzer, tonic, or ginger beer, add bitters and Luxardo cherries, plus a few nonalcoholic bottles of your choice.

Hannah Frye/NYT Wirecutter, Biodance

If the “morning shed” trend hasn’t made it to your social media feed yet, let us get you up to speed: In pursuit of better sleep or glowing skin, people are heading to bed with all sorts of items stuck to their faces, including a face mask that turns clear overnight.

According to a flood of TikTok reviews, the Biodance mask is the ultimate overnight ticket to bright, hydrated, and gloriously dewy skin. Beauty expert Hannah Frye went in with lots of questions: Does the mask stay on through the night? How does it feel? Is it worth the trouble? And she was a bit hopeful. But unfortunately the results were disappointing.

You can do better→

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