Review: Biore Pore Unclogging Scrub

Allow me to begin by saying that I am a total Biore fan-girl. I'm in love with their pore strips, their astringent and their moisturizer. I recently went on vacation and started experiencing quite a few pimples popping up all over my face and so I wanted to get rid of them ASAP. Since there are few options when it came to drug stores down in the Virgin Islands, I wandered into K-mart and picked this up for about $9.00.

The first thing I noticed about this scrub is that it smells incredible, just like the rest of the Biore products. It has a clean, fresh smell and I immediately couldn't wait to get it onto my face (I'm a sucker for thing that smell nice - sue me)! I became a little bit iffy when it came time to use it, though. The beads in the formula are rather cumbersome. They're literally like little beads, unlike the micro-beads or rough scrubs that I am used to seeing and feeling in exfoliating face scrubs. Of course, they are soft and wash off. However, something that got on my nerves about them is that they are a pain in the neck to get off! They get stuck in your hairline and some drip onto your neck, and the sink becomes a wet bead-covered mess whenever I go to rinse the scrub off. I would suggest pulling your hair back tightly before you wash your face with this stuff unless you want more caught in your tresses than on your face. The size and texture of the beads gave me a little bit of pause, too. As I mentioned earlier, I'm used to a little bit more texture when it comes to exfoliators. To me, this felt like the bunny-slopes of exfoliation and didn't feel like it would remove too much dead skin after one use, which is what I usually prefer.

But, I decided to stick it out for results and I'm fairly glad that I did. My face felt so soft after using this and it definitely cut down on the oily shine brought on from my sudden winter-to-summer climate change (ah, vacation). After using it for a few weeks now I have noticed that it has made my pores appear smaller and has done pretty well at making blackheads appear less noticeable. However, as for their claims about helping with acne I must stay I'm still on the fence. Right on the bottle, they claim to work faster/better than Pro-Active at reducing acne for 64% of customers. Well, I've never used pro-Active but I will say that this didn't do much at reducing hormone-induced acne. For the small pimples that have popped up due to diet change, though, redness has been reduced.

Overall, I'm happy with this stuff! It did most of what it claimed to do and although I was not in love with the texture, I cannot argue with results. I may or may not buy this again (I'm a girl who loves her scrubs, after all), but for anyone struggling with clogged pores and willing to try something new, I would recommend this time and time again!