Conair Facial Steamer $22

When I was a little girl I always remembered my mother and my aunt using a facial steamer in their beauty regimen. After seeing cutie patootie youtuber Lindi use one I got the itch to get one too! Check out her site at http://www.bubzbeauty.com/ or you can find her on youtube too. I love her hair/makeup tutorials plus she's got this awesome Nor-Ireland accent <3>

So I bought this guy off of Amazon along with another gadget a Panasonic Pore Cleanser $30 and got super free shipping - woot woot! At first I was hesitant to purchase this steamer model because I read the reviews on Amazon and there were 2-3 comments about the steamer not being wide enough to fit your face in it. I don't have a particularly GIANT face but I was worried that it would turn out smaller than I expected. So when I took this out of the box, I started laughing hysterically! The opening for your face is quite adequate for any normal human face so I dunno if the reviews were written by human bobble-head people or not.

The Swag

But back to the steamer! It comes a lot of baggage. There are 2 attachments: a large one to steam your whole face and small one to aid nasal decongestion. With the small one you can add a bit of menthol oil to the base where the water is added and you just breathe in the medicinal steam. It even included a little beaker to measure and pour water into the basin. I have not used the beaker thingy once - I just put the basin directly under the faucet and fill.

It also came with a bad Clarisonic knock-off which also has 2 attachments: one is a brush and one is a sponge. I haven't tried the sponge attachment yet but I probably should as the bristles on the brush are too harsh for my skin and I got splotchy and broke out after using it.

How to Operate

The steamer is really easy to use. You just fill it up with with water and hit the "ON" button. Once the water is fully heated and ready for steaming it gives you a beep. You set the timer dial (0-15 minutes) to how many minutes you want to steam and hit the "TIMER" button. Start steamind and once the set time has passed it gives you another beep. The dial itself doesn't move or tick after you set it so there's no annoying motor sound.

The Verdict
I love using this before applying mask to really open my pores. The unit is very lightweight (probably 1 lb at most) and compact so I can carry it anywhere. I mainly bought this for facial steaming but the fact that it came with the nasal steamer was a bonus as I know I would use this on the days when I have a really bad cold. I'm not thrilled with the weird cleanser tool or the little beaker because I'm not getting any real use out of them.