if you’ve spent any time at all on social media recently, you’ve undoubtedly seen the viral videos of people using pore vacuums to suction out the gunk from their pores (FYI, these TikToks and IG clips are most definitely not for the squeamish. Woof). It’s led to an influx of texts and DMs from friends asking me if blackhead vacuums really are a magical cure-all for their pores and whether or not they should buy the first one they see online.
So even though I was hella skeptical (in the skincare world, if it sounds too good to be true, it pretty much always is), I also felt the need to buy one and test it out for myself before fully giving it a yea or nay. Although there is super-fancy, v expensive blackhead vacuums you can buy with cameras on the inside (!), I certainly wasn’t about to drop $$ on a thing I wasn’t sure would even work. Instead, I went with the top-rated pore vacuum on Amazon (5,600 reviews?!) and hoped for the best. Which…well, just keep reading.
Do pore vacuums really work?
Yes, pore vacuums really do “work” to some degree…but not on everyone and not as effective as you’re hoping. Like, those super-satisfying videos you see all over TikTok and Instagram? That’s not the norm—sadly. At most, you’ll probably see only a few little squiggles of gunk come out of your pores, maybe even one big satisfying one, but that’s about it.
And even then, you’re not actually vacuuming out your pores—you’re just removing some gunk from the opening of your pores. “What you’re really doing with a pore vacuum is very superficially removing any dead skin, makeup, and oils from the surface of your pores, which you can also do by cleansing very well”.
