Mandelic Acid 10% + HA.

"The Ordinary Mandelic Acid 10% plus HA is only $8, and if you're new to acids or on a budget, this is where I recommend you start. 10% mandelic acid is a sweet spot for effectiveness, effective without a lot of irritation. The formula is straightforward, no fragrance, no unnecessary filler ingredients, just the active ingredient doing its job. The Ordinary sometimes gets a bad rap because the packaging is a little boring and the texture can feel a little sticky, but I don't really care about that, I just care about whether it works, and this one does work. I've had patients use it for months and see real improvement in texture, tone, and breakouts."

"Mandelic acid is a great ingredient for skin texture, improving skin brightness, giving that softer, smoother look to the skin and it does help to gently exfoliate. Great for your evening routine, but if you decide to use it in your morning, just make sure that you're wearing sunscreen. I used to use this product all the time, I want to say 5 or 6 years ago and it was my way of introducing my skin to alpha hydroxy acids, to get my skin accustomed to chemical exfoliants. It's nice that The Ordinary offers a 10% option if you wish just to use a separate serum in your nighttime routine for that exfoliation process and I love that it has hyaluronic acid to hydrate the skin. It's a very gentle hydrating formulation that is super lightweight. I remember really enjoying this, and it's great for all skin types, but if you want more of that gentle approach, mandelic acid is the way to go."

"The first one I want to share with you is mandelic acid. I actually recommended this to my friend whose daughter had terrible dry acne. The key with this is it's great for rosacea and dry acne because it breaks up the oil in the skin, it hydrates the skin, and it also kind of reduces the redness. It's a very interesting formula. The one thing that folks who have regular acne or just not dry acne might not like is it feels a little bit oily. It's an oil-free product but it kind of goes on the skin a little bit on the oily side, so it might feel a little uncomfortable on people who have oily acne skin. But if you have dry acne, if you have rosacea, or if you're just very sensitive and have very sensitive skin, this is a very gentle exfoliator. It's antimicrobial, it's antibacterial, it will mop up the oil in your skin and just give that skin a little bit of a break and gentle exfoliation while your skin is healing. And it's a perfect exfoliator to kind of get rid of those dead skin cells very gently."

"The Ordinary has a mandelic acid serum at one of the best prices I've ever seen. I think this is like eight or nine dollars. I'm actually shocked this is not top of the list, but if you are on a budget, if you're looking for a good easy-to-use mandelic acid, this is it. This serum is so easy to use. It is a little bit potent, so I would say only use this at night. It's a ten percent, whereas the Wish Trend was more of a five. But this also has hyaluronic acid in it, so it can actually bind onto moisture and pull that deeper into the skin. That's why this isn't at the tippy top of my list. I do feel like I need to layer this with other products in order to get that hyaluronic acid to really work. I wish that this was sold in a version that doesn't have the hyaluronic acid. Then this may be the absolute top. But the mandelic acid plus hyaluronic acid fragrance-free formula is a really good one, and it's simple, it's easy to use. It's a little bit oily on the skin, but overall it is really nice."