I have to admit — I used to be very skeptical of LED devices that purport to be good for your skin. When they first started being sold for home use, I felt like they were mostly expensive, ineffective appliances that were obvious cash grabs. Nowadays, though, as is usually the case with any burgeoning category of products, the technology has improved. We’re seeing more sophisticated offerings that not only use better components, but are more comfortable to wear. Full face masks from the likes of Therabody, Dr. Dennis Gross and Omnilux have exploded in popularity, taking over social media and constantly selling out. After hearing rave reviews from friends and family, and undergoing more light treatments in salons myself, I have grown more convinced there’s room for devices like these.
Shark, the maker of vacuum cleaners, air fryers and assorted kitchen gear, has unveiled its take on the LED face mask device here at CES 2025. Launched under its three-year-old Shark Beauty arm, the new “CryoGlow under-eye cooling + LED anti-aging and skin clearing face mask” has quite a long name. I’m just going to refer to it as the CryoGlow mask from here on. At a meeting here in Las Vegas, Shark’s senior vice president of global product development Danielle Lessing described a number of ways the CryoGlow is different from what’s currently out there.
First of all, as its name implies, there is a cooling component to this device. In addition to the 160 “interlocking tri-wick LEDs” on the mask, there are two metallic plates on the cheeks that are shaped like eye masks. This is the conduit for what Shark is calling its “InstaChill” technology and basically are a pair of cold plates that, in my brief time with the CryoGlow, felt satisfyingly soothing. In fact, that might be my favorite part of the device (and frankly its differentiating trait).
After putting on the CryoGlow for maybe about a minute, and after I took several hilarious pictures and selfies with it, I really appreciated how cold it felt in my under-eye area. To be clear, the plates felt chilly immediately after I wore the mask, but it was the prolonged coolness that I enjoyed. And after removing the device, I still relished the sensation that remained, even after a few minutes. I don’t feel like I had the mask on for long enough to know if it’d start to feel clunky after prolonged wear, but at least during my demo, I didn’t feel strained, nor did the wired remote control get in my way.
I also want to note that,…