We can officially call it annual.
For the second year in a row, Robb Report‘s editors, staff writers, and contributors—to say nothing of our occasionally unwitting friends and loved ones—have tested thousands of the market’s best grooming products, and whittled them down to the 50 that are worth the money.
The list includes everything from thoughtful skin care products and antiaging serums backed by real science; body serums that are just as intelligently formulated as the most serious face creams; fragrances from upstart brands and old stalwarts; and hair care tools and treatments designed to help you keep your hair looking great for as long as possible.
We’re also introducing two new concepts with this year’s awards: an Innovation Award, granted to one product that demonstrates impressive clinical results and brings about results in our own personal use; and a Hall of Fame, to which we’ve inducted five items across categories that have been on the market for a decade or more, but still delight us every time we use them.
But you’ll only see those if you make it all the way through the list. Take a look at all of this winners below.
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Best Facial Cleanser: Pavise Gentle Amino Powerwash
Image Credit: Pavise Pavise gets lots of praise for its sunscreen, but not nearly enough for its cleanser. This product is charged with amino acids, niacinamide, glycolic acid, and squalane, making it supremely hydrating, soothing, and smoothing—while providing you with a thorough clean. A little goes a long way, so one bottle will last you a long, long time.
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Best Antiaging Serum: Orveda The Omnipotent Concentrate
Image Credit: Orveda Orveda’s latest seeps into the dermis, where its plant-derived active ingredients influence older, damaged cells to behave more like younger ones. This helps to replenish the skin from within—rather than sanding them off your face with harsh active ingredients. Any highly proactive anti-aging skincare regimen feels incomplete without this in it.
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Best Vitamin C Treatment: Exponent Beauty Brightening Boost Power System
Image Credit: Exponent Beauty This two-step system combines hyaluronic acid serum with a fresh and carefully measured dose of daily Vitamin C. Marry them in your palm for an instant fix of hydration, radiance, and antioxidant defense—plus long-term complexion-brightening benefits.
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Best Eye Cream: La Prairie Skin Caviar Eye Lift
Image Credit: La Prairie Eyelids, brows, under eyes, and corners: La Prairie’s caviar-sourced eye serum tightens and brightens your face’s most sensitive and delicate skin—in that way their proprietary formulas can.
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Best Brightening Serum: Mother Science Molecular Hero Serum
Image Credit: Mother Science Yes, malassezin is a fungus-produced compound found naturally in the skin, but the team at Mother Science has formulated (and patented) a supremely brightening serum thanks to that hero ingredient. Along with barrier-boosting niacinamide, this one magnifies your defenses against discoloration.
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Best Hydrating Serum: Dior Sauvage Men Care Serum
Image Credit: Dior Dior infused its Sauvage-scented serum with the soothing and hydrating powers of cactus extract. It’s a terrific addition to your morning routine—right before you spritz on one of the many Sauvage olfactive expressions, too.
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Best Nighttime Moisturizer: Protocol Water Lock
Image Credit: Protocol Cult-status Protocol launched this slugging sensation, which has all the water-trapping benefits of those other heavyset balms and slaves—only this one can be worn day and night alike. It’s a winter skin savior, and always guarantees more refreshed and plump skin by morning (great for air-conditioned summer bedrooms too).
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Best Skin Care Device: TheraBody TheraFace Mask
Image Credit: TheraBody It’s part anti-aging skin device, part facial massage. Wear TheraBody’s TheraFace mask each day and you’ll get all the benefits of LED facial masks, plus short-term soothing stimulation.
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Best Skin Supplement: Elysium Health Mosaic
Image Credit: Elysium Health Here’s a proactive softgel for skin: With tomato and rosemary extracts, hyaluronic acid, and sea buckthorn oil (to name a few), these daily supplements provide some serious benefits over the long term, including stimulating collagen growth and even delivering hyaluronic acid into the skin, which enhances hydration and diminishes the look of wrinkles.
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Best Acne Treatment: Murad Rapid Relief Acne Sulfur Mask
Image Credit: Murad This sulfur-steered mask is an essential for acne-prone individuals, as a weekly preventative mask or a targeted spot treatment. It soothes with eucalyptus oil, too, and joins a brilliant roster of other acne-fighting products from Murad.
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Best Facial SPF: Supergoop! Triple Prep Weightless Multitasking Moisturizer SPF 40
Image Credit: Supergoop! This cushioning whip-like SPF moisturizer from Supergoop! wears light and combines two essential morning steps into one. It also uses ectoin, hyaluronic acid, and algae extract to fortify, hydrate, and balance skin.
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Best At-Home Peel: Noble Panacea The Exceptional Overnight Chronobiology Peel
Image Credit: Noble Panacea This calculated time-release peel could teach us all about time management: In the first 5 hours of slumber (post-application) it systematically buffs away dead skin with alpha and beta hydroxy acids, while the last three hours are focused on recovery and soothing, thanks to gotu kola (aka cica grass).
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Best Dark Spot Corrector: Medik8 Oxy-R Peptides
Image Credit: Medik8 If other solutions for lingering scars from shaving or acne haven’t worked, try this hyperpigmentation serum that targets such marks with 1 percent oxyresveratrol. A little goes a long way, and the watery serum goes on easy. We also loved that it comes in two portions, both of which you activate by mixing powdered ingredients with a fluid solution, which helps preserve freshness and efficacy.
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Best Electric Razor: Philips Norelco Shaver S9000 Prestige
Image Credit: Philips Norelco This isn’t just the best new grooming device of the year; it’s the best electric shaver, period. Shave bumps and irritation are an afterthought. No rotary shaver has ever cut so close to the skin, and yet this one reduces redness and friction with its slick-faced panels. It catches the thickest or curliest of hairs, too, with its six (!) spinning razors across three heads. You’ll get the closest shave possible on a single pass.
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Best Manual Razor: Gillette SkinGuard Razor
Image Credit: Gillette Sometimes less is more, and that’s true of this two-bladed cartridge razor from Gillette. If you have sensitive skin or shave infrequently, the low blade count could be the ticket for getting an ultra-close shave without any nicks, cuts, or ingrown hairs.
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Best Shaving Cream: The Art of Shaving Bergamot and Neroli Shaving Cream
Image Credit: The Art of Shaving You can build quite the luscious lather with this shaving cream—and a delicious scented one at that. Aside from its nourishing properties, this product reminds us that shaving is a perfect chance to slow down and treat yourself. Call it an art, even.
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Best Skin Care System: Doctor Rogers Advance Duo
Image Credit: Doctor Rogers Ideally, your skincare regimen has a targeted treatment (post-cleanse, pre-moisturizer), but there are a million serums and creams that could fit the script. Doctor Rogers makes things easy with this duo: The morning treatment shields your skin with antioxidant defenses for the day, and the night treatment gives your cells’ regenerative cycle a huge boost.
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Best Shaving Brush: Altesse Studio Prestige Beard Brush
Image Credit: Altesse Studio Made with time-tested 19th-century manufacturing techniques, this boar-bristle brush is the “haute couture of French brushmaking”—and it’s as great at sorting and nourishing the hair on your head as it is for the hair on your face.
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Best Shaving Solution: Caldera Lab The Smooth
Image Credit: Caldera Lab Not all shave creams are creams; this low-later “elixir” is a brilliant, translucent base for a soothing, cushioned reset. It’s also perfect for the guys who just want to refresh their beard neckline with a blade, or those who use an electric razor with a light lubricant.
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Best Deodorant: AKT London The Deodorant Balm
Image Credit: AKT London London-based AKT expanded stateside this past year, and it’s nearly impossible to choose one favorite from its five refreshing aromas. (There’s also a “No Notes” unscented option.) If you haven’t considered the switch from deodorant sprays and sticks, then here’s your official FYC campaign: AKT’s moisture-absorbing and odor-busting balm is a natural deodorant that works, and works all day. Most of its competitors can’t say that—at least not with a straight face.
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Best Body Wash: Diptyque Órpheon Cleansing Hand and Body Gel
Image Credit: Diptyque We’ll take anything Órpheon-scented, because the fragrance’s tobacco-tonka-cedar essence is positively invigorating. So, the fact that this body wash turns one’s bathroom into an Órpheon spa? Sold. It’s also a brilliant standalone hand wash, so buy another bottle for the powder room. It’ll impress every guest who comes to visit.
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Best Body SPF: Dr. Barbara Sturm Sun Cream Body SPF 30
Image Credit: Dr. Barbara Sturm This lightweight, easy-to-wear SPF uses a favorite ingredient of Dr. Sturm’s: Purslane extract provides anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits to further defend skin against environmental stressors, in addition to that SPF 30 shield.
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Best Body Serum: Soft Services Software Update
Image Credit: Soft Services This is the year when the retinol-infused body care arms race started in earnest, and Soft Services is already winning. This nourishing body serum allows you to wake with smoother skin all over—and it’s a major game changer for those rough mitts and dry elbows.
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Best Bar Soap: Aesop Polish Bar Soap
Image Credit: Aesop Ever heard of “forest bathing”? This pine-scented bar soap is like a walk through the Appalachian Mountains, and it gives you a satisfying scrub down, too. Use it every few days for softer, smoother skin.
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Best Signature Scent: Brunello Cucinelli Pour Homme EDP
Image Credit: Brunello Cucinelli Brunello Cucinelli’s debut men’s fragrance has all the trappings of a classic signature scent: It evolves from citrus-spicy to aromatic to woody, and feels well suited to every hour of the day, and every day of the year. In that way, it’s not unlike the Italian philosopher-designer’s clothing. Try it on once, and you’ll want to wear it a lot.
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Best Upgrade Cologne: Burberry Hero Parfum
Image Credit: Burberry After a previous EDP upgrade, the beloved Burberry Hero gets another remix with this powerful parfum. It punctuates those woody notes, with a resinous and aromatic essence throughout.
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Best Office Cologne: Henry Rose Menace EDP
Image Credit: Henry Rose Menace is anything but menacing: Crisp citrus notes splash from a marine heart onto a musky-patchouli base. It’s bright like the sun, and sophisticated yet; wear it to barrel through until Friday, or to be the most pleasant guest at your company’s next happy hour.
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Best Fragrance Debut: Bianco Profumo Neroli Pomodoro EDP
Image Credit: Bianco Profumo This Chicago-based brand is one to watch, having launched three excellent fragrances this year. Our favorite is the wonderfully named Neroli Pomodoro, which combines neroli, tomato leaf, blood orange, and more into this invigorating and inviting scent. It is supremely uplifting—don’t be surprised to smell it on the coolest people at your most stylish local watering hole this summer.
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Best Special Occasion Cologne: Parfums de Marly Althaïr EDP
Image Credit: Parfums de Marly Your fragrance wardrobe needs a few pinch hitters for special events, and Althaïr’s sweet-gourmand essence is a delicious addition to your roster. When you’re invited to fill a seat at a gala last minute, you’ll thank us.
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Best Date Night Cologne: Mind Games Ruy Lopez Extrait
Image Credit: Mind Games In chess, the “Ruy López Opening” is one of the most studied ways to begin a match. And in perfumery, the phrase takes on a new meaning: Mind Games’s Ruy Lopez opens on headstrong black pepper before playing a leathery long game. Wear it to cast a confident radius on date night. This one lets you be the boldest version of yourself.
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Best Spring Cologne: Montblanc Explorer Platinum EDP
Image Credit: Montblanc While Explorer Platinum would smell great every month of the year, it feels like the perfect pairing for spring renewal—it’s what the Alps smell like once the winter powder melts away. This is Montblanc’s best scent, hands down, which is really saying something.
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Best Summer Cologne: Louis Vuitton Pacific Chill EDP
Image Credit: Louis Vuitton Pacific Chill is an instant optimism fix: Its crisp citrus notes transport you to a sun-soaked coastline, where you can visualize all of your stressors floating away on the ocean breeze.
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Best Fall Cologne: Tom Ford Oud Minerale EDP
Image Credit: Tom Ford Oud Minerale reads like a summer scent, with its salty, marine-forward recipe. And while it feels like the perfect summer sprawl, it also eases the transition into autumn, so that you can savor its warming notes of oud well into the colder months.
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Best Winter Cologne: Tumi 19 Degree Extrait
Image Credit: Tumi 19 Degree envelops you like a leather jacket with ripe red berries in the pockets. It’s an extrait de parfum, meaning it has a higher concentration of perfume oils than your standard EDP, so it provides true all-day wear—something you’ll be grateful for every time you put it on.
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Best Hair Styler: Stmnt Grooming Definition Spray
Image Credit: Stmnt Stmnt Grooming continues to build out its gold-standard product roster—this past year saw three new additions to its assortment. The most universal is this excellent texturizing spray, a perfect way to add volume, fullness, and definition to a variety of hair types and styles.
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Best Hair Dryer: Gama Italy Professional iQ3 Hairdryer
Image Credit: Gama Italy Professional This slim and sleek dryer puts barbershop-caliber muscle in your mitts—up to 120,000 rpm, to be exact. It uses active oxygen and negatively charged ions to prevent breakage and frizz, and an easily cleaned filtration system ensures the purity of the air whizzing through your precious strands.
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Best Hair Loss Treatment: Xyon Topical Finasteride and Minoxidil 2-in-1 Hair Loss Treatment
Image Credit: Xyon Xyon expanded its hair loss solutions with this 2-in-1 topical; it combines the benefits of the two most powerful hair retention medicines—minoxidil and finasteride—and also cuts back on the potential side effects (oral finasteride in particular carries a small risk of lowering men’s libidoes).
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Best Hair Growth Device: CurrentBody LED Hair Regrowth Device
Image Credit: CurrentBody Here’s the best way to zone out and sprout some new hair—or hang onto your youthful hairline all the longer. CurrentBody’s LED cap (with its built-in Bluetooth headphones) stimulates the follicles not unlike the way similar facial masks boost collagen. We love that its treatment time (a brief 10 minutes) is programmed to stop as soon as a session is over, which makes using this innovation feel convenient and simple.
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Best Hair Care Duo: Augustinus Bader The Rich Shampoo and Conditioner
Image Credit: Augustinus Bader This one-two punch from Augustinus Bader is a masterclass in fighting frizz. We’ve never tested a conditioner with such a luxurious texture, nor a shampoo that cleanses thoroughly, but leaves behind nourished, hydrated hair.
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Best Floss: Davids Expanding Dental Floss With Nano-Hydroxyapatite
Image Credit: Davids This floss fits into the finest inter-dental spaces, then expands so it can lift away trapped debris other flosses might leave behind. It is infused with nano-hydroxyapatite and delivers the enamel-fortifying ingredient in the most hard-to-reach areas.
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Best Toothpaste: Selahatin Steam Will Rise
Image Credit: Selahatin We look forward to every new Selahatin flavor, because the Swedish brand treats its oral care products more like perfumes than quotidian staples that just need to taste like mint. Steam Will Rise is like a brilliant sunrise over the verdant Hollywood Hills: eucalyptus, cucumber, lime, juniper, and more. It levels up the experience of brushing your teeth—and makes you want to question every element of your daily routine.
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Best Electric Flosser: Flaus Electric Flosser
Image Credit: Flaus Just as electric toothbrushes give you a more reliable cleaning, this muscled-up flosser promises to get everything out between your teeth—without wreaking havoc on your gums. It has three levels of intensity, and it comes with a collection bag that makes it easy to send back and recycle the used flossing heads.
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Best Toothbrush: Oral-B iO Series 10 Toothbrush
Image Credit: Oral-B With its seven different cleaning modes, plus a charging stand and portable charging case, this high-powered electric toothbrush never quits on you. And you can even pair it with Oral-B’s app for AI surface tracking to improve your brushing habits, too.
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Best At-Home Teeth Whitening: Boka Rapid Radiance Whitening Kit
Image Credit: Boka Boka’s recent expansion into whitening products made massive waves in the dental industry. This whitening kit gives its household-name competitors a serious run for their money.
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The Innovation Award: Plated Skin Science Hair Serum
Image Credit: Plated The proprietary complex in this serum summons platelet extract—exosomes derived from human blood—to supercharge your follicles and harmonize your scalp. It is built on 15 years of research conducted by cardiologists who set out to investigate regenerative medicine, and is also packed with antioxidants to fortify hair growth further and reduce breakage. Think of it as the next best thing to getting plasma injections from the dermatologist as a biological hair booster.
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Hall of Fame: Bevel Premium Safety Razor
Image Credit: Bevel Bevel is a men’s grooming megabrand today, but it all started with a deceptively simple double-edged safety razor. Its founder, Tristan Walker, wanted to address the high rates of shaving-induced ingrown hairs among men of color, but he ended up sparking a revolution a wide variety of guys got swept up in. (If you switched from a multi-razor cartridge to a single-edge blade at any point since the company launched in 2014, you have Walker to thank.) While the company now offers scores of other products, the original razor still stands out as one of its best.
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Hall of Fame: Marvis Whitening Mint Toothpaste
Image Credit: Bigelow Chemists There’s a reason smokers and coffee drinkers love this stuff. Marvis’s beloved toothpaste cleans teeth and freshens breath like few other products—even ones with more innovative formulations. It gives you an electrifyingly fresh reset, with a brightness boost as a benefit.
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Hall of Fame: Biologique Recherche Lotion P50
Image Credit: Biologique Recherche Is any facial product more perfectly formulated? This post-cleanse exfoliant lotion—which has amassed cult-like devotion since it was introduced in 1970—balances pH levels, buffs away dead skin cells, and deeply nourishes skin, while also purifying your pelt. This P50 lotion should be tapped in with a cotton pad or round, targeting the T-zone and any other particularly oily areas. Follow with a moisturizer, et voilà: Clearer, calmer, radiant skin.
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Hall of Fame: Kiehl's Creme de Corps
Image Credit: Kiehl's This buttery body cream is the shortest distance from desperately dehydrated skin to soft, supple skin. And its cocoa-butter base is an olfactive association, too; one whiff and you know that you’re in good (soft) hands.
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Hall of Fame: Hermès Terre d'Hermès Parfum
Image Credit: Hermès You can’t talk about the best classic colognes without Terre d’Hermès front of mind—nor can you talk about the most iconic signature scents from luxe labels without the same consideration. It has spawned some superbly scented remixes, but does anything ever compete with the original? That grapefruit-, cedar-, and shiso-infused scent is the stuff of legends.
