Lifestyle

MIRROR, MIRROR

I Let a Smart Mirror Rate My Skin for a Week—Here’s What It Said

Wait—has my face always looked like this?

Carina HsiehReporter, Looker

PublishedMar 19, 2026, 10:35 AM EDT

UpdatedMar 19, 2026, 10:35 AM EDT

Updated Mar 19, 2026, 10:35 AM EDTPublished Mar 19, 2026, 10:35 AM EDT

Like many, I enjoy staring at myself in the mirror. Not so much to admire myself as to gather data points.

Look at those pores! Does anyone else on earth have this many sebaceous filaments—or am I a medical anomaly? Do I have more pimples on my skin than birthmarks and freckles at this given moment in time?

One of the major problems with observing your skin is that you often have nothing to compare it to. Some days I feel like I’m having a gorgeous, beyond beautiful day, and other days I’m more...realistic. There isn’t even anything that really separates the two, or at least, nothing I can flip back to and reference.

Until now. Enter the SWAN Beauty Mirror.

For $795, you can access “a next-generation smart mirror” that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) to analyze your skin, teach you how to do makeup, help you film videos of yourself more conveniently, and, of course, shop.

As I’ve aged, my sacred mirror time has only brought up more questions: Has my skin always folded in towards my nose? Have my cheeks always paused like that before bouncing back? My eyes have always been hooded, but have they always been so hooded? These are among several superficial, skin-deep concerns about aging that are relatively inconsequential.

Curiosity got the better of me, so I asked to borrow the SWAN beauty mirror for a few days. Here’s what I liked the most—and the least about the pricey new beauty tool.

What I Loved

The SWAN beauty mirror has many features, but the one that interested me most was the skin analyzer.

Using the built-in camera, you can track your skin’s status across seven concerns: wrinkles, pigmentation, texture, oiliness, redness, acne, and UV spots. Your skin is scored on a 0–100 scale for each area.

Normally, I’m morally opposed to the AI-ification of everything, but the vain promise of giving me quantifiable data on what my skin needs had me tip-tapping on that mirror in the middle of the workday without shame.

Without changing anything about my routine, I took measurements. Over the six days I analyzed my skin, I was pleasantly surprised at my complexion’s overall score.

Day One: 89

Day Two: 92

Day Three: 92

Day Four: 92

Day Five: 90

Day Six: 91

There were a few days that I received a 100 for acne despite the active, glaring, white-tipped pimples peppering my skin. In those instances, I wondered how accurate the mirror really was.

I thought I had the best skin on Thursday (day five). No active zits had come to a head, and nothing was bubbling underneath the surface of my skin. The SWAN thought otherwise, ranking it my second-lowest day and giving me a paltry 79 out of 100 for texture. (My actual lowest-ranked texture day of 76 had an overall score of 91.)

The best thing about the Mirror was how it clocked my UV Spots. Despite being in the high 90s for most things, my UV Spots were almost always in the low 80s. And to be honest, I don’t use sunscreen every day. I know I should, but I’ve always thought that if I spend most of my time indoors and don’t take time to tan at the beach, I’d be fine.

While it doesn’t seem like the SWAN Mirror uses the exact same tech dermatologists use in-office to check for UV spots and sun damage (they use their own proprietary AI detection, as opposed to, say, a Woods Lamp to check for skin cancer), they certainly did a better job than I would on my own, with only my eyes and the weekly contacts I wear as monthlies to guide me.

Even if the tech the SWAN used wasn’t really anything scientific, I still appreciated the call-out to pay closer attention to UV damage. Turns out if you give me a “needs improvement” score on just about anything, I’ll pay attention. Perhaps I need a psychoanalyzing mirror to determine what this reaction says about me.

What Could Be Better

The mirror is overall very fun, but like many high-tech things, a little wonky.

I found the prices in the SWAN beauty marketplace to be too high for my personal liking and somewhat inconsistently catalogued. Once in a while, there’d be a product callout on the carousel that said something like “Tarte Wanderer Eyeshadow” and then just regular, generic “Brow Pencil.” Which brand? Not sure, just “Brow Pencil.”

Overall, there seemed to be some kinks to work out. There was also a Tom Ford Beauty Brow Sculptor that was misspelled as “Sclptor” on the screen.

There was also some syntax wonkiness. Over the six days, I received two messages that said “Your acne score is in strong” or “Your oiliness score is in strong.” Sure, but strong in what?

I also didn’t love how fingerprint-y the Mirror got. Playing with a device that uses AI and AR and functions as a real mirror requires viewing it from multiple angles at once. Unfortunately, all those angles seemed to show fingerprints. It took me about a day to realize the microfiber cloth I had skipped over during unboxing was, in fact, very necessary. Call it Chekov’s microfiber cloth.

There was also an instance when I was playing with the screen, only for the whole thing to shut off. However, I will say, my absolute worst fear (the mirror suddenly auto-playing a GRWM with audio while I was in the middle of looking at myself in a full newsroom) didn’t happen.

Takeaway

I’m grateful for the opportunity to look at historical versions of my skin. Even if it was just six days, it was super informative to compare how my texture and UV spots changed from day to day. While the SWAN Mirror might not be something I’d ever buy myself, I could see the right person (rich, an influencer who can use the built-in filming mechanism) benefiting from it.

For now, I’ll take the lessons the SWAN gave me (put that damn sunscreen on) and apply it to the old analog mirror I have at home.

Carina HsiehReporter, Looker

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