Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair: Why everyone and their mother are obsessed.

For over a year now, this has been the first skincare product uttered from a beauty bloggers mouth when recommending a skincare product. Advanced Night Repair: the holy grail of skin serum. Look into one of their bathroom cabinets and this product is consistently sitting in reaching distance. We took it upon ourselves to trial the night repair serum and its matching eye cream to uncover why it is so damn popular, if it is worth the price point and whether you need to add this to your daily skincare routine.

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'Advanced Night Repair Synchronized Recovery Complex II' is a mouthful, so is often referred to as ANR in the beauty world. So what is so life-changing about this product? It is marketed as a pre-moisturizer serum and boasts an abundance of benefits - maximizing skin renewal, moisture, reducing wrinkles and leaving skin radiant and toned with frequent use. The product is oil-free, fragrance-free (something we value in a skincare product), dermatologist and ophthalmologist tested and non-acnegenic - meaning it won't clog pores.

On the website, the product makes the claim that "more than 75% of women felt their skin looked more youthful in just 4 weeks. Skin feels smoother, hydrated, stronger. 82% felt their skin was immediately hydrated. Skin looks younger, radiant, more even toned. 83% felt their skin looked healthier, fresher, more rested in just 4 weeks."

A serum is certainly something that the average human neglects to add to their skincare routine, we all know the standard steps: face wash, exfoliator and moisturiser. Skin savvy people will slot in a few extra products to that list - including toner, a separate night cream, an eye cream and most definitely a serum.

The one thing that sells the added step of serum to us is that it penetrates the skin deeper, delivering the active ingredients that, when in a moisturiser, would just sit on top of the skin providing a single layer of moisture. Most serum enthusiasts leave this product for one of the final steps in their nighttime routine, as per the name of the product we adhered to this. At the time of receiving the largest product, they also included the full-sized eye cream which enables us to hit two birds with one stone for this review. For the biggest size of the Advanced Night Repair Serum, it will set you back $188 (NZD), the matching Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair Eye Concentrate Matrix will cost an extra $138 (NZD). Justification in regards the cost of makeup and skincare is subjective of course, this product can definitely be perceived as an investment. Estée Lauder is often marketed as a more mature beauty brand and while we believe that the serum is specifically targeting customers averaging 45-65, it has been picked up by a younger generation of skincare aficionado for a reason. Preventative measures in your skincare routine are certainly worth the investment if you greatly value a youthful and healthy complexion.

So is the product worth all of the hype? Upon the first use, some of the benefits were already apparent. Observing a bare face the next morning, it was obvious that the skin had a glowy sheen, something that hadn't been achieved using any other skincare product. Another observation with further use, over a two week period, is that it healed dry skin around the nose and cleared spots and minor acne scarring. We aren't able to say that this product belongs on a pedestal, the true testament of a products worthiness is if you notice a decline in your skin when you stop using it. So far, we are certain that it has solidified a place in an everyday routine. As far as the eye cream is concerned, unless you are into matching skincare products, we think there are similar products on the market that won't cost an arm and a leg.