ZEROID Pimprove Calming Ampoule

What is this product?

Zeroid's Pimprove Calming Ampoule suits reactive, breakout-prone skin that reacts to most things, because the entire formula is 18 ingredients with no fragrance, no plant oil, no drying alcohol and no exfoliating acid among any of them. Five of those 18 are soothing actives, with dipotassium glycyrrhizate sixth alongside MSM, allantoin, madecassoside and zinc gluconate. It calms rather than treats, though: there is no acne active among those 18, and no amount for anything and no pH turned up on the surfaces read for this record.

What makes it different?

Being short is the whole proposition. At 18 ingredients this runs a fraction of the length of most calming ampoules, and the omissions are what buyers are actually paying for: no fragrance, no plant oil, no butter, no fatty alcohol and no acid, which removes most of what reactive skin commonly flares on. There is almost no oil phase either, so it behaves as a watery layer rather than a moisturiser and dry skin will want a cream over the top. A pseudoceramide sits ninth and sodium hyaluronate tenth, which is the whole of what this offers for barrier support and water binding. The thing to know before buying it for spots is that it carries no acne treatment ingredient of any kind, so it works on the redness around a breakout rather than on the breakout.

What is in it?

The full ingredient list as the brand publishes it, in the printed order. Each name links to what we know about that ingredient.

This brand publishes its ingredient list in Korean only. Names below are the matching INCI names from the Korean Cosmetic Association ingredient dictionary.

Key ingredient

• Water
• Butylene Glycol
• Methylpropanediol
• 1,2-Hexanediol
• Dimethyl Sulfone
• Dipotassium Glycyrrhizate
• Arginine
• Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer
• Ethylhexanamide Serinol
• Sodium Hyaluronate
• Allantoin
• Madecassoside
• Zinc Gluconate
• Oleamide MEA
• Polyphosphorylcholine Glycol Acrylate
• Dilauramido Isopropanol
• Myristoyl/Palmitoyl Oxostearamide/Arachamide MEA
• Sodium Citrate

Ingredients with no mark are ones we found nothing notable about, and when marks overlap on one ingredient we show the caution first.

We could not place these in the list above: 올레아마이드엠이에이, 다이라우라미도아이소프로판올, 미리스토일/팔미토일옥소스테아라마이드/아라카마이드엠이에이

Did the ad claims hold up?

We checked 3 lines this product advertises against the ingredient list and public documents. One of them looks likely, though none are proven outright.

Claims translated from Korean, originals preserved.

Each line is quoted as the brand published it, and each one was read on its own against the ingredient list and the documents the brand publishes.

How we read these lines