This is the most useful page in this section and the product on it is not a cosmetic. If your close vision has changed — presbyopia, cataract, macular changes, or simply the ordinary loss of near focus that happens to almost everyone by 50 — then the limiting factor on your makeup is not the makeup, and no amount of switching products addresses it.
Three properties matter, and they are not the ones the marketing leads with.
It must stand on its own. A handheld mirror occupies a hand you need, and holding it steady at the right distance while applying something with the other hand is a demand that compounds every other difficulty. A standing mirror on a table in front of a seated person frees both hands and lets you rest your elbows, which also solves most steadiness problems at the same time.
It must have its own light. This is the property people underestimate. Magnification works by spreading the same amount of light over a larger apparent area, which means a magnified image is a dimmer image — so a 10x mirror in a dim bathroom can be harder to use than a plain mirror by a window. An integrated light is what makes magnification usable, and it is also what fixes the other common problem: overhead bathroom lighting casts a shadow in every line on your face, which is both unflattering and genuinely obscuring.
It needs two magnification levels. A high-magnification panel of 10x or more for the detailed work — the lash line, a brow, a spot — and a 1x panel to check the overall result. Working only at high magnification is how people end up with heavier makeup than they intended, because everything looks subtle at 10x and reads much stronger at conversational distance.
Beyond those three, the extras — rechargeable batteries, adjustable color temperature, a motion sensor — are genuine conveniences rather than requirements.
