Lasers, in plain light.

The heavy artillery: the entire outer skin layer is vaporised and the dermis heated, triggering massive collagen remodelling. Three decades of controlled series and a systematic review of split-face trials agree it delivers the largest, most durable wrinkle improvement of any device — with long-term follow-up showing improvement persisting for years. CO₂ resurfaces deeper; erbium heals faster with less tightening.

The price is written in the risk column: 1–2 weeks of open wound care, erythema for up to months, and delayed permanent hypopigmentation in ~8% of a large series. For deep perioral lines and severe photoaging in fair skin, nothing non-surgical matches it; for everyone else, the fractional versions below exist precisely to avoid this trade.

The same ablative wavelengths delivered as microcolumns covering 5–40% of the surface, healing from the intact bridges between. Reviews credit fractional delivery with a better risk-to-benefit ratio than conventional resurfacing — and, with caution, it extends to the chest and hands, where full-field is unsafe (the neck, where its hypertrophic scars were reported, is better left to non-ablative lasers). It doesn't quite match full-field on the deepest lines, and results build over 3–6 months as collagen matures.

In darker skin it's possible with conservative density and priming, but carries meaningfully more pigmentation risk than the non-ablative class.

Heat without vaporisation: microcolumns of coagulated tissue under an intact surface. The 1550 nm wavelength remodels deeper (texture, fine lines, scars); 1927 nm works superficially (pigment, tone, actinic damage). RCTs support periorbital wrinkle improvement — 1550 nm beat focused ultrasound in one randomized trial — and a pooled analysis found small-sample outcomes statistically comparable to ablative, though per-session change is clearly subtler.

Its quiet superpower is safety in Fitzpatrick IV–VI (see the darker-skin section). Expect 25–50% improvement in texture/fine lines across a series, maintained with an annual top-up.

Halo fires a shallow erbium ablative component and a deeper 1470 nm coagulative one simultaneously — chasing "ablative-like results with non-ablative downtime". The published base is one multi-center manufacturer-linked trial (~80% significantly improved, makeup next day) with no independent comparison against fractional CO₂ or Fraxel. Clinically loved; evidence hasn't caught up with popularity — a classic "emerging".

The lunchtime tier: low-energy 1440/1927 nm diodes marketed for glow, early pigment, and "prevention". Their plausibility rides on the full-strength non-ablative fractional evidence at lower doses — device-specific peer-reviewed outcomes are thin and mostly uncontrolled: in a 23-patient trial, four to six sessions of the low-energy 1927 nm device gave mild-to-moderate improvement on blinded photo review at three months, and four sessions of the 1440 nm version produced "a mild improvement in select signs of photodamage" (10-patient study in Asian skin). We found no sham-controlled trial in PubMed (searched October 2026). Think "a lighter Fraxel, more sessions, less result per session": pleasant maintenance, honest expectations.

Gentle bulk heating of the dermis with a wavelength melanin barely notices. Small prospective studies report modest wrinkle-grade and laxity improvements after a series of sessions: masked grading of 34 patients after seven or more sessions found coarse wrinkles down about 12% and laxity about 17%, changes the authors called "subtle and gradual" (2003 study). No large, randomised or sham-controlled trial exists. Its genuine value: a polish-and-glow option for Fitzpatrick IV–VI, where most other devices carry pigment risk; one review calls the long-pulse Nd:YAG "the safest laser in darker skin types" (2019 review). As a wrinkle treatment, it's a candle next to the fractional class.