The short version
I love travel. I hate mosquitoes. Every bite I get blisters into a pus-filled sack, and it has been that way my whole life. Creams, oral antihistamines, DEET-based prevention: none of it changed the reaction once I was bitten. It made the outdoors, which is where I most want to be, considerably less fun than it should have been.
Then I tried heat treatment, and haven't looked back. Treated within ten minutes or so, a bite almost never progresses past a tiny bump now. The Beurer BR 60 is the pen I've carried for years, and I liked it so much I built this site around it. Now I test other things too, and share what holds up.
Where this comes from
I'm not a doctor, a pharmacist or a dermatologist.
What I do have is time served. I've spent over a decade living in places where mosquitoes are a daily fact rather than an occasional nuisance: Borneo, Kenya, South Africa, Spain, France and Bali.
And I'm a worst case. Skin that blisters at every bite makes it fairly easy to tell whether something is helping.
How I decide what to recommend
Every product faces the same six criteria: how fast the itch stops, whether the cure is worse than the bite, cost per bite rather than price on the box, whether it survives real life, whether a child will let you use it twice, and whether the claims stand up when you read the research.
Products I've used myself carry a ✓ TESTED BY ME badge. Products I haven't carry NOT TESTED, and I give you the manufacturer's facts without scoring them. I would rather tell you I don't know than pretend I do. If a brand ever sends me something free, that gets stated on the page too.
I earn a small amount if you buy through my links, which pays for the site and for the next thing I test. It costs you nothing extra. The downsides of the product I like most are on the homepage too.
The pen behind all of this: my full Beurer BR 60 review →Get in touch
If something here is wrong, if you've tried one of these and disagree with me, or if there's a product you think I should be testing, I'd like to hear it. Corrections especially: I would rather be told than be wrong in public.
What I'm testing next
Beurer has expanded the BiteX family, and I want the Max and the Go on my own skin before I say anything about them. The same goes for bite away Two and Heat It, the two main rivals to the pen I carry. Those pages exist already, honestly marked as untested, and they get updated the moment that changes.
Why do my mosquito bites blister? → Beurer vs bite away Two vs Heat It: which bite pen should you buy? → Heat vs creams vs tablets: what actually stops the itch? → BiteX Original vs Max vs Go: which Beurer pen to buy? →