Beetles Gel Nail Polish Kit with U V Light, 20 Colors, 31 PCS Starter Set

Why it's worth it

This 31-piece set gives you 20 gel colors, a base coat, a glossy top coat, a matte top coat, a lamp, and the basic tools — enough to do a full manicure the day it arrives. It's the simplest way to find out whether at-home gel is for you.

Twenty colors is the feature that actually matters for a first kit. Most starter sets give you three or four shades, which sounds fine until you want a red for a wedding and a sheer pink for work. Beetles hands you classic reds, soft pinks, pastels, and a few bold accent shades in one box. Owners consistently mention the range as the reason they haven't needed to buy refills. You'll figure out your palette by wearing it, not by guessing at a swatch chart.

The bottles are small — 5 ml each — and that comes up in owner feedback constantly. It's a fair trade. You get many uses out of each one because a gel coat is thin by design, and a 5 ml bottle of a shade you end up hating is a much smaller mistake than a full-size one. If you find a color you wear on repeat, buy that one full-size later.

From our review of 8 at-home gel nail kits, by Sarah Wright, Editorial Associate

What we like

• +Twenty colors is the feature that actually matters for a first kit
• +The bottles are small — 5 ml each — and that comes up in owner feedback constantly
• +The kit includes a matte top coat alongside the gloss one, which is a genuinely nice thing to have and rare at this level
• +The lamp is the weak link, and you should know that going in

What to know

• –The kit doesn't include a nail dehydrator, and the listing itself tells you to use one
• –Several owners found they needed three coats of color rather than two to get full opacity and chip resistance, particularly with…