Lots of acne sites review individual products for acne. They also present affiliate links for those products in the hopes that you will choose to click on the link and buy the product. Here at MyAcneTreatmentReview.com we review a lot more products that we’ll ever try to sell, and it has occurred to us that this can get a little confusing. One product in a product line might be great and the next, not so much. It’s easy to remember the brand name but sometimes it’s hard to get the right product. So for the few days we’ll be reviewing entire product lines for great, not-so-great, and downright bad product choices, beginning with Clearasil for acne.
Clearasil is one of the oldest and most widely recognized makers of skin care products for acne. Its products are inexpensive and some of them work extremely well. Let’s start with two of the best.
Clearasil Acne Products That Get Our Highest Rating
There is probably no better inexpensive formulation of benzoyl peroxide for acne than Clearasil DailyClear Tinted Acne Treatment Cream and DailyClear Vanishing Acne Treatment Cream. The key word to remember here is “DailyClear.” The Tinted Acne Treatment Cream is the old and familiar Clearasil formula with the peach tint. Peach is peachy if you happen to have a naturally peach-colored complexion (which could happen if you have hepatitis or if you eat a lot of carrots), although it tends to stand out on almost any naturally occurring skin tone. That shortcoming of the product is overweighed by the really inexpensive 10% benzoyl peroxide, just $6.99 per tube in the USA and Canada. A dab of this potent benzoyl peroxide cream will kill acne germs fast and help shrink pimples. It’s not a treatment that you should use all over your face but for the money it is hard to beat.
The other Clearasil DailyClear product we give our highest rating is the DailyClear Vanishing Acne Treatment Cream. DailyClear Vanishing Acne Treatment Cream is a lot like the tinted cream, except it doesn’t have the tint. If you have olive, tan, brown, or black skin, it’s a lot less noticeable than the peach-tinted version of the product, and it works just as well. Both of these products are best for pimples that aren’t easily treated otherwise but they are the strongest benzoyl peroxide products available with or without a prescription.
Clearasil Acne Products that Get A High Rating
We also give high marks to three other Clearasil DailyClear products and some products in their Ultra product line. The other DailyClear products that get great reviews include DailyClear Daily Face Wash and DailyClear Daily Face Wash for Sensitive Skin. For the price, just US $5.29 a bottle, these two DailyClear products are hard to beat. They work well, except they tend to be a little too harsh for dry skin. If you have oily, sensitive skin, the DailyClear Daily Face Wash for Sensitive Skin is fine. And it you use moisturizer, either product is OK for any type of skin.
The other Clearasil products we give a high rating are the Ultra Overnight Face Lotion, the Ultra Overnight Serum, and the Ultra Rapid Action Treatment Cream. We’ll tell you about the Ultra Rapid Action Treatment Cream first.
Ultra Rapid Action Treatment Cream is basically a value-added version of the highly rated DailyClear 10% benzoyl peroxide products. The Rapid Action Treatment Cream contains both 10% benzoyl peroxide and an alpha-hydroxy acid exfoliating agent known as gluconolactone. It peels dead skin that blocks whiteheads and blackheads and it gets rid of acne bacteria fast. It’s a good product for treating dry skin, but not the greatest for treating oily skin. If you have oily skin, you are better off choosing products that contain the beta-hydroxy acid salicylic acid. The rapid action of Rapid Action Treatment Cream can be a little too rapid if you have sensitive skin, so test a small area of skin first to make sure that you don’t have any adverse reactions to the product.
The other two Ultra products we recommend are where people who have oily skin can find the salicylic acid that is more appropriate to their skin. Ultra Overnight Face Lotion and Ultra Overnight Serum are both “BHA” formulas that contain the beta-hydroxy acid salicylic acid. This exfoliating acid soothes as well as opens up the skin and it’s a lot gentler on oily skin. The formula has the salicylic acid at a pH of 4. This is acid enough to break up dead skin but not so acidic that it irritates healthy skin.
There’s just one possible problem with Ultra Overnight Face Lotion and Ultra Overnight Serum. Both of them contain trace amounts of a botanical agent known as Helichrysum. If you are allergic to ragweed, Helichrysum sometimes can make your face break out. It’s an allergy, not acne, but it still makes your skin red. If you don’t have a ragweed allergy, however, Ultra Overnight Face Lotion and Ultra Overnight Serum are among the best BHA products you can find at drugstores and discount stores.
What About Other Clearasil Products?
Clearasil makes many other acne products. We’d describe most of them as “OK.” The Ultra Acne Clearing Scrub, Ultra Daily Face Wash, and Ultra Overnight Wash would actually be great products for acne if you did not have to wash them off your skin just about as soon as you put them on. They have the right exfoliating ingredient for oily skin, salicylic acid, at the right pH, 3.9. This ingredient takes 5 or 10 minutes to work and you just can’t hold your face in a position that it both stays on your face and stays out of your eyes. You have to rinse it away.
These products are just fine as cleansers, although there are some equally effective products that cost a little less. They are very useful combined with any of the other Clearasil creams because they “prep” pimples for benzoyl peroxide treatment, but they won’t get rid of pimples on their own.